Invention and Reinvention

If necessity is the mother of invention, then what is the mother of reinvention?  Desperation?  Despair? Boredom? 

I ask because I find myself wanting to do a little reinvention of my own.  I have to wonder if it’s born out of my desire to control everything.  The major changes of the last 6 ½ months of my life weren’t exactly of my own making, so it’s left me feeling a bit powerless.  More accurately, it revealed just how much I am NOT in control of my own life. 

I also think that after years of school, fall continues to feel like the perfect time for a new start.  That new school year feeling dies hard, as it turns out. 

So this September, I decided to start afresh.  I’m reclaiming football season for my own (that won’t make sense to most people but I’m happy I no longer have to care about SEC football), I just cut my hair shorter than it’s been since college, I’ve given up fast food and takeout, and started my Dave Ramsey Total Money Makeover.  The last of these really just means that in an effort to aggressively pay off my car and my student loans, I can’t afford to do much else, so it coincides nicely with giving up fast food and takeout.  My only fast food before was a weekly lunch at Chick-Fil-A and maybe Quizno’s every now and then, but with no takeout, and a pretty tight eating out budget, I have to cook a lot more.  I like to cook, so this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it requires so much more planning!

While I think these are all beneficial life changes for me right now, I know that nothing I do outwardly will change my heart.  I’ve been meditating on this verse a lot lately: “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.  See, I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?  I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.” (Isaiah 43: 18-19)

I need a daily (or hourly) reminder not to dwell on the past, and I love all of the encouragement and promise these verses hold.  God IS doing a new thing—in me and around me.  And my Creator is able and willing to make streams in the wasteland.  Hallelujah!