44. Living Your Best Life in Retirement: Lessons from Legos and Faith

Living Your Best Life in Retirement: Lessons from Legos and Faith

In this episode of Courageous Retirement, Vona Johnson shares an unexpected lesson learned while building Legos with her grandson—and how it beautifully mirrors the opportunity retirement offers us.

By watching her grandson playing with legos, Vona reflects on what it means to “dump everything on the table,” reassess what we’ve built so far, and intentionally rebuild for the season ahead. Retirement, she reminds us, isn’t an ending—it’s an invitation to start fresh with purpose.

Vona encourages listeners to thoughtfully use their God-given gifts and talents, while gently challenging the belief that our value is tied to income or productivity. With faith woven throughout, she invites retirees to trust God’s provision, seek His plan, and embrace retirement as their best season yet.

This episode offers practical encouragement, faith-filled perspective, and a genuine call to live fully and courageously in retirement.

Episode Timeline

00:00 – Introduction: The Joys of Retirement
00:16 – Life Lessons Learned from Grandchildren
00:50 – The Lego Lesson: Building, Dumping, and Rebuilding
03:47 – Embracing Retirement with Purpose
04:17 – Financial Freedom and Trusting God’s Provision
05:54 – Avoiding the Trap of Equating Worth with Money
08:02 – Exploring New Opportunities in Retirement
09:12 – Conclusion: Stepping into Your Best Season

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Transcript

0:00

One of my greatest joys of being in retirement is being able to take time to spend with my grandchildren that I wouldn't otherwise be able to do if I was still working. I love looking for teachable moments where I can talk about Jesus and about life and help them to learn and grow in our time together. But have you ever noticed how much we can learn from them by just hanging out with them? One day. I was really blessed by the opportunity to learn that maybe we should live life a little bit more like we do when we play with Legos. Hope you'll stick around.

Speaker 0:31

Do you fear? What lies beyond retirement? What if it's a gateway to a life filled with purpose, meaning, and adventure rather than an end? Discover peace and fulfillment as you boldly enter this new chapter in Courageous Retirement, a Christian podcast. I'm your host, author, and coach Vona Johnson. Let's get started.

