Free and Coddled

“So,” they all want to know, “how does it feel being retired?”

I’ve not known how to answer, because I was not actually retired. But yesterday, Monday, I finished moving out the boxes and pictures from the office, turned in my keys and cell phone, and hugged the two women in the office (for the first and only time in my five years there, understand!), and drove away.

Today, I am retired.

And it feels just fine. Free, actually.

I typed that and thought of the “Me and Bobbie McGee” line, “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.” Ha. It’s not that bad, not yet.

I feel, well, almost coddled, to tell the truth. Consider for instance that in my most recent trip home to Alabama, one of my sisters made sure that my favorite meals were on the table and the other presented me with shirts she had bought for me. The churches in our association have showered me with gifts which paid for most of the new Camry I’m tooling around town in. And Monday, First Baptist Church-New Orleans pastor David Crosby brought his SUV and hauled the last of my boxes of books to the new office at FBC-Kenner.

The administrator at Kenner teased, “I hope you like your new office. Mary Ellen, the librarian, made sure we painted it. She wanted it to look just right.”

The church office bought a new printer/scanner so I can e-mail cartoons each Monday morning to the Baptist Press. They’ve run a computer line into the library so I can do this blog and work on writing books from that office.

I have no more excuses.

Most of us recall the times we have begged off from some assignment or duty because “I don’t have the time.” No more. Nothing but time.

Well, almost.


I am accepting every speaking/teaching invitation I possibly can. Since I’m leaving my Guidestone (retirement) account alone for the next couple of years in the hope it will build back up to where it was a year or two ago, I don’t have the luxury of locking myself in that office permanently to churn out books. So, it’ll be a day here and a few hours there.

We’ll see how that goes.

The last week of this month, I’ll spend much of my waking hours at the Baptist Press booth in the exhibition area of the Southern Baptist Convention in Louisville Kentucky. I’m bringing my pens and paper and sketching anyone and everyone who stops by. Since it takes only two minutes–I’m not all that good but I’m fast!–the line moves rapidly.

I thought for 10 seconds about printing up cards to lay on the table announcing my availability for revivals, deacon retreats, prayer conferences, leadership banquets, and janitorial services (!) for those I draw, but decided against it.

The Lord will open those doors as He chooses.

Have I mentioned what my son Neil and I are doing next week? Sunday, June 15, we will be delivering his twin daughters, 12, to a camp near Asheville, NC. While they spend a week horseback riding, canoeing, and such awful pursuits, he and I will drive on to Gettysburg and explore that fascinating historical site. Ever since Margaret and I visited this Civil War town some five years ago, I’ve wanted to bring my sons, both of whom are history buffs. (Marty wasted his vacation time recently at the beach with his family!)

Neil has borrowed all my Gettysburg books and I’m listening to an audio book, as we try to bone up on our Civil War history to make the most of these few days. We thought of running on up to Cooperstown, NY, to the Baseball Hall of Fame (I was there in ’95 and fell in love with that quaint little town), but that’s just too much driving. We do intend, however, to run over to Lancaster, PA, and have lunch with the Amish folks.

My strong hunch is very few 69-year-old men are ever able to spend such a week with their firstborn son. So it will be special for both of us, something never to be repeated, more than likely.

I’ve mentioned here how that some forty years ago, I had a little extra money and asked my sister to engage a professional photographer to drive up to my folks’ farm and take pictures of them. “I’ll buy lots of black-and-white and color 8x10s,” I told her.

The photographer did that, and I have an album of those photographs. Pop is on his tractor, Mom is bringing him water, she’s working in the kitchen, that sort of thing. Dad’s health was bad, and we had no idea he would live into his 96th year. But I’m still glad I did it.

At some point that day, the photographer remarked to my sister, “Your brother is so smart to do this. My father died recently, and I don’t have a single picture of him.”

I have friends who upon their retirement took their entire family–spouse and grown children and grandchildren–on a cruise to the Caribbean. No doubt that makes a lasting memory. But we’re not cruisers. We’re history people.

In 1976, the Bicentennial Year, we took our children on a 3 week vacation from Mississippi into New England. We visited Washington, DC, and went through the White House, visited Philadelphia and Independence Hall, that sort of thing. But mostly, we saw the country and we visited presidential homes. The ones I recall–and in order–were the homes of James K. Polk, Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Franklin Pierce, Calvin Coolidge, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. I was 36 at the time, so remember these far more vividly than anyone else in the family does.

And lest anyone think we might have been wealthy to afford such a trip, we combined it with the Southern Baptist Convention in Norfolk and my first meeting as a trustee of the Foreign Mission Board at Ridgecrest, NC. Pastors usually figure out how to combine vacations with church trips!

Just before we left for that trip, a church member dropped by and slipped me a couple of hundred dollars. “We want you to enjoy this,” he said.

You can tell the coddling has gone on with me for quite some time. (On that note, I tell people my cartooning and drawing is a family thing. When I was five, Mom put my 3-year-old sister Carolyn and me at the kitchen table and told us to draw. That started it. When I was 16, my older sister Patricia paid for me to take a correspondence course in cartooning. My dad used to sit by the radio at night after supper and, just before dozing off, would ask me to get my pen and paper and draw him. He’d wake up periodically and ask to see the result, make a suggestion or two, and resume his nap. When I finished high school, I was the only one of the six children to attend college. My schooling was paid for–I was to find out years later–by my parents and brothers and sisters. I graduated from Birmingham-Southern College without owing anyone a cent. I had been coddled.)

Last Sunday, I participated in the installation of Ronnie McLellan as the new pastor of the First Baptist Church of Marrero, a suburb of New Orleans on the west bank. Transitional pastor, Dr. Archie England, has served that terrific church for nearly four years. At some point, Ronnie McLellan, who was a staff member as well as seminary student, married Archie’s daughter Allison, forever cementing the professor/student and pastor/staffer relationships!

I was touched by the way large groups of church members surrounded Ronnie and Allison and prayed for them. Worship leader (and also seminary professor) Darryl Ferrington planned this so that the congregation would come forward four rows at a time, encircle them, and pray for them.

“I thought I figured the exact time we would need for this,” Darryl said, “but what I did not count on was all the hugging!”

It’s nice to be coddled.

I forget which New Orleans blues singer said this–perhaps Louis Armstrong or someone–but when he was born, he had so many uncles and aunts and cousins, “I was seven before my feet hit the ground!”

Nothing better than that.

When the mothers began bringing their children to Jesus, the disciples rebuked them. “He doesn’t have time for this,” they must have said. “Rather,” Jesus said, “let the children come to me and do not hinder them. The Kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”

Then we read, “And He took them into His arms and began blessing them, laying His hands on them.” (Mark 10:16)

If that’s not coddling, it’s nothing.

Not enough coddling going on in the world today, if you ask me.

Let the church fill that void. It’s what we do best when we are faithful.

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