iRetire4Him Show 148: Grace and Grit in Retirement

Jim Brangenberg: Your retirement years could be 30 years of purpose-driven, fully funded ministry, years of making impact in ways and places you never imagined. Welcome to iRetire4Him. I'm your host, Jim Brangenberg. Please check us out online at iRetire4Him.com. That's I retire the number four him.com.

Once a teacher, always a teacher, our guest today grew up teaching in the public schools of St. Paul, Minnesota. For those of you don't know, I also grew up near St. Paul. So let's be clear, growing up in Minnesota is no cakewalk. It's cold, it's really cold, and it's hot and miserable too. But the cold gets you after the years, so that's why so many Minnesotans migrate to Arizona, Florida, Texas, and other destinations. After all, Martha and I are in Missouri after living in Florida for 20 years, but I digress.

Sheila retired to sunny Arizona and I say retired, quote unquote, retired to sunny Arizona and I may add hot as a convection oven, Arizona. That's what it is, and that's where this story picks up. Was Sheila satisfied with Arizona living as a retired person or was God prompting her to do something more? Was there purpose and meaning to be found in Sheila's retirement years? Let's find out. Sheila Arrington, welcome back to iRetire4Him for more of the story.

Sheila Arrington: Thank you, Jim, for having me. I'm so excited to be here and just share a little bit what God has been doing in my life and however I can just share the word of God and the love of God.

Jim Brangenberg: When you were growing up, what did you think retirement is all about?

Sheila Arrington: When I was growing up I probably looked at it as how I looked at my grandparents. They lived on a farm and my mother's parents in Topeka, Kansas, and, just thought it was just gonna be, you're gonna have coffee with the neighbors and you're gonna just do a little church stuff and just have good time. That's what I thought it was gonna be like.

I did not really put a lot of thought, and where I grew up, the conversation was really not about retirement, but you saw people who were retired and they did, they were just doing daily things, nothing spectacular. So you didn't put a whole lot of thought into it at that time.

Jim Brangenberg: Sheila, how many years were you a public school teacher?

Sheila Arrington: I was a public school teacher for over 37 years.

Jim Brangenberg: Everybody's going, praise God for Sheila. We need people like Sheila, and just so you know, audience, there are millions of Christ following public school teachers all over America. You need to pray for them because it's not an easy job . Sheila, was it a job that you love? Was it an easy job that you had?

Sheila Arrington: It was not an easy job, but I believe just for me, I knew that I wanted to be a teacher from the beginning, when I was five years old. I was a kid that in the summer, as soon as school was out for the summer, I ran home and with my friends and we played school. So for me it was challenging at times, but I knew that I was called to do it. It's a calling.

Jim Brangenberg: Oh yeah.

Sheila Arrington: And so throughout, I was able to, you have your trials and you have your tribulation and you have those kids that can push your very last button. Oh, I'm telling you, you're mad.

Jim Brangenberg: (laughing) I might have been, I might've been one of those kids at times with Mrs. Connie Johnson, my eighth grade English teacher. I'm pretty sure I pushed her to the edge. Sorry. And if I could find... now, Mrs. Johnson, growing up in Burnsville, Minnesota, you think I could find her? Connie Johnson. How do you find a Connie Johnson in Minneapolis area? You can't . (laughter)

So how old were you re when you retired from teaching?

Sheila Arrington: 64.

Jim Brangenberg: Okay, so 64. And then, how long did you stay around St. Paul before you and your hubby decided to go arizona winters are a whole lot nicer than Minnesota winners? How long did it take for you to say we're checking out?

Sheila Arrington: I had no idea. It was a surprise to me, let me tell you. Steven, my husband, is an avid golfer. He loves golfing. He always came out here to golf. He either went to Florida or he came to Arizona to golf. And the last time he came before we moved, years before we moved, he said, Sheila, there's something about arizona. It's different from the last time when we were in the nineties and we visited and neither one of us really cared that much for it.

He said, but it's different. And he said, so after this tournament, I want you to just come on out. And we'll stay here for a few extra days and just look around and just see how you feel. I thought, oh, okay. Okay. So we get there. I come out and those of you who know the Lord, when he starts stirring you, I was like, what is this? And Steven really said, Sheila, I always wanted to, he's always wanted to not retire in Minnesota. I am, on my father's side, I am four generation Minnesota. I am lock, stock, and barrel.

Jim Brangenberg: That's saying something. That's saying something.

Sheila Arrington: Yeah and my sister was the first African American mayor of Minneapolis. And we have roots deep in Minnesota, so it was like leaving? And I remember the Lord spoke to my heart. He said this: do this for your husband. And that was a wrap. Within a year and a half, our house sold. On the first day in Woodbury, we lived in Woodbury, we had four offers.

