Episode S6E4: “Transitions in Life - How God Leads into the Retirement Seasons of life” with Dawn Pownell PART 2

PART 2:

Dawn Pownell discusses her faith journey and the joy of rethinking her faith walk. She emphasizes the importance of trusting God without sight, drawing parallels to John's gospel and his lifelong faith journey. Dawn shares her new role teaching at Dallas Bible Church and her openness to new opportunities, including spending time with grandchildren and subbing in schools. She highlights the significance of mentorship and the impact of her mother's service. Dawn advises seeking wise counsel, praying fervently, and being open to God's guidance in retirement, encouraging listeners to embrace their aging years as a time for continued service and mentorship.

Transcript

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Steve today on the finishing well podcast, God led me this year into rethinking my faith walk, and it has been such a joy, such a great reawakening. And I just can't tell you what a gift it's been 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. Hal habecker, well, welcome back to the finish. Well podcast, we're here and with part two and my friend Dawn Powell, Don, it's been fascinating to listen to you describe your relationship with God through this transition from what you've been doing for most 30 years, whatever, and now God's taking you to a new place. I'm struck by the importance of learning to listen to God taking you from a place that you have known into a place you have not known you were just talking. You know, we want to see things and nail them down, right? But that's not the way God works. That's not the way of faith. Hebrews 11, six. You can't see what faith is. All you can see is the result of God's promise. So I think this is terribly significant in our retirement Season of Life, wherever it begins, your 40s, your 50s, your 60s, your 70s, life is a a process, and you're following God through each season that he gives. That's what you're telling us, right? And it's difficult to do it that way to as I said to you earlier, you know, facing the reality in John of seeing the people's response to the miracles and seeing that my choice had had to be there was no way around it. I was being called to follow and believe with no sight. I was not going to see what was ahead. I was going to trust and walk one step at a time, one day at a time, by faith that he would lead me where he wanted me to go. And that is so contrary to how we normally like to operate, right? I especially like to see and know. It's easier to see and know and go with him, but when you don't know, and I didn't know, when I left and closed that chapter, I did not know where God would lead me. I did not know, but I had peace like I've never had, and I felt lighter, I felt freer that I didn't have to control anything. I used to pray during those five years that I would literally wake up in the night and have a billboard in my room that said it's time to retire or press on. And of course, that isn't how God operates. He wanted me to be put into this position where I opened my hands and said, I'm walking with you without sight, I believe, without sight. Okay. Now thought just occurred to me as we were talking here you you use the illustration of Jesus healing the person at Capernaum, his son, right? So John, I think John was started following Jesus, let's say in his early 20s, if we could, right, put a time there. So from his early 20s to his 90s, when he wrote revelation, and even when he wrote his gospel, I think he wrote his gospel in his late 70s, maybe early 80s. So he's thinking about this all of his life. I mean, speak into that, it sounds like John is reflecting out of his years of experience and following Jesus into something he had never known before. But Jesus said, Follow me and I'll make you fishers of men. And that's what he's always done. So imagine John for all of those years pondering all that he had seen. I'm sure he had made notes on it. I'm sure he had labored over it and thought through it, but God didn't lead him to physically write that book or experience what he did to write revelation until the very end of his life. Can you imagine? So he's following Jesus one step, one year, one decade at a time, just like we all do, right? And unlike the other gospels that were written by the men at a much younger age, a much. Fresher experience. John's book is so rich and full of detail, and it's magnificent. And imagine the years in between experiencing and actually writing it. God just has. He just has this unbelievable providential plan. And if we can step out of ourselves for a moment and let him do his wonder work, his wonder. We see that in John and what he did. So that's the amazing invitation of the retirement season of life. Let's say, from your 60s on up through. You know, it's a story of how God leads us just like He led us the first 50 or 60 years, nothing different, correct? It's daunting. It's a big change. And so you know, in praying about where he would lead me, specifically lead me to use my gifts and my time, and knowing that what I had to do was guard against filling my days that would be my natural controlling inclination line up my days full of all of the events that I thought I needed to do to serve Him. And so there was only one thing that God really revealed to me at the end of May I had in my prior years. Those 10 years, I stayed home with children, I had been blessed to teach at Dallas Bible Church in the women's Bible study, and I loved it. I loved the discipline of studying and investing in the word and trying to apply it and share that with adult women, and that was really revealing for me that I didn't just love teaching children scripture. I love teaching adult Scripture as well. So fast forward to May, and I get a call from the church that they do know I'm retiring, but that doesn't mean anything, right? So they called and asked if I would be interested in teaching in the women's Bible study again. And I was thrilled. I had total peace about accepting that incredible opportunity. And so tomorrow I teach my first lesson at Dallas Bible Church of the women's ministry in their Bible study. And I'm