The camper had reached its final destination.

I hadn't.

Leaving it behind at Aunt Amy and Uncle Dusty's was one thing. Uprooting the rest of our lives and following it north was another.

Nick began working while the kids and I remained caught somewhere between two lives. For several days at a time, we'd travel north to be with him. Then we'd head back to Kalamazoo, where there was still a house to pack, clean and eventually sell, responsibilities to manage, and a life that hadn't exactly received the memo that we were trying to leave it.

I was still finishing Radiant School of Ministry on Mondays. I was still technically employed. I was still on stress leave. And although we'd taken a step toward Hart, I hadn't actually closed the door behind us.

That mattered more than I realized.

The time apart wasn't easy on our marriage either. Nick and I missed each other. Usually, when the kids and I first arrived, we were simply happy to be together again. Sometimes that reunion remained sweet.

Sometimes alcohol entered the picture.

And sometimes the things already strained between us became considerably louder once it did.

There were good nights. There were arguments. There were moments when I questioned whether any of this made sense at all.

I had spent years building my career. College. Clinicals. X-ray. Mammography. I had worked hard for the life we'd created, and walking away from my job wasn't simply changing employers.

I didn't know whether there would even be another job for me in Hart.

There was a very real possibility that moving meant laying down my career entirely and becoming a homemaker.

Ironically, that was exactly what I'd wanted when Nick and I first married.

Funny how terrifying an answered prayer can look when it finally arrives wearing different clothes.

Because becoming a homemaker now meant trusting our family to live on considerably less income. It meant releasing some of the security we'd worked years to build. It meant trusting that if this really was where God was leading us, He would provide for whatever waited on the other side.

And I wasn't sure I could do it.

I had doubts.

A lot of them.

By early fall, we were still living somewhere between we're moving and are we actually doing this?

Then Nick went to Awaken.

Awaken is a retreat through Radiant Church designed to create space for people to get away from the noise of everyday life and spend intentional time with God. I won't tell you everything that happens there.

Some stories aren't secrets.

They're simply better experienced without someone telling you what's coming.

What I can tell you is that Nick went first.

The men's experience challenged him in ways I couldn't have accomplished for him. There were things happening inside my husband that I couldn't fix, confront or love out of him. He needed his own encounter with God.

And a few weeks later, apparently, it was my turn.

I received a call telling me that an opening had become available for the women's Awaken.

I assumed they were reaching out because Nick had recently attended.

They told me I had signed myself up.

Interesting.

I had absolutely no recollection of doing that.

At this point, I'd spent enough time watching strange little pieces fall into place that I wasn't particularly interested in arguing with an opening I didn't remember asking for.

So I went.

There were twelve of us women, intentionally echoing the twelve disciples, along with others who quietly served behind the scenes. For five days, we stepped away from our normal responsibilities.

No phones.

No endless notifications.

No outside noise demanding our attention.

We had our Bibles, notebooks, worship, fellowship and one another.

And we were served.

That part affected me more than I expected.

As women, so many of us are accustomed to noticing what needs to be done before anyone else does. We clear the dishes. We clean the mess. We make sure everyone has what they need.

At Awaken, they wouldn't even let us throw away our own plates.

Other people cooked.

Other people cleaned.

Other people prepared what came next.

Our job was to receive.

To rest.

To pay attention.

To let God deal with whatever we'd been too busy carrying to notice.

I walked into that retreat knowing virtually no one.

Some of the women already had relationships with one another, and several were leaders within the church. I could have looked around, figured out who everyone was, and immediately begun adjusting myself accordingly.

I could have hidden the rougher edges.

I could have pretended I didn't smoke.

I could have become whatever version of Jenny seemed most acceptable in the room.

But what would have been the point?

I hadn't come there to impress anybody.

I was tired of being afraid of people's judgment and rejection. If God was going to do something with me, He was going to have to work with the woman who had actually shown up.

So I showed up as myself.

Cigarettes and all.

Don't judge me.

Over those five days, strangers stopped feeling like strangers. We worshiped together. We laughed together. We experienced things that created a kind of connection that's difficult to explain to someone who wasn't there.

And slowly, the noise inside me became quieter.

By our final day, the Michigan fall had settled beautifully around us. The sky remained mostly cloudy, with occasional sprinkles throughout the day. The air was crisp and fresh, and the woods were filled with fall colors so beautiful they almost demanded your attention.

There was a peace over the day.

Even through the difficult parts.

Especially through the difficult parts.