Jim Brangenberg: Wow. I guess it was time for you to go .

Sheila Arrington: Yes. And came out here, got a beautiful home and all of that, but little did I know... I did not know what I was going to do. God did.

Jim Brangenberg: Well, and let's save that for a minute, but I love the fact that you - I get it. When you're from Minnesota, even sometimes people think Minnesota, really? That's a crazy place, but it's a place... when you're from there, it's my home. Some days I have a hard time admitting that when it gets the crazy things in the news.

But you were there, you got generations there. I moved there as a little kid. What a great place it was to raise a family back then. Your sister, so your sister was a mayor of Minneapolis? I'm trying to remember her name 'cause it would've been when I was - Sharon Sales Belton- so that was the nineties, right? Wow. I remember that. That's hilarious. That's the first time I heard that.

Okay. So I wanna give a little shout out to our iRetire4Him book. Martha and I wrote iRetire4Him for everybody listening to give you a perspective on if maybe you're just like Sheila, like I never thought about what retirement would be like. And so you've done what many people have done. They've just checked out. iRetire4Him is all about how do you find meaning and purpose in your retirement years, but through stories and through encouragement, 'cause some people in retirement need to go back to work. So if you're gonna go back to work, choosing a place where you can make the biggest impact on the people that are younger than you.

Or maybe you don't need to go back to work, so move your household into a neighborhood full of young families because those young families desperately need to know what does it look like to, what's marriage look like? What does cleaning a house look like? What does fixing things on your own look like? What does a budget look like? All those things they can learn from you.

iRetire4Him has written for you and it's filled with stories from Martha's dad of what did it look like to live out retirement on purpose with a purpose. Get a copy today, online at our iWork4Him Bookstore. iWork4HIm.com/bookstore. And if you make any donation to iWork4Him, we'll give you the book for free and we'll sign it as well. That's iRetire4Him. It's the book. You gotta have a copy.

Sheila, talk to me about this. You've experienced a few years of the American dream of retirement, still living in Woodbury before you decided to go to Arizona, and I know life changed then. Did you find the America dream of retirement fulfilling, satisfying?

Sheila Arrington: You know what? I am just a different, I didn't ever get a chance to really retire like that, Jim. See, because of couple of things. When I retired, of course, and I was with St. Paul Public Schools. I was in their professional development department. So immediately when I had retired they said, would you be a consultant?

So literally I retired in June, had the big party, but in September I was working with new teachers. Now when you look back 2020, and you say I had always told the Lord when I retire, this was my conversation to God, I'm all in ministry. He comes for those words.

Jim Brangenberg: Even though you were already in ministry 37 years as a public school teacher.

Sheila Arrington: I was already doing ministry, but full time, you got me. I went right back as a consultant to a consulting position and he's she will stay there. So I think, it was another thing of I'm moving her out of here, minnesota, away from public education, because she's going to keep saying yes to these people as they ask her to do.

Jim Brangenberg: But even so, mentoring the next generation of teachers, what a privilege that was. That's really that's the most biblical thing I've ever heard because the Levitical priests were required to start at 25 and retire at 50, but then their next stage in life was training up the next Levitical priests.

You were doing the same thing. That was the true, that's the only biblical sense of retirement that really makes sense is okay, you can stop doing your regular day job, but start training everybody else, pouring the years of wisdom that you have. Oh my word, classroom. I don't know if you know this, but I taught seventh and eighth grade math for one year.

 (chuckles)

Jim Brangenberg: No training. I was substitute teaching for fun. And they recruited me because in Florida you only have to have a degree in order to be able to teach the first two years. You don't have to have a teaching degree. So you just have to have a four year degree. And you could teach in your discipline.

And I had a computer science business degree, and that was the worst job I ever had in my entire life. And it wasn't the kids. It was the parents. The parents were the worst part of that whole deal. So I understand just a little bit of how hard this is. If I'd had a mentor in my life, I might've been a teacher forever, but I didn't have anybody mentor me. I literally was thrown in a classroom that was three weeks old because the teacher didn't know how to add and subtract and she was teaching math.

Okay, so God shifts you from Woodbury, Minnesota, to Arizona, and he's got a plan. How did God reveal to you what was next? Because your teaching, your mentoring, that's built into your DNA, that's what Sheila Arrington's all about. What is next? What does he have you doing today?

