Episode S6E3: “Transitions in Life - How God Leads into the Retirement Seasons of life” with Dawn Pownell PART 1

Dawn Pownell discusses her transition from a 30-year teaching career to retirement, emphasizing her identity as a child of Christ rather than her role as a teacher. Despite initial reluctance, she felt a divine appointment to return to teaching after staying home with her children. Over five years, she wrestled with the decision, ultimately finding peace in retiring. A pivotal moment came during a Bible study on John, which reinforced her faith to believe without seeing. Dawn now focuses on trusting God's leadership, embracing new opportunities, and redefining her identity beyond her professional role.

Transcript

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ANNOUNCER today on the finishing well podcast, my identity is not what I am doing. Who I am is the child of Christ, the daughter of the king, and so when I keep that in the forefront, it sure makes it easier to step out of the role that has been a big part of my identity for a lot of years. Welcome to the finishing well podcast where we encourage believers of every age to find meaningful ways to impact the world for the kingdom of God. Our mission is to prepare and encourage every person to live well and to finish well. We pray this podcast will be a source of strength and encouragement as we seek to glorify Christ as we engage him in our aging years. Now, here's your host for finishing well. Hel habecker, welcome to the finishing well podcast again. I love doing this. We meet people of all different stripes, shades and work experience, and I have a very special friend with me this morning. Dawn pal. Now welcome dawn. Thank you. I'm so excited to be back well, Dawn and my wife and Mary Yarbrough did a podcast a while back on mothers with dementia. You may want to go back and catch that in our library somewhere. It's a very powerful podcast, but God's at work in her life in transitions. You know, one of the things that we talk about in finishing well Ministries is everything changes. You know, we age. Everything changes from birth right through the end of life. Life is a series of constant changes, and how well we adjust and sense the Spirit's leadership in those changes is critical, I think, to what God wants to do in our lives. So Dawn's been through a transition, and it's taken her a number of years, and I thought it'd be great to hear her story. It would encourage all of us, wherever we are in this changing transition scheme in life. So Don just a personal word. You and I go way back. We do. I knew your husband in medical school, and it's been a long time ago, and we've watched each other have been a part of your family's life. Absolutely you married all three of my children and baptized all three children, including me, I have so much fun thinking about you and your family and how God has woven our lives together. So change happens. Tell us what you've been doing in the recent past, like, say, for the last decade. Just summarize what God's been doing in your life, where your mark has been made, etc, okay, um, I have been teaching in the classroom for 30 years. I taught two years in the public school when I originally started, and I knew immediately I couldn't do it. It was like teaching with my hand tied behind my back, not being able to say the word of Jesus, so I applied to a Christian school in Dallas and started teaching first grade, and it was immediately apparent to me that was what I was called to do, to teach God's word. In addition to academics, I loved teaching the academics I loved pushing on character and teaching kids how to have some grit and become independent and responsible. And that's how I met Jonathan habecker, wild man who I love dearly, and I knew your family, but we we really spent that year together, and that was a really special time for me to have him. I really, I love, I love my wild man. Jonathan habecker, and you had a big impact in his life. Well, I don't know about that, but you all, it was a joy. It was a joy to have your family, and a real joy to have him. So then I started, we started our family. I stayed home 10 years. What a gift. And then I got a phone call to come back to teach fourth grade at the same private Christian school in Dallas. And so I went back. I agreed to go for a year and a half. There was a teacher that was pregnant, and my kids were all starting back into school, and it was just, it seemed like a divine appointment. And so I agreed for a year and a half I would go back and teach fourth grade. And how long did that? 24 years? Is it? God good? So I have been teaching fourth grade and loved it. I loved it. I love wired for that. I think, I think I was too it was the right age. I was on a great team. I was in a great school. I was able to do things in addition to teaching in the classroom. I taught chapel on a regular basis. I was able to do a lot of things that just filled my soul, and I was most. Importantly, able to speak the gospel into children's lives and into parents. You can't assume, just like in church, that everyone in your classroom is coming from a family that has both believing parents, just like we shouldn't sit in church and assume that's the case either. So I am so grateful that God gave me