For many of us, self-reliance was not a philosophy we chose; it was simply how we managed.
We made it through the ’80s and ’90s largely unscathed, with the toxic hair gel, the big hair, the fake nails and the stonewash denim. We managed to negotiate high rise, low rise and in between. Paper-bag waists, cheap denim, expensive linen, labels on the outside and the tartan knickerbockers as we bopped away to the Bay City Rollers (praying this trend doesn’t revive!).
We took great care not to let our fingers slip between the gaps on the searing hot slides at a park with no soft place to fall in 40-degree heat. We rode unrestrained in the backseat while Mum and Dad smoked their Camel cigarettes they had sent us to the shop for, with a note and a $2 note. We drank from the hose, played in the streets till the lights came on, and endured the return of miniskirts, flares and midriff tops—more than once.
Now suddenly, we find ourselves in a world drowning in ‘certified coaches’ that serve us with $19 checklists, preloaded with answers to questions we never asked to begin with. We’re berated at every turn on how we’ve been doing everything we ever learned wrong the entire time, only to see us revert to what we always knew. Consumerism has managed to rebrand the very things we call ‘life’, which was free, and tells us that we must take a stand in the camp of anti-ageing—or die! Strange, we were kind of looking forward to getting old, and slowing down, and not having to think so much about everything.
If any of this resonates, you’re who I look to serve. Your life experience is cherished, your lived experiences are witness to a world that is slowly slipping away, yet you recognise that the most important things remain the important things. The sun still rises and sets, mostly in the same place. Fractured on the inside, overloaded on the outside, you recognise that in all the madness, you’ve stuck to your own volition.
Metanoia is not another act of self-loathing passing itself off as self-improvement.
It is recognising that God is in the equation, and that healing is a process. It cannot be reduced to the latest pill, quick fixes, creams or yet another new fad diet. Lord knows we have seen plenty of those come and go.
Rather than trying to control and fixate on every aspect of our lives, it asks a much larger question:
Where is God in this, and where is He leading me now?
Maybe you are living with illness, grief, disappointment or loss. Perhaps the life you are living bears little resemblance to the one you thought you had all planned out. You may have spent years becoming something you simply outgrew, unexpectedly.
You may be in Christ, or not. You may not yet know exactly what you believe.
But if you have begun to suspect that there is so much more than what we have been told—that restoration is bigger than cure, that your body is not your enemy and that you were not created to spend your life obsessively correcting yourself—then this work is for you.
Metanoia is not about becoming someone you are not, or a more disciplined or spiritually contrived version of the person you already are. Nor is it an invitation to throw away your life experience, your discernment or the practical things you know work for you.
But if you are in a place where you are ready to discover what it means to become whole—body, mind, story, suffering, gifts and future—under His care, then this is the place for you.
You do not need more information, greater effort or yet another protocol.
Perhaps what you need is clarity, simplicity and the simple decision to turn away from what isn’t working, and instead to what can.