THE FREEBIRD FORGE STORY
WORDS BY
LAURENCE COPPEDGE
19?? – AGE ??
As a young boy, living with my single mom, I used to go on Saturday mornings to my beloved grandfather’s metal shop and learn the trade of my people that his father and uncle taught him when he was small like I was. We made small cannons, a small steam engine, bullets, and fixed household items that broke. It was an excuse for a wise old man to teach his grandson metalworking skills, but more importantly, how to solve problems, and to know that he was loved.
19?? – AGE 15
My grandfather died when I was 15 and left me his tools. I would go into his shop and smell his smells, I would open drawers looking for something, looking for him, longing for him.
1994 – AGE ??
In 1994, I went off to college and studied business. I found myself rising in leadership roles and felt the excitement of success and the disappointments of failure. As I stepped into more and more complicated and risky entrepreneurial endeavours, I began to become addicted to the fast pace, to risk, and to a purpose that drove me to succeed. As my entrepreneurial efforts thrived or failed, I began to lose heart, and a creeping depression emerged. As the workload grew, so did the depression and I was forced to slow down and face the fact that my life wasn’t working.
I was 40 years old, and the wheels were coming off my life.
2013 – AGE ??
As I sat on the side of mountain in 2013 at a spiritual retreat, the idea of returning to the trade of my people was given to me by my kind Father God, and the name Freebird Forge formed in my mind. Could I make implements of blessing for people that I love? After my grandfather died, it was like my small boat was untied from the dock of metal work and I drifted slowly away from my roots. My people had been shaping metal for more than 100 years and I felt drawn to step back towards the trade.
20?? – AGE ??
At the retreat, the idea of learning to receive the fathering of God was presented. Hearing this, my heart wanted to get up and run out of the room, having lost both grandfathers at 15 and my father at 20. I was both terrified and excited by this invitation toward healing and felt led to pray for fathers in the trades to show me how to use my grandfather’s hand tools and machinery.
20?? – AGE ??
In that great risk, my kind Father God has met me at each step. From the kind and quiet older man who I met at the blacksmith shop the Monday after I returned from the retreat, to the older man who used to work in a machinist shop, who is about to show me how to use my milling machine next month (August 2025). God has brought me fathers in the trades, and in that process, my trust in Him has grown.
I am growing in my metalworking skills, and I am finding new places of my heart and story that are being healed as I work with my hands.