that opportunity for all those years to invest in the students, obviously, but the families as well that became, many of them became really good friends for a lifetime. So I've loved it well, that mission that you were on, then used all of your skills, your passions, and you were, as we would say, thrilled with doing God's work in that season of your life, correct? So what changed? I mean, you know, it's interesting to me how we make transitions, and I remember when I left the church as your pastor, you know how God worked in my life. So was there something stirring in your life to leave the classroom? And how long did that last? I had been wrestling, and I used the word wrestling over this decision for about five years, and I, I don't know what it was about it, I just had a sense of unease each of those five years, questioning whether or not I was really being called back. My heart was always that I didn't want to be there if I wasn't called to be there. It's too hard of a job. You don't want to do that job unless God's called you to do it, and I loved it, and I loved where I was and what I was doing. So each year, I would begin praying like in the fall, late fall, all the way through March, when I had to make a commitment. And at the end of that, for the previous four years, I felt really at peace. I felt called back, and I knew it was either for specific children or a specific family, or what he was going to teach me by the people he put in my orbit. But I knew without a doubt, all those prior four years that I was called to go. And so I did. I loved every minute of it. And then a year ago, as I started that process, and I'll talk in a minute about kind of what my process was and who I involved, but I didn't feel at peace. I didn't feel at peace, and I had a great administrator that prayed for me and gave me additional time, and I didn't feel peace until I said, I think it's time to go. So you would say the Holy Spirit was working in your life. He was developing something of discomfort, transition, change. Can you describe it any further? I think that there was just a sense of this might be time. I've always had this little funny thing I say about teachers, that we all have an expiration date. We don't know it. I mean, is there anything worse than your child having a teacher and you and Vicki looking and said she should have retired 10 years ago. I didn't ever want to be that person. I wanted to leave when I knew I was still doing the work of the Lord in a way that was acceptable to Him, not not about me. I just wanted to not be in there, ineffectively causing more hardship to kids and parents, and so I just started feeling this sense of, maybe it's time, maybe it's time. And that increased over those five years. It really did. And by last year, so this is I've been retired only one month. How? Right? You know, I but the process I've wrestled with for the last five years, and I've labored in prayer. I've asked other people to pray. I've sought wise counsel, you being one of them, your wife being one of them. And in the end, I really knew it's okay, it's okay to step out. This has been a glorious 30 years that God gave me in that place, but I also knew, and I think this is why the wrestling was so hard for me, that when I walked away from it, when the door was closed behind me, there really was no going back, right? And I think we have to accept that if you're 60 years old or 55 years old, you know, there is really no going back to that, that chapter is closed, and the finality of that was a hard part of the process, too. I think that's true. It's just my own assessment as I watch life and learn from it. Yeah, I think that's true at any season. I mean, God wants to take us to something new and the next, and to go back. I mean, he wants to keep leading us forward. I think it's all about going ahead with the Holy Spirit, with Jesus leading us, Deuteronomy, 31 eight, God is always ahead of us where He's taking us. Thank goodness, thank goodness. And I do agree with you wholeheartedly. There is no going back as we go chapter by chapter, following his leading. And so that's hard. If closed chapters are hard for you. Some people, I think it's easier to close the door and move on. I think that's a more difficult time for me. Is a closed chapter. But I knew when I knew that God was calling me out, he was closing it, and he would lead me to the next thing. The other thing I'm very confident of is I listen to God myself and watch others do the same thing. It does take time. I mean, occasionally there is an instant you'd know exactly where God's leading you, and you shut the door and move ahead. And it's doesn't take years or months or whatever, but I think it's normal that life takes time. And listening to God is a skill that we learn to do year by year, as his spirit moves and changes us. And it doesn't come naturally, right? We're in an instant generation. We want a quick answer just we want a quick meal and a drive through and a quick meal delivered to our house and sitting before the Lord and listening is not our natural instinct. And so I agree with you, it takes time, it takes years. It takes circumstances that drive you to that. And for me, this drove me to that for quite some time, and I would agree completely with that. So talk to me