Our Path

Girl meets boy at youth group. Girl thinks boy is young and goofy (14 months younger seems like a lot at 15), but there is something about him...Boy thinks girl is hot!:). They flirt, a lot. He asks her out, but says she will have to pick him up because he isn't old enough to drive yet...she thinks this is hilarious and laughs...they don't go out then. Fast forward 13 years, as they both live and learn, fail and succeed and grow in Christ. That dorky boy Googled me and asked me out again. This time I say yes. On our first date he says we are getting married. I laugh again, but secretly I think he is the one!  Two months later we are engaged and ten months later the dorky, but hot boy marries me!  I'm very thankful God had a plan bigger than us!  He knew I needed this man's gentleness and strength to walk me through many joys and an extreme heartache. Reinventing the Blackwells comes from a place of really having to trust and know that God is good in all things, even in death.  
     I was sitting on the couch on a beautiful Saturday morning, after a Friday at the lake with our little family and a night of backyard camping. This morning Stephen had made pancakes and we were planning our day. I had texted back and forth some with Zach, my twin brother, about our plans. About 30 minutes later I got two texts in a row from friends. One saying just that they would keep our boys. I told Stephen, "Hey!  This is weird, but we might be getting a date day!"  Then, from another saying they heard about Zach's wreck and were praying for us. I remember just freezing. I instantly knew he was on his motorcycle and this was bad. The rest is a blur. Maybe, Stephen can share that part sometime. Within 10 minutes, I found out my best friend from the very beginning of life, my twin and womb-mate, was dead. Instantly, from a stupid motorcycle wreck. 
      It has been 1 year, 10 months and 13 days. It has been horrible, stressful, and tear-filled, but also it is bringing me to a place of real truth, life evaluation and complete trust in God. A beautiful and scary place. We hope to bring you on this journey with us. The walk isn't easy, but I do believe Romans 8:28, All things work for good for those who know God and are called according to his purpose. 2 Corinthians 1:3 tells me God is a God of comfort, and I can testify to that.  Life is hard, life is messy, life is sad, but with Christ it is joy-filled!  We are reinventing our lives because Christ reinvented us!  Thanks for walking this journey with us!  

In Christ alone,
Robin Blackwell

In memory of my Zach Sewell

An Introduction

It’s been said that necessity is the mother of invention.  People were tired of reading and working by candlelight and lamps so Edison invented the light bulb.  People needed a concise, immediate way to contact someone across town, so Bell invented the telephone.  People needed a way to find out who was the lead actor in the Gremlins, so IMDB.com was created.

If invention comes from necessity, one could deduce that reinvention comes from a flaw in the system.  Take the beeper/pager.  In the 80’s and 90’s, this was the be all, end all in contacting your friends, family members, and business associates.  The problem was you had to find a phone to call that person back.  We didn’t “need” the pager, unless you were a doctor.  The need was for us to be able to contact someone while mobile; there was no immediate feedback via the beeper, so cue the mobile phone.

We, the Blackwells, have pinpointed a flaw in OUR system.  We are the typical middle class, Christian, American family. A husband, wife, 2 sons, and a dog, living in a 3 bedroom, 2-bath home in Small Town, TX, USA.  We go to church almost every Sunday, and worked for years as teachers.  Sounds normal (granted we are anything but) but here’s the kicker; our flaw is that we are typical.  God didn’t call us to be typical middle class, American Christians.  Typical is going to church because it's on your Christian Checklist.  Typical is singing Christian Karaoke on Sundays and being mute of the Gospel the other 6 days of the week.  Don’t mistake what I am saying.  Corporate worship is not Karaoke, but when your life doesn’t reflect God the rest of the week, are you truly spending that time in worship or are you just singing the songs you’ve heard on Christian radio? And the crazy thing in this is the devil usually leaves the typical alone, because they aren't a threat.

Now no one sets out to be typical. We go to church, because at the heart of it, we do love our savior, and we want our children to love our savior.   But somewhere we got comfortable, and sometimes with comfortability comes laziness, which leads to just showing up to church and make excuses on how not to commit.  The biblical word for typical is lukewarm.  I’ve always envisioned this verse like God biting into a have cooked hot pocket.  It’s just warm enough to fool you on the outside but when you get to the meat its almost cold, and it makes you just want to throw up.  Makes my stomach churn just to think of that.  I can’t go back to that, The Blackwells can no longer stomach being typical, or lukewarm. 

Reinventing the Blackwells isn’t going to be a self-deprecating look at our flaws, or a social media experiment.  We are finding who God made us to be, our pursuit is real and this is our journey, and we’d love to see you journey with us as we discover how to no longer be typical.