We spent much of that final day in silence, each of us given space to be alone with God. No conversations with one another. No phones to reach for. No distractions to rescue us from ourselves.

Just us and the Father.

A soft wind moved through the woods throughout the day.

By evening, as we began returning from our time alone and preparing to gather again, the wind had picked up.

Not violently.

My hair wasn't whipping across my face. There was no storm rolling through.

But everything had a sway to it.

Trees moved.

Leaves shifted.

The wind seemed to come from everywhere rather than one obvious direction.

And somewhere in all that movement, I stepped beneath the porch for a cigarette.

I had spent five days laying things before God.

But there was still one thing I needed settled.

Hart.

Because despite everything we'd already done, I could still go back.

Our house hadn't sold.

I still had my job.

The life we'd built hadn't disappeared yet.

I could return to Kalamazoo.

I could return to my career.

I could choose the thing that made sense on paper.

And standing there beneath that porch, I finally admitted to God that I didn't know what to do.

I had spent years earning my medical degree and building a career. Walking away from it meant walking away from income our family depended on. Moving to Hart meant trusting that what Nick could provide would somehow be enough.

It meant surrendering control over a future I'd worked very hard to make secure.

And something about that choice felt painfully familiar.

Once before, I'd found myself facing a decision where fear of what would happen financially had influenced what I chose.

That story went much deeper than I understood at the time.

I wasn't ready to unpack all of it yet.

But I knew I didn't want to make another life-changing decision from fear.

So I stood there watching everything sway around me and told my Father the truth.

I needed more than a feeling.

More than circumstances.

More than an open door.

More than someone else telling me they thought we were doing the right thing.

If He wanted me to uproot my life and stay in Hart, I needed to know.

I needed something I couldn't talk myself out of later.

And apparently, in that moment, I decided Gideon was an appropriate role model.

I looked around at the wind moving through everything around me and said something to the effect of:

I don't know, Father. I guess You're going to have to still the wind.

And He did.

Everything stopped.

I don't know how else to describe it without making it sound less extraordinary than it was.

It became picture-perfect still.

The trees that had been swaying weren't swaying.

The leaves weren't shifting.

There was no movement.

I looked around.

Nothing.

I turned and looked in another direction.

Nothing.

For a moment, I honestly wondered whether time itself had stopped.

My rational mind searched for something—one branch, one leaf, anything still moving that would allow me to explain away what I was seeing.

There wasn't.

There are experiences in my life that I can look back on and question.

Was that God?

Was that coincidence?

Did I understand what was happening correctly?

This isn't one of them.

My knees hit the ground.

I thanked my Father.

I had asked Him for something so audacious that part of me probably hadn't expected an answer.

But standing in that impossible stillness, I knew what I believed He was telling me.

Stay.

Eventually, I stood back up.

And everything was still.

Still.

I looked around a little... confuzzled.

That's my daughter's word. Confused and puzzled wrapped together.

Because now I had another question.

Had I really just asked God to still the wind...

and He did?

And was I now somehow supposed to tell Him I was finished with it?

I certainly wasn't under the impression that I had suddenly been placed in charge of the weather.

The whole thought felt ridiculous.

But everything around me remained so strangely still that eventually I awkwardly looked around and said,

"You can... I don't know... let the wind resume?"

It came out like a question.

Because it was one.

I felt weird even saying it.

Did I really just make a request of God that now required me to somehow release the command back to Him?

Apparently so.

Because instantly afterward, the movement returned.

The trees began to sway.

The leaves moved again.

The wind returned to the world around me as though someone had pressed play.

And there I stood beneath that porch, cigarette in hand, knowing I had just experienced one of those moments I would carry for the rest of my life.

There are very few moments in life when you witness something and know, without question:

That was God.

This was one of mine.

I had begun this journey trying to figure out where God was taking us.

I packed the camper.

I studied maps.

I chased impressions.

I tried destinations on like clothing, hoping one would finally fit.

We traveled through ten states in eleven days looking for somewhere to land.

And eventually, exhausted and defeated, we stopped looking.

The camper found its resting place before I did.

But somewhere beneath a porch on a windy fall evening in Hart, Michigan, something inside me finally stopped wandering too.

I had spent months wondering whether I should turn around.

Whether I should go back.

Whether I had misunderstood the trail entirely.

That evening, I stopped asking.

The backpack had been packed.

The trail markers had been followed.

The camper had been parked.

And finally...

I had arrived.

Companion Thought:

Sometimes God doesn't awaken us by showing us where to go next. Sometimes He awakens us

to realize we've already arrived.