a little bit about your identity was wrapped up in who you were as a teacher, and you were a good one. Well, you're very kind to say that I loved what I did, and I think if you love what you do and you're using your gifts, then you are probably okay, right? My identity, and this is something that I wrestled with when I really had made the decision to step out in faith and follow his leading. I started really processing that, because I knew that we all identify on some level, wherever our purpose, our role is at that time, right? And so for me, yes, a part of my identity was being a teacher there, teaching chapel there to, you know, doing whatever I was doing. And so I had to step back from that. My identity is not what I am doing. My identity is the daughter of the king. And when I really sat in that, after I made this decision, it really made it okay to have people stop me and say, aren't you? Yeah, you know, yes, it's okay, but that's not really who I am. I am thinking this in my head. That's not really who I am. Who I am is the child of Christ, right? The daughter of the king, and so when I keep that in the forefront, it sure makes it easier to step out of the role that has been a big part of my identity for a lot of years. I think that's part of the challenge and transition. So much of our identity may be tied up in what we did, and if that changes, God's moving us away to something different. I mean, I'm not doing the same thing. So who am I? And what's happening to me? And that often happens with transitions, that there is a new process of redefining ourselves, seeing our gifts in a new way, absolutely, absolutely. And I think you're right. It doesn't matter what new chapter you're in. I remember when I stayed home from teaching and changed my role, then to being a stay at home mother and Pat and I would go somewhere, and, you know, people would say, Well, what do you do? And I felt like saying, Well, you know, I'm a stay at home mother, which I did say, and I can almost see in their faces, oh, well, you know, that was probably the hardest job I've ever had. Were those years at home with young children. But it goes without saying, it's hard to walk away from those identities that become kind of a comfort for us, right? So it's a reprogramming, refreshing of your thought process to realize that's not who I am. It's not that's just what I was doing. That's where God called me. I think that's so easy to do our culture reminds. Us of our importance being and what we're doing at that time, what we're producing, etc, right? And our jobs, but that's never the way God thinks of us. No, no, it's not me. He is tasked for us to do, but it's always in our relationship with Him and who we are and being his servants, not in the task that is ours for a season of life in that sense, absolutely, I completely agree. Good. So talk to us about who you're becoming. What are your gifts? What are your skills? How is the new dawn pal now? How does she look? What is What are you doing with your life now? What are you doing as a result of who you are being? How's he changing you? Okay, well, I'm going to go back to a pivotal point in the process for me in making this decision. Was in January of this year, I was doing a Bible study at Dallas Bible Church, and I had been back at the church doing the Bible studies, and loved him, and I re enrolled, and then picked up the book and looked at it, and it was the book of John. And I'm going to be honest, I studied John a lot. I've done BSF leadership for years. I've done John A lot of times, and I was so desperate for God to give me clear leading in this area of whether retirement was the right thing for me that I really thought, Oh, I just had that little sigh in me of I know John, John is not a fresh look at scripture for me, well, what ignorance for me? I've had to confess that, because it just shows scriptures fresh every time we open it up, right? Always new, new every morning, right? And so I did this study, and it wasn't five minutes that I was into that study, and I knew exactly why we were studying John. It was for me. Well, that study was for me. And, you know, we started, it's a beautiful Bible study on John, and it focused, really, on the miracles. And you have to be moved by the miracles that you could see. You know, the wedding at Cana, turning water into wine, the feeding of the 5000 I mean, who couldn't see those miracles and be moved right? A few fish and a few loaves, and then you fed 5000 people with baskets left over. You can believe when you see something like that, right? But then, when we started in on the miracle of people who believed without seeing. And that became a paradigm shift for me. And the one that really struck me was in John chapter 446, to 56 ballpark, and it's where Jesus has returned to Cana, a Roman official approaches him. He's come from Capernaum, and he is begging Jesus to come to see his child. His child is sick and dying. And the royal official actually says, Sir, come down before my child dies. Verse 49 and Jesus says in verse 50, go Your son will live. And the man went believing that his son would live, and was healed, wow. And I dove into that like a starving person, because that was my life. I had to really look and see that I I have believed and been able to trust