Sheila Arrington: What He has me doing today is a variety of things. I do a conference, a yearly conference called Purposely Design Conference. We do it every April. It is a conference where we bring women in and we talk about equipping, we talk about maybe finding purpose. We talk about building relationship with God, helping you in maybe God's put a business or you have entrepreneurship on your heart. So we have a variety of things. Purposely Design Conference has grown over the years. Next year will be our sixth year of doing it, and I've been in Arizona, in September, seven years. So God got busy really quickly.

The end of 2024 we did our first online fundraiser, Gifts of Purpose to help fund our Breaking Free to Soar class for women who have had some challenges and need some extra strategies and support. We're putting some new things in place for 2026, where we're going to have our first Women Who Brunch with Purpose, where we're going to help and partner with organizations that help women get back to work and they maybe need some new clothing or new clothing to them. So we will, through that brunch, have a fun fashion show. People will bring their beautifully, beautifully gently used clothing to donate to these organizations so women can go back to work feeling good.

Jim Brangenberg: Living in Arizona, there are closets and closets full of clothing that should be donated there, because you know that women don't let go of their clothing very easily, and so they die with closets full of clothing. That's just my perspective. Don't judge me. I've been married almost 40 years, so I have perspective.

Sheila, what I love is your conferences, you're dealing with the heart of issues. You're not just trying to teach people how to sell something or trying to teach people how to manage people. You're dealing with the heart. Like your event that you just had in 2025 in April of 2025, talk to me about what was the theme this year.

Sheila Arrington: The theme was Grace and Grit, and we talked about the grace of God and how layered the grace of God is. The grace of God for salvation, the grace of God for empowerment, the grace of God for equipping, the grace of God just to live daily, and then grit, because sometimes that piece is missed. Sometimes people forget. The people that we study in the Bible, I don't think any of them had an easy life.

So we, sometimes the Christian message gets skewed that if things are happening and they're not going very well for me, what's wrong with me? No, you're just fine. And God wants you to get some grit in your life. Because this life is pretty gritty and you need resilience to do the things that God has called you to do. And I was able to really go back to one of my favorite stories to just talk about scripture, really, the Lord dropped on my heart: " if you cannot run with the footman, how are you going to contend with the horses?"

So that was my scripture that I shared, and that really is about in the everyday bumps, trials and tribulations of life, we can't let them take us out because for those of us who are really called to do and be part of the army, to be part of that remnant of God, there's coming days where we are gonna have to contend with horses. And really what that means is there's gonna be some trials ahead that are going to be steep and they're going to be heavy. And we got to be able to be in relationship with God. We have to be close to him. We have to know him intimately to be able to contend with the horses that are going to be in our lives.

That was really the focus of let's understand what God's grace will keep us and hold us. But we have to get in there with the resilience and the grit of life and to push forward into the things that we are called to do.

Jim Brangenberg: When you say grit... often on iWork4Him, I say that God uses adversity in our lives to take us from who we are to who He can use more effectively. Are you talking about the kind of grit that wears off our rough edges?

Sheila Arrington: Talking about two things really that will happen in Christ, but I'm talking the grit of resilience.

Jim Brangenberg: So determination, resilience. Okay, got it. Okay.

Sheila Arrington: Yes, to be able to, just like 1 Peter 5: 10 where he talks about that through suffering, you will what? Be perfected, established, and become firm.

Jim Brangenberg: But Sheila, we're talking about retirement. We're in a retirement show. People who are retiring don't want, they don't think they need grit anymore. They don't expect any adversity. They don't expect, they expect to be on a life of pleasure. They're expecting life to be perfect. Yet, if we're gonna continue to follow Jesus, in the dust of his steps, we should expect that, shouldn't we? Because God's not done with this. Just 'cause we quote unquote retire.

Sheila Arrington: First of all, Jim, you know we talked about this a long time ago. Do you retire in God?

Jim Brangenberg: If you do, I'm pretty if sure you're follower Jesus and you quote unquote retire in God, the adversity's gonna come fast and furious because he doesn't let us just sit there and get moldy. He does not.

Sheila Arrington: My thought is if you retire in God, you're not here. (laughter)

Jim Brangenberg: Okay. Good point. He's gonna take you out?

Sheila Arrington: Yes, you've lived your days and that's it. God has plans for us all the way until he brings us home and unfortunately, that is why we get all that beauty on the other side. But here we get some beauty, we get some great things, there's beautiful things that happen in our lives, but literally we are here to glorify God.

That is why we are here. The other day the Holy Spirit put on my heart the intricate pattern of a butterfly and just how that glorifies God. The intricacies of our life are to glorify him, and that's why we're here. We're here because of him. Sometimes man gets it twisted. It's about us. No, it's about him. We are here to glorify him. Everything that he created is to glorify him, and so we have to keep our eyes, if you would say, on the prize. And the prize is Jesus Christ.

