What’s Next…Jumping Off a Cliff

By Carol Roberts

Last July Paul and I went on a retreat to a place in western Montana called Sanctuary Farm.  It was a small cabin discovered through a rental company.  It was the perfect place for us to get away for a few days to make some decisions and dream some dreams, and celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary.

The first thing we did when we arrived that evening was make a list of 16 topics to talk about throughout the length of our retreat.  We came up with topics including creativity, work, performing, church, ministry, gardening, traveling and health.

We put the name of each topic on a piece of paper and then both wrote down what we would like to discuss about that topic.

Then we put all the topic papers in a stack, and went back and forth, choosing a topic to discuss, over the next two days.  As we discussed the topics, we wrote notes about what things we wanted to happen in the future.

During this retreat we took time to clarify what we wanted as we looked to our future and how we wanted to live it over the next 20 years or so, and what dreams we wanted to pursue.

One of these dreams was to create an online community of people who would like to learn about living a creative life. 

In the meantime, we both retired from our local school district.  We were both teaching for a company called VIPKid where we taught children in China how to speak English online.  But there were things happening in the country of China pointing to the Chinese government cutting off access to “foreign teachers” (that would be us) teaching children in mainland China.  So we knew this job would be phasing out, but at this point we had no specifics.

So our dream started edging its way to the forefront of our lives.  We had been thinking about this in one aspect or another for years.  Because of our special literary-themed gardens we have created in our backyard, we thought that would be a good match to connect with an online community focused on creativity.

Returning from our retreat, we began to realize that VIPKid, as we knew it, was drawing to an end closer than we thought. 

I had named the retreat “What’s Next….Jumping Off a Cliff”.  If you are familiar with the show “The West Wing”, this is in reference to President Jed Bartlett asking his then Press Secretary C.J. Cregg to “jump off a cliff” to take a big leap of faith and become his new Chief of Staff.

On August 8, we drove to Spokane to pick up our new puppy, Cleo.  We had received more negative news at this point about the future of VIPKid.  On that trip over I made the following comment to Paul:

“I feel like we are not jumping off a cliff any more…I feel like we are being pushed.”

It was as if God was telling us… “Go for it. This is your dream.  I am The Creator.  I like and support people who create.  You want to help people create.  When people create, it puts good into the world. You can do this.”

So we did.  We started planning and writing things down and talking and changing until it was time to commit.  We applied and became an LLC.  We joined online groups for help. We prayed. We talked to people. We talked to each other.

And “Grow Me A Story” was born.