and walk forward in transitions God has brought to me because I could see where he was leading me, right, but I was being called to make the biggest transition yet after motherhood Without seeing I was to be this man. I was to be the Roman official who was told to go without seeing any miracle. I was just told there was going to be one just like him. This man walked away and even crossed his own servants on the way home, they were coming to tell him that his child was alive and well. And he said to them, what time did he turn around? What time was he healed? Well, it was one o'clock yesterday, the exact time that this man was standing before Christ, the King. And so this was really ground shifting for me, how I had to really be honest with myself that a lot of years I'm a make a plan girl, I am your girl. You give me a plan. I'll get all the ducks in a row. I'll implement it. I will do the job to the best of my human ability. But that wasn't what I. Is being called to do here. I was called to believe without seeing or knowing where God was leading me next, to use my gifts just to trust. And that boiled down to releasing a lot of fear, a lot of fear of the unknown. And I just had to wrestle in that. And I wrestled in that all spring. It was really a turning point for me in my thought process. But what I found was, once I laid that down and released it and trusted not knowing, not seeing, I don't get to see the full bread baskets. I don't get to see the water turn to wine. I just have to walk forward knowing in faith that he's leading me, that he will use me, that he will open the doors that need to be opened, and and I can rest in that. And there came peace beyond understanding when I crossed that juncture in my faith walk. Oh, that's phenomenal. I mean, it seems to me, as I reflect on your story and reflect on the stories of Scripture, isn't that what faith is all about? God is always leading us to something, and we don't know what it really looks like, except that he's promised to be with us. He'll take us, and then all of a sudden, a whole new world opens up absolutely and I think we can control, try to control. What a joke, right? What can we really control? But I think we can try to control the outside factors. For example, stepping out of the classroom, I could have lined up a million things starting this fall, that I would be involved in that would fill my day, fill my time, and allow me to just lean into the next chapter without really the time to process, to pray, to think about, but that's not what I was called to do this for me, believing without seeing involved opening my hands and just saying, lead me where you want me. Because for the first time, I really have the time to do that for him, to lead and open doors that I've never had the opportunity to do before. So serving in places that I couldn't because of time constraints or small children or whatever it was, I'm in a new place, but I had to learn to open my hands and say, I can't see what's ahead, but you can see what's ahead, and I want to walk in that way. So teach me, show me, lead me, open the doors. Takes time. It takes a hunger. You know, it seems to me that that's what every season, let's say, moving from your 50s, 60s into a season of retirement, however quickly that happens, but that's what God wants us to see ahead and not to be overly concerned about. Well, how fast does it happen? You know, just paying attention to the voice of God in our lives, because he is taking us from point A to point B, and that's a journey, and you don't know exactly how long it'll last, but you do know he will lead you, and he will get you to where he wants you to be, and then the next season as well, your 70s, your 80s, your 90s, or whatever it is, right? And it's just trusting. It's it's a step of faith, no question about it, this big transition of retirement is a step of faith, no different from any others, whether the transition was to a new position or to a staying home as a young mother or whatever it is. It is opening your arms, opening your hands, and saying, just lead me. I love that dawn. I'm going to make a transition. Let's wrap this one up. Let's come back and do a part two on this and talk about what it really looks like, and how you knew what God was leading you into, and just some specifics. And that's what we all cry out for. We want God to lead us from one season to a next, maybe a hard season we're in or whatever, but God wants to take us somewhere into the future. Absolutely, I'd love to come back and talk for you a little bit more about all of this that God's done. You're awesome. Don thanks for the first part of this, and this is the finishing well podcast. So tune in for our next chapter of this discussion with Don. Thanks, Don, God bless you. Thank you, friend. You've been listening to the finishing well podcast. Let's keep pursuing Jesus together and encourage each other to follow him in our aging years. Subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts, or you can find us. At finishing well ministries.org/podcast, our vision is to change the way we think about our aging Season of Life, equipping you to actively pursue God's calling in your life. May the Lord bless and encourage you and we'll see you next time on the finishing well. Podcast, you you.