Last night was such an exciting night for us at Peaced Together as we won a gold award for ‘best replicable project’ at the Christian Funders Forum awards for 2016. This morning as I reflect on it I am taken back five years before I started this project to a time when life was looking bleak. I had been through several years of both health and personal difficulties and was at my lowest. Prompted by friends I went on a course called ‘Crossroads’ by an organisation called Day2. It was about finding your purpose. At the same time, I re-ignited my love of all things creative and began quilting and other sewing projects. Life was beginning to spark in me again. My time spent sewing gave me the opportunity to process what I was learning on Crossroads, I started to see hope through my quilting as I took rags and created something beautiful I saw the possibility of how this could also be true for people’s lives. As I completed a mosaic project the vision of hope for those who felt ‘broken’ came together as I saw that brokenness might be a chapter on your journey but that it didn’t have to be the end of the story. I knew that my purpose was about bringing hope and the only way I knew how to communicate this was through the creative arts. I felt alive when I was being creative and therefore this would be true for others, what if the creative arts that I loved could become a vehicle to bring healing to many.
I am so grateful for the friends who have walked this journey with me. From a close friend who said that what I had was not just for me but that many women could benefit giving me the courage to write the course and begin this amazing journey. Part of my own hope and healing was getting my eyes of myself and bringing hope and healing to others. To the many family and friends who have caught the vision and got behind it. For an amazing, growing team of trainers who everyday walk the journey to hope with many women. To the Cinnamon Network for believing in this project and enabling us to expand training other Churches and charities to deliver the course in their own communities. And to an amazing God who has helped me find beauty, hope and purpose in the middle of pain. I am so thankful that hope and healing in my own life has sparked hope and healing in others and this could also be true for you.