April 30, 2024 was my last day as a dentist.

I had known that date was coming for months. I had planned for it, prepared for it, and in many ways looked forward to it. But when I walked out of that office for the last time, I was not prepared for what hit me.

Grief. Real, heavy grief, the kind you usually reserve for funerals.

Then relief. A quiet exhale I didn’t even know I was holding.

Then fear. The slow, creeping kind that whispers: Who are you now?

All three showed up at once, and none of them asked permission.

I Didn’t Expect to Grieve Something I Had Chosen to Leave

Nobody tells you that retirement can feel like loss, even when it’s a good thing. Even when it was your decision. Even when you’re ready.

I had spent 37 years building Mountain Springs Dental. I started in a single rented treatment room from my childhood family dentist. I eventually built my own facility with seven treatment rooms and three private offices, and watched it grow into something I was genuinely proud of.

When you pour that much of yourself into something, walking away from it doesn’t feel like freedom at first. It feels like leaving a piece of yourself behind.

And for a while, I let myself grieve that. I think that was the right thing to do.

But Grief Is Not the Whole Story

Here’s what my faith kept whispering to me in those early weeks and months:

Letting go is not the same as losing.

There is a principle in the gospel of Jesus Christ that I have come back to again and again in this season of my life. It is not a complicated doctrine. It is simply this: God’s timing is not our timing, and His plan for us does not end when our plans do.

Proverbs 3:5-6 says it plainly:

“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”

I had acknowledged Him through 37 years of practice. I had leaned on Him through a health crisis in dental school, through financial hardship, through the long slow grind of building something from nothing. And He had been faithful every single time.

Why would that change now?

The Hardest Part Was the Title

I will be honest with you about something.

For a long time, my identity was tied up in the word Doctor. Not because I was arrogant about it, but because that title represented something real. It represented decades of sacrifice, of service, of showing up for people on their worst days. It meant something.

When I retired, I felt that title slip away. And losing it was harder than I expected.

But here is what my faith has been teaching me ever since: my worth was never in that title. It never was. It was in the work I did behind it, the people I served, and the integrity I brought to every single appointment. Those things do not retire. Those things are still mine.

And more than that, they pointed toward something God was preparing me for next.

Trusting His Timing Means Trusting the Next Chapter

LoriAnn and I drove to Florida the same evening I retired. No party. No wind-down. Just the two of us and a whole lot of open road.

Looking back, I think that drive was a picture of exactly where we were spiritually. We had closed a chapter. The road ahead was open. And we were choosing to trust the One who could see further down that road than we could.

That is what faith looks like in retirement. It is not passive. It is not resignation. It is an active, daily choice to believe that God has something ahead for you, something worthy of the person He has already shaped you to be.

The same hands that built a dental practice can build something new.

The same discipline that got you through 37 years of showing up can carry you into the next season.

The same God who directed your paths then is directing them now.

Retirement Is Not an Ending

If you are approaching retirement, or if you are already in it and struggling to find your footing, I want to say this to you directly:

What you are feeling is real. The grief is real. The fear is real. The disorientation is real.

But it is not the final word.

Retirement is not the closing of a door. It is the opening of one. And for those of us who have built our lives on faith, there is something deeply freeing about arriving at this threshold and realizing that the same God who walked with us through every season is already standing on the other side of this one.

You don’t have to have it all figured out. You just have to trust the One who does.

That is enough. It really is.

If this resonated with you, I’d love to hear your story. Leave a comment below or reach out. I read every one. And if you know someone navigating the transition out of a career they loved, share this with them. Sometimes the right words at the right time make all the difference.