After more than thirty-five years in banking and finance, I recently stepped into retirement — and into a season of reflection unlike any other. Over the past months, I’ve had some honest conversations with myself about life, purpose, and the transitions that come with age.  As I looked back on my career, I came to some sobering realizations and asked myself some difficult questions:
What difference did I make in the world?  Whose life did I truly impact? 

And then more questions followed — Is it too late to find a new calling? To discover something I truly love to do? To step out of the world’s definition of success and into something more meaningful?

Then In the quiet of prayer and meditation, three simple words continued to echo in my heart: Wait. Trust. Pray. I do my best to live by them, though waiting and trusting have never come easily. The unknown often stirs fear in me, but by the Grace of God I am learning that my fear is just an attempt to manipulate the waiting.

..and so I wait, and in the waiting I’ve found myself drawn full-time  into creating art — not just as a hobby or a business, but as a form of seeking, and of prayer. Each piece becomes its own meditation, and I become absorbed in the present creative moment, and in the waiting.  

The process has become a kind of therapy — a sacred conversation between my hands and my heart. Perhaps in the waiting I have found a calling for this season of my life.

My prayer is that these works might find their way into the hands of those who will use them to draw nearer to their Heavenly Father — just as creating them has done for me. If one person finds peace, reflection, or renewal through a piece I’ve made, then all of this waiting will have been worth it.