Chapter 5 - A Seed Was Planted

Looking back now, I can see it clearly: something started to grow during that second desert.

It didn’t begin as a grand revelation. It wasn’t a burning bush moment. It was quiet. Subtle. Almost too small to notice at first. But it was there—a sense that something old was being revived. A gentle return of something I thought I had buried.

A seed.

For a long time, I believed my calling had ended when I left the church back in 2003. I thought I had walked away from ministry for good. Even after my healing journey began, I assumed those doors had closed forever. But as I began to rest, reflect, and listen more deeply, I started to realize that the dream I once carried wasn’t gone. It had simply been buried.

What I couldn’t see at the time was that the same seed that had taken me to Brazil at 27—the passion to walk with people in their spiritual growth—was still alive. It had been hidden beneath layers of pain, disappointment, and survival. But it was there, waiting.

And now, after everything I had been through, it was starting to surface again.

Only this time, it looked different.

I no longer felt drawn to stages or programs or traditional ministry roles. I didn’t want to “lead” people in the ways I used to. I wanted to walk with them. I wanted to create the kind of space that had once saved me—where people could be honest, where they didn’t have to perform, where they could encounter God in the quiet, in the ordinary, in the mess.

That desire wasn’t theoretical. It was embodied. It came from lived experience. I knew what it was like to feel alone in your faith. To sit in a church pew and still feel invisible. To pray the right words while feeling completely disconnected from God. I knew how long healing could take—and how vital it was to have someone simply stay with you while it happened.

The idea of spiritual direction began to take root.

Not as a career. Not even as a ministry. But as a natural outflow of everything God had done in me. It was never about helping people find answers. It was about helping them pay attention—to the movement of God in their own story, to the sacred patterns unfolding in their lives, to the gentle invitations of the Spirit that often go unnoticed.

As Elisabeth Elliot once said, “Suffering is never for nothing.”
And Henri Nouwen’s words became a guiding light: “The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there.”

I had been there. Twice.
And both times, the desert didn’t destroy me. It refined me.

The pain I once tried to hide had become the very soil where this new calling could grow. I was beginning to understand what it meant to live as a “wounded healer”—not in spite of the suffering, but through it. It shaped how I saw people. How I listened. How I offered presence. It deepened my compassion and softened my approach.

And eventually, I realized that everything I had been through—every loss, every unraveling, every rebuilding—was preparing me for what came next.

Portugal.

I didn’t plan it. I didn’t strive for it. But over time, it became clear that the same calling that had taken me across the ocean to Brazil years before was now leading me home. Not just geographically—but spiritually. It was time to bring everything full circle.

Not with the same voice. Not with the same expectations.
But with a heart that had been reshaped in the desert.
A heart that had learned to walk slowly, listen deeply, and trust that God’s timing is always kind—even when it doesn’t feel that way.

The seed had been planted long ago.
Now, it was beginning to bloom.

To Be Continued

Next: Rooted Through the Wilderness