By: Laura Bennett
Transformation stories are always so appealing. Whether they’re about pre and post weight loss, an underdog who overcomes the odds to find success or a once bitter mogul whose heart is softened by hope, we love seeing people experience positive change and believing we can too.
The challenge in our attraction to these stories is that they’re often told after the in-between has been completed: we don’t journey with these characters through their road to change, we just see them arrive with a glossy montage that snaps through years of hard work.
Best-selling author and blogger Hannah Brencher has long had a love of such stories. But as her readers of Come Matter Here, If You Find This Letter and Fighting Forward would know, while she has dipped in and out of deep depression and now found “rhythms of healing” in her life, Hannah has intentionally taken them along for the ride in great detail.
“I love sharing vulnerably, and I love [being able] to let people know where I’ve been and what I’ve walked through because I know it can help,” Hannah told the UNDISTRACTED podcast.
“One of the most pivotal things [in my life] has been my journey with depression. It tries it’s hardest to try and convince you that you’re someone that you’re not, and it really rattled me.
“I was forced to take a step back and really look at my life and the things I was working on, and working towards, and ask, ‘Does this make me happy?’.”
Pursue Health and ‘Success’ from a Biblical Perspective
What’s eventuated from that process and Hannah’s continued refining of her approach to daily life is a career based around a series of blogs and books that encourage readers to seek out their own transformation story, learning to pursue health and success from a biblical perspective as opposed to one guided by culture.
“In this season, I feel like my biggest mission is to inspire people to be participants in their own story and not spectators,” Hannah said.
“I feel like my biggest mission is to inspire people to be participants in their own story and not spectators… We are living in such a spectator world…” – author Hannah Brencher
“We are living in such a spectator world that I want to [say], ‘Get off the phone and go live, go apply it, go do it’.”
Her latest book Fighting Forward deals with that as it prompts people to “relentlessly live in pursuit of their own life” and learn how to overcome the lies that hold them back – one of the biggest ones being that change has to happen quickly and all at once.
“Start in one area,” Hannah said.
“Those micro steps, they add up, they matter. They change you.
“You have to be willing to see progress at the root level [which] is contrary to our ‘drive-thru microwave’ culture.
“The best stuff takes time to simmer, it takes time to grow. It’s a slow, consistent process and once you fall in love with that consistency it does become addictive,” she said.
Hannah’s book Fighting Forward is out now..
Article supplied with thanks to Hope Media.
About the Author: Laura is a media professional, broadcaster and writer from Sydney, Australia.
Feature image: Hannah Brencher / Facebook