Over the last 16 years I’ve made several trips to Africa, and along the way, purchased many mementos while on my travels.  One of my favourites would be the style of jewellery pictured below.

The beads are actually strips of paper torn from magazines, rolled, glued, and lacquered, then (in this case) threaded onto elastic to make this piece.  It is a great way for the local women (and men) to create an income generating business to support their family.

On reflecting about the creative idea of this product using what local resources are available, a product that now has a very large market to the tourist population has been created.  Who knew that an old magazine that has been read and re read many times over would one day be a bracelet, a necklace, or a pair of ear rings?  Yet this idea has gone on to grow and expand so much so that it has changed the lives and future destinies of so many families and communities.

Life can be just like this . . .

Life is full of many twists and turns.  Some anticipated and expected.  While others come completely unexpected . . . you don’t even know how you landed there, moving in that direction.  For me, I’ve worked as an Anaesthetic Nurse in the same place, in the same role for the last 24 years (the last 16 years in and around trips to Africa).

A couple of months ago, I was reflecting back over all those years, and how comfortable I am to stay there.  I’d probably never leave.  Is that a bad thing?  Seemingly it wasn’t meant to be . . . for within a few weeks after that time of reflection, I found myself taking a new direction.

Currently coming to the end of a 12 month contract, and nothing permanent available for me in my current workplace, I began looking for a new place of work, as an Anaesthetic Nurse, or maybe something different.  I wasn’t sure.  I considered a completely new direction in the area of medical supply sales, but that didn’t work out.  I considered the ‘moving interstate direction’ where there are more opportunities . . . but then a recruiter agency found me online, and it all took another direction again.

She found me something much bigger and better than I could have negotiated for myself.  Then in the midst of landing that position (as an Anaesthetic Nurse) I discovered some things about myself and my own health, that now has me considering a study option, that may open up the possibility of another  direction for me further down the road, albeit still in health, but along the lines of natural therapies.

And so it is . . . we should always be open to the unexpected twists and turns . . .  seemingly it’s all part of the journey, all part of the process.

The paper had to be a page in a magazine, before it could ever become a bead on a piece of jewellery.

It was never imagined that the magazine pages would one day be used to create jewellery . . . until someone came up with the idea, created it, and developed it.

Today’s direction might look completely different to the direction of tomorrow. . . but I believe God has already had the idea, created it in each of us, and it is being developed  as we move through the process of all the twists and turns, on the journey that is life.