Looking back, it’s all been such a miracle.
Years ago, on a RECCE trip to Tanzania at a conference, my girls begged me for chocolate biscuits. As I ducked into a little hole-in-the-wall shop…and bumped into red-haired Dr. L, whose talk I’d just enjoyed…
… Who would have known that this serendipitous meeting would lead to us exchanging numbers, her buying my book Dream Brave, writing my first real review, and somehow glimpsing my soul? 💛
Years later, across oceans — as we moved from Singapore to Tanzania and her family from Leeds to Glasgow — she smelled the hunger in my bones, introduced “trauma” into my vocabulary, and connected me to her therapist friend in a small UK town who walked me back to life.
This week, while attending the world’s largest trauma-recovery conference in Oxford, God sent a family (friends of Dr. L’s friend) who gave me healing in their own way- a warm room, clean sheets, home-cooked meals. 🧡
A day before I arrived, God also sent two strangers to send identical love-gift amounts to cover my trip costs. 😭I felt belonged. Seen. Loved.
Four trains and a long hike later in a different town, I finally met my therapist in person. Together we made a breakthrough via EMDR — the culmination of all the work we’d done. I received a special unicorn gift. I finally sent off my book proposal to my agent.
And who but God could orchestrate another conference to invite Dr. L to speak and pay for her travel down to the very small town where I was… so that we could meet again, right this weekend?
Three years after that first encounter, our paths, intersecting across the globe, intersected in that small window. We finally hugged.🥹😭
UK felt like God’s choice — I could walk, soak in quaint sights, sip decaf lattes under blue skies in a season that was supposed to rain. From there, I went to a third town too, at the unexpected invitation of a stranger, to pursue a childhood dream.
For so long I had longed for a place to breathe, to belong, to feel at home. Coming to the UK was that — a reckoning, an awakening, a coming full circle. I can breathe again.
God weaves the best stories. 🕊
