Meet our Hosts Pt.2

Lee and Carol compare their life journeys to the quote, "Youth for fun, middle age for work, old age for God."

Transcript

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SPEAKER_02 0:05

Welcome to Retirement Reflections. My name is Lee Martin. I'll be your co-host along with Carol Juicy. Carol, good to see you today. Fun to be back with the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Yes, it is, Lee. And I understand we're going to interview each other.

SPEAKER_02 0:24

We're going to interview each other, and I have an interesting question or statement in question to start with. Someone once said that youth is for fun, middle age is for work, and old age is for God. But I don't agree with that. I think all three ages involve all three things.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 0:51

You know, so we talk about our our life as a young person was more than just fun. Some of it was kind of like work. And all of it God was in it somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Well, I believe that. I think when twenty-year-olds walking their path, they don't necessarily see that they are being called to anything. They are just wondering where they're going. And I've always had this image of walking a path. And my path has led me in my old age pretty close to understanding what it was all about. But in your twenties, you have no clue what it's about. You think you do, and you think you're brilliant. You really think, boy, I know I've got a career ahead of me and I they're excited about it.

SPEAKER_02 1:43

I think there's a lot of times that the younger generation wonders what am I going to do with the rest of my life? I think they focus maybe on the wrong thing. I think rather than focusing on on purpose, they're more concerned about how much money am I going to have, where am I going to live. It's almost like the younger generation is more worried about the end than the start.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

That's interesting.

SPEAKER_02 2:04

You know, it gets Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

I have a younger generation granddaughter and she's finishing college and she's excited about the future because she knows she's going to be a teacher. She's she's so focused on it. And I'm hoping that what she's hoping for will actually come because then comes the real life and when you they start the reality of real life.

SPEAKER_02 2:29

Well, let's suppose that we've got folks that are listening to us that are in that younger age in their life. What what was your life like as a young adult? Did you know what you wanted to do? Did you have a direction? When did it all fall into place?

SPEAKER_01 2:43

Uh you know, Lee, I was kind of um a little rebel.

SPEAKER_02 2:47

Things never change, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:48

Oh yeah, I know. I can be a rebel as my old age, too. But as a young woman, I was really excited about I was gonna have a career in art. I was gonna be a fashion designer. Not a designer, a fashion illustrator. And I got a job as a fashion illustrator, and I found out that wasn't what I really wanted to do because all she would give me is purses, and I wanted to do figures. And pretty soon I thought, when am I going to be able to start illustrating figures? Oh, she said, honey, she said, you're not going to start figures for a while. I said, So you're going to put me on shoes and purses? And she said, yes. And I thought, well, I don't want to do that. So I went to my next thing is I wanted to travel. And I got in my car and I had a job out Yellowstone National Park, and I said, I want to see some of the country and art. So as a rebel, I just took off and I was always excited about my life. I wasn't worried about much of anything. Where I see more of the younger people are w seem to be a little bit more anxious and frustrated. I sure wasn't. I just did what I wanted to do.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

See, my story was a little bit different than that. My dad was a truck driver, my mother was a professional cook, either at the school or at her own restaurant. Um we were very active in church, and the preacher always was preaching to the kids and the young adults about what are you going to do with your life? He really never gave us options. Basically, he was saying, What does God want you to do with your life? And that translated to me that the only thing that that I could do was either to be a preacher or to be a missionary. And I chose to be a missionary in my my whole life. I I decided when I was like about 12 years old that God was calling me to be a missionary. I remember in the summertime afternoons when my preacher was his day off, I would go with him and go fishing. And so my life was kind of evolved around my pastor as my mentor and what he said and what he did. And so I remember he said to me one time, he said, I remember two things in particular. Well, one of them was, what's your daddy do? I said, Well, he's a truck driver. What's your mama do? I said, He she's a cook. And he said, Well, let me give you a bit of advice. If you can go be a truck driver, or if you can go and be a cook and be happy doing it, then go do that and don't be a missionary. Oh you know, and I I questioned him. I said, What are you saying? He's saying, if you can do anything else but be a missionary and be happy, then do that. The only ones that will be successful as missionaries or preachers will be those that that can't do anything else. I'm reminded of a time here after I was an adult that I had a preacher friend say, you know, you can do better. I was I was running a rescue mission at the time, working with the home mission board of our denomination, and he said that you can do better than that. I've heard you preach, you can do better. And I realized, no, I couldn't. I was doing what I was doing because I couldn't do any better. Doesn't mean I wasn't talented or gifted or skilled. It simply meant that I couldn't do anything else and be happy.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Well, you certainly had mentors. As a young woman, I did not have a mentor. I did not even go to church. Consequently, I was a very happy happy rebel. And I liked being a rebel. I have no at that particular time it wasn't called rebel. It was called being a beatnik.

