We woke up in a hotel somewhere between Alabama and Georgia with air conditioning, real showers, and absolutely no idea where we were going next. At this point, that was becoming pretty normal.
We knew we were continuing east, and as we crossed into Georgia, we made one of our customary stops to collect a little evidence that we'd actually been there—a souvenir, a sticker for the camper. I even bought myself a hat.
My cousin lived near Atlanta, and I'd considered stopping to see her. Nothing major. Just a quick visit, stretch our legs, say hello, then get back on the road. It made sense, which apparently meant I was already trying to make it happen.
Again.
But the closer we got to Atlanta, the stronger that familiar pit in my stomach became. By now, I'd been treating that feeling as one of the ways God was teaching me discernment. Peace meant proceed. The pit meant pay attention.
So instead of trying to force another stop into our journey, we listened and kept driving.
We drove through Georgia with a pit in my stomach—and I never ate a single peach!
Honestly, I'm still a little offended about that.
But North Carolina was waiting, and North Carolina was different. I hadn't told everyone just how much I secretly wanted this one to be it.
Long before Nick and I were married, I'd felt drawn to North Carolina. When I was finishing radiography school, I'd even looked at jobs there and nearly pursued an interview. Then I met Nick, life went another direction, but North Carolina never completely disappeared from the back of my mind.
Now, years later, here we were.
There was another reason I'd chosen Salisbury. Near the area was a Christian retreat community I'd been researching—the kind of place where ministry wasn't simply something people visited. People lived there. Community, healing, growing food, shared life, a more self-sufficient way of living. It looked a lot like something Nick and I had already found ourselves dreaming about.
I'd even emailed them on July 3rd asking whether we could stop by and see how it worked. I never received a response.
Still, secretly, I wondered.
Was this what "get ready, pack light" had been leading us toward?
Maybe we were supposed to join something like this. Maybe someday we were supposed to build something like it. Maybe North Carolina was why I'd felt drawn south in the first place.
There were a lot of maybes riding with me when we pulled into Dan Nicholas Park Campground in Salisbury.
And the campground was beautiful. There were walking trails, biking trails, trees, and room for the kids to explore. We'd brought our bikes, so we could actually ride the trails together. It felt like the kind of place where we could finally settle in for a few days.
We were scheduled to stay four nights. Surely, if North Carolina was the answer I'd been aching to find, peace would settle over me here.
Instead...
I started aching, everywhere.
Within the first day, I noticed stiffness. By the next morning, moving was becoming difficult. We visited a local zoo, and even walking around began feeling like work. That evening, we took our bikes onto the trails, determined to continue enjoying ourselves. At one point, I felt something shift in my right hip. I stopped, rested, and tried to shake it off.
But by the third morning, my entire body seemed to be rebelling. My joints felt swollen. Everything was stiff. Walking hurt.
The wounds that had caused so much misery earlier in the trip were finally becoming almost a nonissue.
And apparently my body decided there was now an opening in the schedule.
Nick still describes it best:
I aged thirty years in three days.
We were supposed to remain in North Carolina until July 8th, but July 7th was our anniversary—and I woke up barely able to walk.
I needed to use the restroom, but the campground bathroom was a decent walk from our site. I started toward it and quickly realized I couldn't make it. I hurt too badly. Eventually, I gave up and relieved myself near the vehicle before climbing inside.
And cried.
On our anniversary, in the state I'd quietly hoped might hold the answer to where our family was supposed to go, I sat in our vehicle crying out to God because I could barely walk.
I didn't understand. I had wanted to visit that retreat community. I wanted to understand how people actually lived this way. I wanted to know whether we were supposed to join a community, build one, homestead, live more simply—or do something entirely different.
I had spent this whole trip looking for an answer.
And now I couldn't even walk to the bathroom.
Nick eventually came looking for me. He saw my face and knew I'd been crying, and I told him how badly I hurt. Everywhere. I didn't know how I could keep doing this.