Jim Brangenberg: Okay. But lemme just, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna be devil's advocate for a second.

Sheila Arrington: I love that. Okay. Come on.

Jim Brangenberg: Because most people, when they think of glorifying God, they think they're doing things. You know, that there are human doings. Yet after your conference in April, the Lord called you into sabbatical to do nothing. That's what people think - to do nothing. But yet God had you doing something very specific. What was the specific thing God had you doing in sabbatical that you believe He's calling us all to do?

Sheila Arrington: To sit at his feet, to rest, to love on him, to just love on him, to build your relationship with him. I said it before and I'll say it again: it is not about assignment. The assignments come out of relationship with him, outta sitting next to him.

God will tell you, you know, what he wants you to do. And it's a daily walk. We wanna get our calendars full. We want to have all of our ducks in a row. And sometimes God just wants to say, you know what? When your calendar's so full, you don't see Mrs. Jones across the street that is hurting.

Jim Brangenberg: It's so true.

Sheila Arrington: Because your calendar is so full. Sit at my feet. Let me tell you who to call today. And he will do it. I wanna talk if I can, to the person who is saying, I don't know how that can operate in my life. That sounds really for someone who really is walking with the Lord. But I wanna say this to you, just start with the sitting down quiet one day. You don't have to have an agenda to come to God. You just sit down and if you have some questions, you can write 'em down or you can just ask them.

Just talk to him like you would talk to a person that you could see sitting next to you. It's really just that easy, sometimes we get so caught up. Oh, I can't hear. I can't hear. What do I say? What do I say? Say what's on your mind.

Jim Brangenberg: Yes. God's not afraid. God's not afraid to hear what's on our minds. Sheila, when you say these things in front of other fellow retirees - because listen, I could sit and listen to you forever 'cause I agree. And Martha and I are both one of those, we're so busy doing, we need to learn. It's a skill we all need to learn, the being with God, the abiding, just being quiet.

When you explain this to your fellow retirees, because you live in Retirement Village now. You're in Arizona, the whole state, okay, 80% of the state, they're retired and on a permanent vacation. When you start to speak to retirees that there's meaning and purpose in their retirement years to come, that they're not endorsed, certainly the ones that are Jesus followers, not endorsed to check out and be done for life, but that they should start with being with God so they can get their assignment out of relationship, what kinda responses do you get?

Sheila Arrington: A lot of it is that, I never thought of it like that. It's just, I never thought to just sit with him. I never thought to just write down some questions. I never thought - and the hesitancy comes from, what if I don't hear back? Then we talk about trust and then there's some other things of teaching that has to come in. And it's not, it's not a roadmap. Everyone is different, and it's just getting out there really exploring.

Jim Brangenberg: That's so true. It's not a roadmap. I love that.

Sheila Arrington: And purpose has never been a destination. It's always been a journey. Your destination is on the other side. It's not here. And that is why it is so important for me, I have to tell you, I'm gonna just tell on myself, okay? The Lord, as I've been in the sabbatical, one morning he's telling me, I want you to get out your journals. Go get your journals. And I said, okay, I am going through my journals. I said, I'm not finding anything that's just touching me. All of a sudden, Jim, I find a journal that I wrote, 2023. You know what it said?

Sit with me, refocus, be present with me. All of the things that I was thinking this, he had been telling me that. How many out there has God been saying something like that to you?

Jim Brangenberg: Phew. For two years, me. He's been saying that to me. Sheila, I love the example, and I love how you're pouring your life into other women. Sheila arrington ministries.com, I believe. Is it.com or.org? I should've known.

Sheila Arrington: Oh, sheila arrington's ministries.com is the get to my website.

Jim Brangenberg: And we'll have all the connections in the show notes so you can get ahold of Sheila. Maybe you wanna spend some time with Sheila and she's got a conference coming up next April, 2026. You're gonna wanna be there.

But Sheila, you're a great encouragement because you are in the middle of retirement world in Arizona and you can be a great encouragement to let people know, Hey, we're not done yet. Sheila, thanks for being back on iRetire4Him, for sharing more of your story. The last time we only had nine minutes of it. Today we got a lot of it. Thank you Sheila, for coming back on.

Sheila Arrington: Thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure.

Jim Brangenberg: You've been listening to iRetire4Him with your host Jim Brangenberg. In this retirement phase of life, I want my life to be full of meaning and purpose so that I could say iRetire4Him.