couldn't be more thrilled. But other than that, I have my hands open and I am doing a little bit here and a little bit there. I'm able to help pat a little bit away from the office. But for the office, I've been able to see my five grandchildren a little bit more often. I've been able to go back to school and sub with my friends. I taught last week in fourth grade, and loved it. Loved going back to have a day to teach and see the people, the community that I built into and they built into me for so many years, and I felt great joy in just walking away from that too. So I am really open to seeing what God does. I'm pondering a few things, praying over a few things that have just kind of been put on my heart, and I don't know what'll happen with those things, but I don't want to make them happen. I want to hold and let him show me what to do. And so that's part of this believing without seeing. So you're seeing God use some of the building blocks he's put into you this passion to know scripture, to teach women, you know what you've kind of put off to the side. I had to absolutely yes, but now it's, it's one of your strengths, one of your skills. And God says, Don I want to, I want to bless you in this whole new season of your life. I always think about this as we enter a whole new season of life, there's new friendships. I mean, you will meet so many new people in this new teaching role. You know, as you mentor and teach the scriptures to women, your kids are at a whole new season of life. I mean, that's another building block parents, as they age and continue to grow in Christ, that's the best mentoring process you can use for your kids. The best thing you can teach your adult kids is to model for them a mother, a woman who has continued to engage in God every day of her life. I really do agree with that Hal and I think pouring into our adult children as well as our grandchildren, is pivotal. And one thought I had in May as I was doing this, and it's funny, what people's different responses to me at retiring, and I had many people say to me, Oh, you're. Going to you're going to just be with your grandkids every day? And I said, Well, I don't think so. I will love that I can be with my grandkids and my adult kids, but that isn't going to be the best thing to be there all the time. So what I really realized is it's really no different from my classroom, right? I poured into those children with my life, blood and my energy and my everything, but I also poured into their families, to their parents, and that's a little bit about what this looks like for me, only it's the gift is, it's my own family, right? And so when I get to walk alongside these children and adult spouses that I God gave me, kids that I love and and their spouses that I love like my own. And now getting to walk beside grandchildren is they. The oldest is eight, and the youngest are two. And then there's one on the way, number six is on the way in December. And so to get to have that kind of desire to pour into them, to sit and talk with them about Christ and about hard things and how to trust and all of those things with my own people, my own little class of family, is a sweet blessing. It really is just incredible opportunities. So I want to go one more angle on this. Who are the people that have helped you set your course in life? I think one of the big things of our season of life is to be mentors of generations coming behind us, starting with your own family, of course, with your your kids, adult kids, in our 60s, in this retirement season, it opens up a whole new door of mentoring people from generations following us. So two parts you know who mentored you. How do you value that? What would you say to younger women or younger adult children come behind you? What do you set for? What is God calling you into? Who are the people that you need to pay attention to? And then how do you do that in your life? Now, I mean, I think God's calling you and Pat not only to mentor your adult kids, but there's people around us in church, and the adventure is, I don't know who God's going to take us into. I mean, we're going to meet all kinds of new people, just like I've done in this ministry, and as a whole new world out there. It's exciting, isn't it, to just know that he is going to lead you and lead you into these places where, I mean the mentors in my life I didn't anticipate, because I became a believer very late. I didn't come to Christ until I was 16, and so I would have to say the, you know, the first people that mentored me, because I knew nothing about scripture, was the people who walked beside me those first few years of faith and sat with me with a Bible that I knew nothing about Old Testament new I mean, I knew nothing how, and so I was mentored by a lovely young woman that really carried me into Scripture and helped me fall in love with studying God's word. Wow. And then, when Pat and I were first married, we were at Northwest Bible Church, and they had just started a big women's to women's ministry there, and I was in a small group with a godly woman that sat with us. There were three of us that met with her regularly for six or seven years, and you know, we could ask her questions that were safe, that we didn't know we were young married people. We didn't know how to do this marriage thing. And we talked a lot about life together and how to be in a Christian marriage and follow a husband that was trying to follow the Lord and how all of that looked and so that was really pivotal for me. And then, you know, I had a mom that was a beautiful example of service. She was. I had the privilege of knowing her personally you did, and she loved you and but she spent her whole life serving others when my some of my early memories of my mother are of her putting on her little hospital uniform to going up to Methodist Hospital in Houston and giving people magazines and sitting with them. And she went every week. She went every week and just served those who were in her path. But she did that her whole life. She She served others beautifully. That was one of her strong suits, and she was an independent, single woman for 40 years of her life, and she worked the entirety of her life. She worked