His response was immediate.
"You're not going to."
That was it. He was done.
At the time, Nick didn't always know what to do with my pain. When something broke, he wanted to fix it. When the broken thing was me, there wasn't a wrench big enough.
And his helplessness often came out looking like anger.
I didn't understand that then. I simply knew that when I was already hurting, his frustration made me feel as though being sick was somehow another burden I'd placed on him.
So there we were. Me crying. Nick frustrated. Our anniversary.
North Carolina.
Very romantic.
Apparently, the camper was also about to become collateral damage.
Somewhere in the frustration of packing everything up early, Nick decided he'd had enough of the futon we'd been wrestling with throughout the trip. I don't even remember exactly what offense the futon committed that morning.
But apparently it was unforgivable.
We weren't taking it home.
Out it went.
They could burn it.
At that point, I wasn't arguing.
We packed our little home and left Dan Nicholas Park one day early. Before getting very far, we stopped at a pharmacy and bought me crutches. Between the pain in my right hip and the stiffness throughout my body, walking without assistance had become too difficult.
The adventure was over.
At least that's what we thought.
We weren't looking for another campground. We weren't searching for another state. We weren't asking where next.
We were going home.
Then something strange happened.
The farther we traveled away from North Carolina, the better I began to feel.
Not weeks later. Not after another doctor's appointment.
Within hours.
About two hours into our drive, the stiffness began easing. My joints didn't feel quite as swollen. The pain began lifting. I could move better. The farther away we traveled, the more my body seemed to release whatever had taken hold of it.
I couldn't explain it.
But after spending this entire trip learning to pay attention to peace, pits in my stomach, circumstances, and the strange ways my body seemed to react under stress, I couldn't ignore it either.
To me, it felt like an answer.
North Carolina wasn't home.
Maybe we'd spent ten days trying so hard to find where God was saying yes that I hadn't considered He might use the journey to show us where He was saying no.
As my body improved, so did my determination. Maybe we didn't have to limp home completely defeated. There was one more place we could go.
The Ark Encounter.
We'd taken the kids years earlier, when Liam was so young he wouldn't remember it and Alayna was barely old enough to remember much herself. So we decided to end this adventure with something good.
By the time we arrived, I was feeling significantly better, although I wasn't back to normal. Nick didn't want me struggling to walk all day, so he rented me one of those mobility scooters.
Not exactly how I'd envisioned touring the Ark.
But at this point in the trip, I'd learned to adjust my expectations.
And you know what?
We had fun.
There was no arguing. No chasing storms. No searching maps for our future home. For a little while, we simply enjoyed our family.
It was a good ending to a very challenging trip.
Then we went home.
Eleven states. Ten days. Hundreds and hundreds of miles. Urgent care. Storms. 104-degree heat. A bottle rocket to the face. A flat tire. A missing bolt. A hitch that apparently had no business still hitching. Strangers who became provision. Crutches.
And one mobility scooter.
We had left home looking for an answer. And somehow, after all those miles...
we ended up right back where we started.
It felt like defeat.
Nick had already begun looking at jobs in Alabama because, honestly, Alabama was the closest thing we'd found to somewhere that felt different. But looking back, I don't think we had fallen in love with Alabama.
We'd fallen in love with the people we met there.
And those weren't necessarily the same thing.
North Carolina had been the place I'd secretly hoped would give me certainty.
Instead, it gave me crutches.
We had tried asking. We had tried listening. We had tried following peace. We had tried chasing summer. And if I'm being truthful, we'd done our fair share of trying to force God's hand.
Now we were home. No new address. No job waiting. No grand revelation about where our family belonged. Just a camper that hadn't even been completely unpacked and two exhausted people wondering what all of it had been for.
What we didn't know was that the answer we'd driven through eleven states trying to find wasn't waiting farther south.
It was about to find us when we finally stopped looking.
Sometimes finding where we belong requires discovering where we don't.