SPEAKER_02 6:18

A beatnik, yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

I love poetry and I really just wanted a good time. And God certainly wasn't one of at that time I didn't know that God was really in my life, where you had mentors, you had a good solid foundation. I had no foundation. That didn't come right away. That came. And I know and I've always believed that God had his hand in my life. I was naive and I probably could have met different people, but good people kept coming into my life. So it when maybe they were mentors, but I had I liked good people and people that like to have fun. But God did come into my life at a point, and he came in at a big time.

SPEAKER_02 7:04

And she was talking about about her life, and and we somehow we got to talking about taverns and bars. Yeah. And she had mentioned that her uh that she lived above a bar. I think it was her parents that run the bar. And there was some that was where they had the once a year they would have the family reunions at at the bar. And the uh sometimes they would open the bar for family night. And when I was growing up, oh my goodness, that was, you know, if you want to go straight to hell, you do go to a bar, you know. And I remember telling about my Sunday school teacher was a milkman, and I saw him coming out of a bar, and I was just crushed by that. My dad took me to the bar to talk to the bartender and for him to show me that the bar actually had milk. So all my Sunday school teacher was doing was delivering milk to the bar. But I thought about that, and you know, and kind of how that formed my life. I remember in the back of our refrigerator we had a bottle of I guess it was wine, and mother would say it was for medicinal purposes. And I kept after them and after them until they finally took it out and said, come here and watch us, and they poured it down the drain. And never had any more. So, you know, that was kind of my my background on that. But let's fast forward from that age to middle age. If indeed the youth was for fun, and then we now have families and responsibilities, and now middle age is is for work. How did you relate to that? What was your work life like?

SPEAKER_01 8:33

When I actually had to get a job, I worked in a factory, and I found out right away. I thought there has to be more to life than working in a factory.

SPEAKER_02 8:42

What kind of work did you do in the factory?

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Sorted laundry in this uniform factory, and I just sorted uniforms, and that wasn't fun. That wasn't fun at all. But I thought, what do you really want to do with your life, Carol? And not having anybody giving any guidance, I said, I want to be a secretary. Why I wanted to be a secretary, I do not know. And I started a night class at the local junior college and taking shorthand, I wasn't very good at it either.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

Were there were there any other options at that season of your life for women? I mean, what was a woman my perception is that women were supposed to be mothers, secretaries, or nurses.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Well, I found out I wasn't a very good secretary because I couldn't spell, and we didn't have spell check, so uh that was not one of the better careers. The interesting thing was I also found out that I really enjoyed learning. And I that came as a shock because in high school I could have cared less. But I really always was a reader, and I started taking classes at rather than just shorthand at the college. And I thoroughly enjoyed learning. But I'm gonna jump ahead of that. So I decided to get a degree, and that gave me a lot of focus. And long story short, I ended up getting a master's degree at Layola in pastoral studies of all things.

SPEAKER_02 10:06

Really?

SPEAKER_01 10:06

So the Lord was leading me all along. I went from work sorting laundry in a factory to a master's degree in pastoral studies, and he's been working with me ever since. Wow. So amen.

SPEAKER_02 10:21

Well, you know, that age for me, whenever I got married and we had children, I began to realize how important that was. In my particular profession, being in in ministry as a clergy and going back and forth from being a missionary here in the United States to being a pastor and then back to the missionary thing. To me, it was all kind of like being a missionary, but the one thing I realized more than anything is that you couldn't be single and be in that ministry. You had to have the stability of having a family. Churches, for instance, uh would go through cycles. They would hire young students out of seminary, married, and then the next when they would leave, then they would hire uh someone who was married and had uh school age children because they would stay longer at that church. And then that person would leave, then they would hire uh retired people because they uh knew more and would stay longer at that church. The emphasis in the churches was who can we get to stay the longest? But I realized how important it was for me to have a wife and how important it was for me to keep that wife, you know, because if something should happen that we would divorce, separate, that was the end of my ministry. And so I was always very conscious of the fact that not only was my relationship with my wife based upon love, but it was also based upon the reality that the church uh required it. And so we deal with that. But then also kids. My son and daughter would probably agree that the most difficult thing they ever had to do was to be preacher's kids. Oh, I called that PKs, you know, because they had to be the perfect example.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Perfect example, yes.