hard, she opened a little gift shop, and she worked into and into her 70s, when really she couldn't work anymore physically. And so having those examples of serving and working hard and having mentors that asked hard questions and walked beside me during really pivotal places in my life. And of course, there were educational mentors too that helped me to be better in the classroom and to be a better steward of what I was given in that role of teaching and and they made me better people. I had co workers that poured into me and helped stretch me in and that is our call for the next generation, and how that looks. I have open hands to find out, but I know that it will be a piece of it, I would say, not only to you, but to everybody listening to this podcast, the season of 60s, 70s and 80s. I think one of the more powerful things we can do the Spirit working through us, is to be mentors to the generations following us. I think that's why God leaves us here in the aging years. I mean, you say, why does he take me home? Well, he's got things for me to do. He's got business. He's got people to for me to serve and pour my life into. And that's a unique opportunity. With the experiences we have, we can love generations coming behind us absolutely and continue to learn from those who are ahead of us. Now, you made a quick comment about your mother as she aged. What did you learn from her in addition to using her skills? But she had some challenges too. She had some challenges. She had some physical challenges. She had some dementia, I would definitely say dementia challenges. She had was diagnosed with ALS at the very end, but she never quit serving. She loved church. She was at church at the in the front row, praising the Lord every single Sunday, she started this little letter writing card ministry, and she sent cards to people every day telling him that she'd been praying for him. I remember there were a couple of elderly people that she had known through the shop. You know, she knew everybody in Houston. She was born and raised there, and then through the shop, she there. I just, I felt like I was with the mayor every time I was with her. And so there were a couple of little ladies that were ahead of her in age, that were in their late 80s, that were house bound, and my mother would go and sit with them and take them lunch and visit with them every week, every week. And you know, that's a ministry. That's a powerful ministry to aging people who lose their physical ability to get out, to go to church, and are shut in and isolated and huge dawn. It's huge as the aging population in our world increases. You know, there's no end to the people we can serve and be with and encourage and enlighten the opportunities God has for them through the skills that we have, I absolutely agree, and I'm gonna say Vicki halbecker has been a mentor for me for my whole adult life. She's one of the wisest women I know, and she knows scripture like no one else, and she's taught me a lot about following the Lord's leading, and what I love about your bride is she's not afraid of asking me the hard questions. But some of the things that I've learned from those mentors over over time are things that I leaned heavily on in this transition, and I want to just speak into that for one moment, because I think that they were really, really powerful for me. And one of those is when you're facing a new transition, whatever degree it is, labor in prayer over it. Pray and pray and pray some more and ask the people around you who know you the best to pray with you. Ask your family. Ask the people that know your circumstances and know you your real heart, not the image of you, not the role of you, but the people who know you and you and Vicki were some of those people seek wise counsel, and you can't seek wise counsel from an ungodly person. I don't believe in this circumstance. I think that if I'm asking you to pray for me, for God to lead me into the next chapter, I need you to be like minded with me and praying with me. So seek wise counsel again for people. That can honestly know your concerns and your fears and to be open, be open to the ways that God is leading you to rethink your current role. God led me this year into rethinking my faith walk, and it has been such a joy, such a great reawakening, and I just can't tell you what a gift it's been. And just open your hands, open your hands and trust and let go of the control, lay down the fear and walk with him. And I know that every morning, I know that God will lead me to what I'm supposed to get to that day. You know occurs to me to you, you should write this all out. It's a little little pamphlet about how we ought to live in our retirement season of life. Well, it just might happen. Really knows, and I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to even talk about what the Lord did in this season, because it's his story. It's his story, and I want it to be told it's about his faithfulness and goodness and mercy all the days of our lives, right? It's true. It reminds me of two verses that have carried me. They're just my best friends, Psalm 7117 and 18. Oh God, you have taught me from my youth, and I still declare your wondrous deeds of your own leadership in my life at my age. Now, don't forsake me when I'm old and gray, until I declare your strength to this generation and your power to all who are to come. That's our mission in life. Absolutely, I hope this has been encouragement to you to listen to dawn and hear what God has done in her life. And our prayer is be the same in your life, wherever you are in this transition of going into our aging years, whether you just start to think about retirement or how God leads and what happens? God cares about us. He wants to put us in positions where he loves to use our skills, our strengths, our gifts, and Don your great illustration of that. So thank you. Thank you. May God bless you out there and continue to pray for finishing well Ministries as we encourage all of us as we age into experience God's leadership in our life in every way. May God bless and encourage you all 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, you 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.