5 - A Seed Was Planted
Looking back now, I can see it clearly: something began to grow during that second desert.
It did not arrive as a grand revelation. It was not a burning bush moment. It was quieter than that. Subtle. Almost too small to notice at first. But it was there — a sense that something old was being stirred back to life. 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 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 was not gone. It had simply been hidden.
What I could not yet see was that the same seed that had taken me to Brazil at 27 — the desire to walk with people in their spiritual growth — was still alive. It had been covered by layers of pain, disappointment, and survival. But it was still there, waiting.
And now, after everything I had been through, it was beginning to surface again.
Only this time, it looked different.
I no longer felt drawn to stages or programs or traditional ministry roles. I did not want to “lead” people in the way I once had. I wanted to walk with them. I wanted to create the kind of space that had once saved me — a space where people could be honest, where they did not have to perform, where they could encounter God in the quiet, in the ordinary, in the mess.
That desire was not 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 important it is to have someone simply stay with you while it does.
That is when 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 quiet invitations of the Spirit that so often go unnoticed.
As Elisabeth Elliot once said, “Suffering is never for nothing.”
And Henri Nouwen’s words became a kind of compass for me: “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 did not destroy me. It refined me.
The pain I once tried to hide became the very soil where this new calling could grow. I was beginning to understand what it means to live as a wounded healer — not in spite of suffering, but through it. It shaped how I see people. How I listen. How I offer presence. It softened my approach and deepened my compassion.
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 did not plan it. I did not 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 kind, even when it does not feel that way.
The seed had been planted long ago.
Now, it was beginning to bloom.
To Be Continued
Next: Rooted Through the Wilderness