0:50

I dunno about you, but whenever I go to the store with grandchildren, it seems impossible to get out of the store without buying something. On this particular trip, my five-year-old grandson wanted Legos. And he picked out, of course, this box that was probably 30 or $40. I'm like, no, no, no, no, buddy. We're not gonna do that. Let's look at this section. And he picked out a Lego set that was a three in one set. You could put together a cat, an alligator, or an owl. It was probably, around $5. I thought, okay, yeah, I'm probably getting off cheap. Let's do it. Honestly, that was probably the best $5 investment I've made in a long time because we went home and he put together the cat. And it didn't take him very long. He, of course, right away, had to take that design apart and he basically just dumped all of the, the Legos on the table again and started following the instructions on my iPad to put together the next design. But as I'm watching him, I realize that it was a lot like a sermon that our pastor gave recently when he talked about sometimes in life we just have to dump everything out on the table, start over, pick out the things that are worthwhile and of value and let the rest go. And as. My grandson was putting the next design together. I realized that that is so true. It doesn't matter where we are in life. I particularly am working with people at retirement age, so. I use the example of how we can take all of our gifts, our talents, our experiences, our, the things we really like, the things we don't really like to do. We can put all of that on the table and then we can go back and start picking out the things that really bring us joy that we want to do, that we, feel. Are purposeful. Whatever is important to us, we can pick those back out and start building, if you will, the life that we want to live now. For me, I think that that's really important. But it's kind of like as I'm watching my grandson, he got to get in kind of a hurry and he would skip a step once in a while. He didn't follow the instructions explicitly, and I thought got to thinking about that, and I realized that we can do that too, right? If our Bible. Which is the foundation of our faith, and we always need a strong foundation. Whenever we're building anything, whether it's a building or an owl out of Legos, we need to have the right foundation to start with. And as we get to go, and sometimes we get things out of order and it doesn't look like we thought it was going to look. Now, at that point you make the decision. Is this okay? Or do I wanna go back and I can pull apart those pieces that maybe got off track and start over again. So it's like you can go all the way back to the beginning or you can take a few pieces out and, and redesign if you will. So I, I just felt that, it's really important for us to think about this as we enter. This age of retirement, whether you're already retired, thinking about retired, or maybe you're a long ways from it, if life isn't looking the way that you wanted, if you don't feel like you're living out the design for life that God created for you, it's never, ever too late to put the pieces on the table and go back and start your design over again. One of the things that really struck me as I was doing a devotion recently is the fact that those of us that have a pension, a retirement plan, are really in a unique place in that. We may have an easier opportunity. It's like we can always start over and sometimes it's harder if, if your income is dependent on a job and money coming in to pay the rent every month, you're in a different place than those of us who have retired or are at retirement and we'll have money coming in. I always laughingly say that I make more money before I get outta bed in the morning than some people will make all week long. Now, I don't say that to be bragging. I say that to say that God has blessed me with provision. The years of work that I have put in have come back now and allows me to build a life that I can use all of the gifts and talents that God has given me, so that I can answer his call to more, if you will, in this stage of my life. Now, it doesn't mean that I have to do it forever. I can do what I'm doing for a while and then I can do, like my grandson did. I can take all those pieces apart, throw 'em out on the table and start building all over again. It doesn't have to be forever, but that's the joy of being able to be at this stage of retirement. We can use the gifts and talents, the wisdom, if you will, that we've been given to mentor others. We don't have to get paid for that. I do caution you to be wary of something that I've found myself doing and I've been doing this over and over again, and that is that we have this tendency to bring our value from the title. The amount of money that we make, and we can, we can learn the lesson and we can go, Nope, God has provided for me. It's not about the money. You guys have heard me say that it's not about the money, but then somebody will plant the seed. Well, and if we do this, and we do this and we do this, then all of a sudden you can be, you can make so much money and it's so easy to fall into that trap again. And I always think about the story of the young man that went on vacation down in the Caribbean somewhere and he was walking along the beach and he came across this old man that was just fishing out on the dock. He was, you know, sitting back in his chair just. Really enjoying the beautiful day. And the young man came by and was like, Hey, how you doing? And they started up a conversation and the old man was showing him how to fish and everything. And so he let him try it and the guy was so excited. He was like, this is so awesome. He said, do you realize. That if you did this and this and this, you could start this business and you could be bringing people in all the time. You, you could take this throughout the world and bring people in so you know, and teach them how to fish. Just like you've taught me how to fish. And the old man looked at him and he said like, well, why would I wanna do that? And he said, so that you could have all your days to just sit back and fish. And the guy looked at him like, really, dude? I'm already doing that, and sometimes we can fall into that trap too. And we have been provided this opportunity to enjoy life. Yes, we still have a purpose and we still want to use our gifts and talents to bring God glory and to invite others to know and love him. But we can do that from wherever we are, wherever we've been placed. So don't fall into that trap of the world of always having to make it about the money. Just remember that God will and always does provide for us. If you are at this point and you're starting to wonder what the next step looks like, I just really encourage you to spend time in the words, spend time talking to God what he wants for you in this next season, this best season of life. You can throw it all out on the table and take things off. Maybe you don't even want the pieces, parts that you've always used. Maybe you don't. Want to do that anymore? You can start over. You can go back to what you enjoyed doing as a child and you know, I mean, there's so many opportunities, so I just invite you to really think about that. If this is something that really, resonates with you, I. And you would like, you're not really sure what steps to take. I would really love to have a conversation with you. I am really working on ways that I can help people enter into this best season to fulfill their second calling. And if this sounds good to you, subscribe to the show and we'll continue to talk about that or just reach out to me. I'll put a link to schedule a call and let's just have a conversation about what your best season looks like. I would love, love to help you do that, so I just wanna thank you so much for stopping by today. It's such a blessing to be able to share with you what courageous retirement can look like and to hopefully inspire you to take action on those longings that God has put on your heart. Those dreams and desires that he gave you are there for a reason, and if you are feeling the call to take a step and make a change in your life, don't hold back. It is such a blessing to go after the gifts and talents that God has given you. One of the things that really struck me as I got to thinking about this Lego analogy is that we all have different paths. Um, sometimes people know exactly what they wanna do from early on in life and they get on the path and it's kind of like they bought the big mega Lego kit and they just started building it and their whole life was spent building that one design. Others are probably more like my grandson, where they don't really know for sure, so they buy the. Little mini three in one kit and they build one and then they, yeah, that wasn't quite right. So they take it apart and they build something different and then it wasn't quite right, and so they take it apart and they build something different altogether. Or maybe you're somewhere in between those two extremes. But the point is that we can stop and recreate at any time. You could almost think of it in terms of like the, the cityscape ones where you have one kit and you build that for a number of years, then you go start another one, and eventually you have this whole mega city, but you're really doing different pieces, parts. So just something to think about, how sometimes we're always. Just driven, we know what it is and we go for it. Other times it, it comes in smaller pieces, smaller kits, if you will, and no one answer is right. We all have our own path, our own journey, and that's the beauty of living out our lives and our callings for Jesus. I just wanna thank you for stopping by today and I, I pray that this inspired you to think about what God's. Nudging you towards in your best season I'll be back in two weeks to share more with you about how you can engage your faith and live your more in courageous retirement. God bless.