It started with a pair of old jeans.
Not a theology degree. Not a grief ministry. Not a vision for a brand that would one day carry the stories of two little girls and a book that had been fifteen years in the making.
Just a pair of old jeans — and a question that has driven me my whole life.
What could this become?
Where It All Began
I have always loved taking something old and making it into something new.
Long before Old to New Creations had a name — long before it had a mission or a brand or a journal or a book — it lived in my hands. In the quiet, creative hours spent repurposing things that other people might have set aside.
Old jeans became purses and bags — cut and stitched and decorated with appliqué designs that made them entirely and uniquely themselves. Nothing about them said old denim anymore. They said made with intention.
And then there were my Grandma’s sheets.
The soft ones. The special ones — the kind that carry a particular warmth that only comes from years of being washed and slept in and loved. When they were no longer needed as sheets I could not bring myself to let them go. So I repurposed them into little dresses for little girls.
Something ordinary — something that might have been discarded — transformed into something new and sweet and full of a different kind of love than it had carried before.
I did not know then that God was showing me something.
I just thought I was sewing.
The Name That Came Before the Meaning
Old to New Creations became the name for what I was making long before it became the name for what God was doing. You can read the full brand introduction here.
It fit the work — the literal, hands-on, fabric-and-thread work of taking old things and making them new. It was descriptive and simple and true.
And it stayed.
Through seasons of crafting and creating. Through the early days of sharing what I was making. Through years of life that brought joy and loss and grief and growth in ways I never anticipated when I first stitched a purse out of a pair of old jeans.
The name stayed — quietly, persistently — even as the meaning began to expand beyond anything I had originally intended for it.
The Moment It All Connected
It was not until I sat down to design the journal that I saw it clearly.
I had been carrying the name for years. I had been living the story for years — the grief, the spiritual formation, the slow and nonlinear journey of allowing God to make something new out of the broken places. And when the time came to put a name on the journal — the tool I was creating to help other women practice intentional faith —
The name was already there.
Old to New Creations.
Not just a craft brand. Not just a sewing hobby. But the thread that ran through everything — from my Grandma’s sheets to a hospital room in the middle of the night to a Fuller Seminary cohort to a children’s book that had been waiting fifteen years to be written.
The same name. The same truth. The whole journey.
And underneath all of it — a verse I had known for years that suddenly felt like it had been written specifically for this moment:
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” — 2 Corinthians 5:17
The Verse That Changed Everything
I want to sit with this verse for a moment — because I think it is one of the most radical and most misunderstood promises in all of Scripture.
The old has passed away. The new has come.
We tend to read that as a one-time event. The moment of salvation — the before and the after. And it is that. Absolutely and completely that.
But I have come to believe it is also something more.
It is a description of how God operates.
Not just at salvation — but throughout a life. Throughout a grief. Throughout a season of loss and confusion and inner lies and slow healing. Throughout the ordinary Tuesday mornings and the hospital room nights and the anniversary days and the counseling offices and the small groups and the sewing tables.
God is always in the process of making something new.
Not erasing the old — the old is still there. The jeans are still denim. The grief is still grief. The scars are still real. But He takes the old and He works it into something that could not have existed without it. Something that carries the history and is transformed by it at the same time.
That is Old to New.
Not the destruction of what was. The transformation of it.
I wrote about the slow and nonlinear road of healing here.
What This Brand Is Really About
I want to tell you — as clearly as I can — what Old to New Creations exists to do.
It exists for anyone who has ever held something broken and wondered if it could ever be made new.
It exists for the grieving mother who cannot see past the loss to imagine what God might be building in the rubble.
It exists for the woman who has been a Christian her whole life and suspects there is a depth of practice and presence she has not yet found.
It exists for the person in the hard middle of something — the waiting, the suffering, the confusion, the slow work of healing — who needs to be reminded that God is not finished with their story.
It exists because of a pair of old jeans and my Grandma’s sheets. Because of Madison Joy — born on Christmas morning, thirty-five days. Because of Lucy Grace — gift of light, delivered still, whose brief and beautiful presence changed everything. Because of a Fuller Seminary cohort and a Listening Prayer session and a small group that has shown up for years. Because of a two year old boy who padded down the hall every morning and asked a question that planted a seed. Because of fifteen years of a quiet, persistent nudge that would not go away.
All of it — every broken and beautiful piece of it — has been Old to New all along.
I just needed time to see it clearly.
I wrote about that prayer and what followed here.
An Invitation
If you have been reading along these past twelve weeks — thank you.
You have walked with me through hospital rooms and grief bottoms and anniversary days and spiritual formation cohorts and sewing tables. You have let me share the most sacred and most difficult parts of a story that I was not always sure I was ready to tell.
And if any part of it has resonated — if any part of it has found you in your own hard middle and offered even a small measure of hope —
Then it was worth every word.
Because that is what Old to New is for.
Not to present a polished, finished version of a life that has it all figured out. But to share honestly from the middle of the journey — the broken places and the beautiful ones — and point to the God who has been faithfully, persistently, supernaturally at work in all of it.
He is doing a new thing.
Even now. Even here. Even in whatever you are carrying today.
“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” — Isaiah 43:19
Do you perceive it?
Look closer.
It is already happening.
Thank you for being here. If this series has meant something to you — share it with someone who needs it. And if you are just finding Old to New Creations for the first time — welcome. If you want to start at the beginning, click here.
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