SPEAKER_02 12:00

And in a lot of churches, fortunately, not with my children, but in a lot of churches, the the preacher's kids were the onreists, the most difficult folks to deal with, you know. In my middle ages, middle ages, that sounds weird. When I was middle aged, the emphasis was that I had to maintain, and it was almost like for looks. You know, if I go back and look at that, I think there would have been some things that maybe I I should have done differently and not thought about, you know. You know, I have to uphold this image. You know, I'm I'm the preacher. Today I hear people say, Well, you don't even act like a pre or you don't look like a preacher. What's a preacher supposed to look like? What's he supposed to act like, you know? And I'll tell you what, it's sometimes it's no fun being a preacher because you have to act like I don't like to act.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

What I did hold on to from my early age all the way through, I really have enjoyed life, and I've enjoyed I'm a happy person. And I didn't have that burden that you are describing. I could just be who I was, and I wasn't really bogged down with trying to have any image really could care less what people thought of me. But I wasn't a bad person. I just didn't have that feeling that I had to have any kind of an image. Free spirit. Free spirit. Free spirit. I never thought of that. Is that what a free spirit is?

SPEAKER_02 13:16

It is to me. Well, let's trans let's keep going and go up to where we are now. Mature adults. Mature adults.

SPEAKER_01 13:24

I am an old woman.

SPEAKER_02 13:25

You know, I I'm having more fun now than I have probably ever had in ministry. And and I've had a lot of good positions. I worked with college students and I loved it. I worked with homeless people and I absolutely loved it. I worked with police and fire, and I love, you know, I remember when I was, oh, probably 16 years old and driving across a railroad bridge in St. Joseph, Missouri. I remember I had a 60 impala. And I remember feeling like God said to me, one of these days, you're going to do something great, even greater than Billy Graham. And I was so excited about that. And then years later, I realized that every stage of my life got greater than the one before. And every one of those, Billy Graham had never been in. Billy Graham had never been a Baptist. Well, he did start out in youth ministry, but he'd never been never worked with homeless people. He never worked with police and fire. And so in that regard, I was, quote, greater, you know, than Billy Graham. But I remember, I honestly feel like every place God has put me was greater than the one I was in before. Because I learned in every one of those. And I'm having so much fun now in my mature years. It's fun. I guess it's fun because I remember my mother used to say when we'd talk about people that would disagree or not like you, she would say, Well, they can't eat you. And it's it finally took me all those years to realize what she was saying. I mean, what's the worst they can do? They can't eat you.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

No.

SPEAKER_02 14:50

You know, and if you lose a job or if or if something changes drastically, that's just an open door to something else.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Well, we're now talking about our age I am old, and I have recently really felt my oldness. But I have always found different parts of my life that are filled with joy, happiness. I have a fantastic husband. I for 56 years, Ron and I were married, and he brought a lot to me. He taught me an awful lot. Can't be a as you use the word, a free spirit all your life. He taught me to be grounded. And again, I know that the Lord was working with me from all along. The right people came into my life at the right time. And I can't even explain it. That Ron and I stayed married for 56 years is amazing. The poor man, he didn't know what hit him. But I gave him something that he didn't have in his life either. He was so grounded that he would have stayed in the same spot for year after year after year, and I gave him more possibilities. There are a lot of possibilities in life.

SPEAKER_02 15:56

There really are.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

And even as we're old as I'm old, I see possibilities.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

Well, you know, you only have two choices. You either do what you like or you learn to like what you do. There's there's no well, in between is is just a big void, and and that's not a good place to be. But I know of a lot of people who who hate what they do, they hate their job, they hate their relationship they're in. There's just no joy and no happiness. And from my perspective, you either either change that, I mean, if you're in a job you don't like, there's lots of other jobs. And if you don't want to take the chance of going out and looking for another job, then suck it up and learn to like what you do. You know, those those are the options, you know, that that I see. If you could go back to your your younger self, what kind of advice would you give, knowing what you know now?

SPEAKER_01 16:43

My younger self, I would have said, Carol, go out to Yellowstone and have a good time. And to me, life was an adventure. I mean, I thought, let me try different things, let me see what it's all about. Did I have make mistakes? Yes, I made mistakes, but I learned from them a lot. The one thing, this something struck me as you were talking. I have a sense of humor.

SPEAKER_02 17:07

You do.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

And life, absolutely, you have to laugh your way through the whole thing because it is funny. And the funny things that happen in your life. What's that saying? You grin and barrack, you just absolutely you've got to have a sense of humor about life. And I have met people that have no humor. Yeah. And I think the first thing when I met my husband is his humor. It was so dry that I don't even know that he even thought he had one because somebody asked me when I said that he was so so funny. They looked at me and they said, Who? Because his humor was so dry, but he just made me smile all the time.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

