The art of reinvention and a tale of two tigers.

All about where is God when it hurts, and what can we do about it.

Photo by Chris Zhang on Unsplash

There's nothing like the opportunity to reinvent yourself. Pop stars do it all the time.

Come on, you know it's true. But for us "normal" people, we don't tend to take the opportunities that life presents us to start over, reinvent, or do things differently.

For example, for as long as I can remember, Cass has had the same hairstyle… come to think of it, so have I. (oh, except for that Covid beard, haha, check it out below). But in this season of new beginnings, we decided not to slide into the next thing without thought, just doing what we've always done.

(Here’s the Covid beard in full force!!)

For reinvention to happen, we felt we needed to get away and seek God. I'm not talking about reinventing the external things (and before you ask, neither of us has changed our hair color or style, but yes, I have lost the beard), but the more important, spiritual things. We realized that if we took time to pray and work out what we've learned, we could build on the past rather than just repeating things and not going anywhere new.

I love the coincidences of God!

As it turned out, the day before we left for our retreat, Amanda Viviers sent us her workbook called "Begin Again." It arrived in the mail as a gift at just the right time. It's an "end-of-season guided journal ." So we packed the car with all we needed, including our brand-new journals and Amanda's workbook, and embarked on the process of self-reflection and discovery.

Fun Fact: Did you know that the word "coincidence” only appears once in the Bible? Jesus used it in the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:31.

The time away was full of sunshine and wide sandy beaches. It was so great that I was convinced we no longer needed to do any reflecting after all. Despite this, Cass was committed. I tried everything to avoid the process, urging her to "go for one more swim ." She wouldn't let me get away with it, so, with the sun on our faces and the soundtrack of the sea, we opened up the workbook and our journals and started.

Photo by David Iskander on Unsplash

Journaling is hard work!

I don't know if you journal, but I find it difficult when I do. However, once I start and the words begin to flow, it is definitely a freeing experience.

I filled pages with the highs and lows, the good, the bad, and the ugly. We reviewed the last 12 months, wrote manifestos and letters to ourselves, and edited our lives. It was challenging. We laughed and cried. And through the process, I discovered a renewed hope as we dreamed about the future.

I realized I had much more to work through than I had first thought. And not all bad - mostly good. I became overwhelmed by how God has graciously led us and gone before us. As I unraveled the tangled ball of wool that was my thinking, I soon awakened to the fact that God's goodness had been present in all the mess. I can’t believe I hadn't noticed. All the activity, the fretting, and stress had taken over and blurred His fingerprints that were all over our lives. I had been distracted by all the wrong things.