I used to work with the police department in Topeka, Kansas. I was their chaplain, and I would go whenever someone would die, an unattended death means that no medical personnel were there. We had a lady that lived in an independent living facility. She died in her sleep. And of course, the daughter came and found her and panicked and called 911, which they sent the police, and of course I was part of that group that would go. She was in her mid-90s, and I remember sitting there in the room. Mom is still in bed, we're waiting for the coroner to come and pick her up. And so the daughter begins to tell me about the things that her 90-some year old mother had done. She'd been a Girl Scout leader, she'd been a choir leader, she had gone to France, Paraguay, Afghanistan, everywhere. Just this lady had done everything you can imagine. She had gone deep sea fishing, she had she'd gone snorkeling, you know, she'd been a lifeguard. And in the midst of all saying this, I I guess I kind of smiled and chuckled because the the daughter said, Excuse me, did I say something funny? I was kind of embarrassed, and I said I said, I'm sorry, but I was just thinking about all the things your mother has done, and there's only one thing she hasn't done, and she did that last night. You know, and so she kind of looked at me and she said, Well, I I guess you're right. You know, sometimes we live a full life and we don't even know it. A lot of things take place, and you know, I was thinking if I was to go back to my younger self and uh give some advice of some kind, I think it probably would be number one, think before you speak. Oh, because you can't take back what you say. Oh, that's a good one, Lee. You have to hang on to that. And I think the other thing would be is to understand that wherever God places you, you can be of great value. Because I look back, and I don't think I have regrets, and yet in every place I've been, there's there's things that I wished I had done.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

Right.

SPEAKER_02 19:35

You know, so I have to look back on that and realize that what I've done, God can use in every situation. Whether it's something good that I intended to do or something stupid that I didn't intend to do, God's going to use that anyway. So we look at our lives now and we re realize our life today is a combination of things that we wanted to do when we were young people, things that we actually did when we were middle-aged, then enjoying what's left. Enjoying, yeah. Enjoying what's left.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

I've I have enjoyed life and I've been privileged to have wonderful people in my life. I have met so many, right here at Canterfield, I have met unbelievably good people. People that I enjoyed being with, talking to. Has there been bumps in bruises? Yes, there have been. And I very often I could be one of the biggest complainers that there are. Really, seriously, I can complain with the best of them. And that's another thing I like about Canterfield. I can we all can complain to each other, and we all understand each other. I was at lunch today and a gentleman was he was in a lot of pain, a lot of pain while he was eating. And I told him, I said, now you're in a lot of pain. What are you gonna do about it? He said, Well, I have a lot of things I have to do today. I have to get this done and this done. I said, but you're in pain. Why are why don't you just go home and rest? I can't because I have to get get this done. And I said, You're not listening to me. And he said, No, I'm not listening to you at all. I don't want to listen to you. So he got up in his pain, and he's and I saw him in the hallway limping down, and I realized that we can give good advice and nobody pays any attention to us. That's true.

SPEAKER_02 21:16

Well, you know, let's draw this to an end here somewhere and realize that what we hope the future has for us here on this podcast is people that see life as for what it is. You know, and it it's sad sometimes that people think what life at this age is all about is gloom and sorrow, and I don't have anything ahead of me, and you know, nobody, my kids won't come over and see me, and I'm so sad I want to go home and eat dirt, you know, that kind of thing. Right. When in reality, this is probably some of the best years of our life. And it all has to do with our mental ability and and for me anyway, the dependence we have upon the Lord.

SPEAKER_01 21:57

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 21:57

You know, do I need a lot of money to do the things I want to do? Yeah, I probably do, which means I need to change the things I want to do. I need to stop and realize, you know, hey, what I've got's good, you know. It could always be worse. About the time I think things are really bad, I walk around the corner and see somebody else. I think, well, wow, things aren't as bad as I thought they were.

SPEAKER_01 22:17

Well, the um I have enjoyed you, certainly uh meeting you at Canterfield and and also I have enjoyed sharing our art experiences. Yes. And that has been a real joy for me to meet another artist and somebody that understands what art means to us, and we can talk about it. So I've had uh many, many good conversations with you.

SPEAKER_02 22:40

So well, good, and I think our time is about coming to a to a close. We as senior adults have a lot of things to do this afternoon.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

Oh, that's right, you do.

SPEAKER_02 22:50

That's right. We got a lot of things to do. So, Carol, juicy with a T. G-I-U-S-T. G-I-U-S-T. Juicy with a T.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

If those that are wait a minute, you just pronounced it correctly.

SPEAKER_02 23:02

I did. Very good. Those of you that are listening on the World Wide Web, she'll probably tell you again how to pronounce her name, but that's that's okay. Hey, I'm gonna go. We'll see you later, okay? Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

Hi, Patrick Bunjam here. Retirement Reflections is a small startup podcast that we hope will share our community stories with family, friends, and anyone else who wants to listen. Despite being produced at Canterfield of Kennesaw, the opinions of our hosts and guests do not reflect the company's official policies and procedures. We hope you'll stick around to see what stories we have to share. Thanks for being here, and we'll see you next week.