I lived in a big, newly renovated house in a cheery suburb. I had designed it inside and out, bringing it from dated and weathered to perfectly functional and beautifully classic. Each room had its own purpose and held all the things needed to achieve it. After years of moving and seasons of survival, we finally had roots—friends and neighbors we loved, kids thriving. Our dream home.
Keeping that beautiful house in order took a lot, but I loved this nearly full-time job—until one long, tearful night after a frustrating day. While wondering if I would always stay in a relationship that brought me more sadness than it should, I heard a voice call me “Beloved Daughter” and say, “You always have a choice. You are free.”
That voice had warmed me before, encouraging kindness over bitterness, comforting me as an unseen wife and a mother without a real village, and steering me toward truth rather than performance. This time the warmth stayed.
I began to run everything in my life through a new test: Was I doing this from love? Was I choosing this? Was this real or true? Was this freedom? I carried my new labels — “beloved”, “real”, and “free” — close to my heart, breathing them deeply and often. They rapidly changed me inside and out. Anything I had been doing because I thought I should or to please someone else had to be modified or discarded.
Straighten the curl out of my hair to look like my pretty friends? No.
Make sure the house was picture-perfectly clean before violin students arrived? No.
Continue attending a church that offered community but bound my spirit with “rightness” and shame? No.
Fight for a marriage that looked good on paper but starved me of love? No more.
I now knew that my freedom and joy were worth something — that I was worth something — many somethings, actually: real love, relationships that knew and supported the real me, freedom to worship the God I had come to know in authentic, personal ways, release from pleasing everyone else at my own expense. I had found Love and Truth. Everything else had to go.
At home, I was free to choose how I spent my days — to read, plant, or cook what I wanted, decorate however I pleased, host a game night with friends — but the more I could do in my home, the more I had to manage, and the less time I had to simply be beloved, real, or free. Through my new filters, the home I had dreamed of and built began to look like a comfortable kind of cage, belonging to someone who no longer existed.
As I decluttered my life and home of anything that no longer fit, I started hearing that loving Voice more clearly, and in strange and unexpected ways. Dreams, thoughts that weren’t quite mine, waking up to song lyrics I hadn’t heard in years but that reminded me I was cherished. YouTube offering exactly the right answer to a quiet concern. A friend’s timely text. My attention drawn to something ordinary that mattered for later. A picture in my mind of myself doing the next right thing when I got stuck.
This Source, Presence, Spirit — whatever you want to call it — was leading me, teaching me, helping me, through both my deepest thoughts and my most mundane tasks. I learned from Him not to rush anymore, and my kids quickly learned it from me. If I started to hurry or strive for perfection, the quiet Voice would fade until I slowed down, breathed, and asked again, “What’s next?” It got to the point where I could wake up and know what to do next, and next, all day — no calendar reminders, hardly looking at the clock — and still get everything done and everyone where they needed to be, right on time.
Communication between me and this living Presence became second nature. It was a guiding voice and teacher during the day and a source of universal truth and wisdom at night. I could ask any question and find the answer inside of me, but not from me. I had replaced my nightly dopamine-scrolling with Presence-seeking, and I couldn’t ever go back.
One night, I was nearly asleep when I heard a whisper that said, “It’s Jeep Time. It’s Jeep Time.” I didn’t know what it meant, but I was intrigued. I assumed it was related to a recent conversation with my kids about how a Jeep and a dog might be fun. Maybe God wanted me to drive a car that fit the new me better than my pristine, overly-intelligent SUV.
I opened Craigslist. The first listing under Autos, having been posted within the last hour, was an older, white, “Freedom Edition” Jeep Wrangler. It had clearly seen some adventure and been through some stuff, just like me. Freedom had become my guiding force over the past few months, and I knew this was no coincidence. I bought the Jeep in cash, thinking it was simply my next mom car. After all, a paid-off vehicle in my own name was one big step toward cutting the financial ties between me and my future-former husband.
Over the coming weeks, the usual-unusual messages kept flowing: visions of me and my son loading duffels into the Jeep, dreams of me and my kids around a campfire, Norah Jones crooning “Come Away With Me” in my head upon waking, a sudden urge to order long johns and snow boots for the four of us—in July. I saw a future of adventure mixed with sweetness, and danger covered with protection.
It became clear that, though I had imagined my husband eventually leaving when I asked, I was the one being sent away. The “wilderness” I was being asked to enter reminded me of Hebrews 11:8—”By faith Abraham… obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.”
I had spent enough days walking with this Voice who called me Beloved, never being led to anything but peace, mercy, and sweet surprises. So I would go, but I was afraid. I begged and bargained, trying to find ways to go into the “wilderness” without actually taking my wonderful but very privileged children — and my extremely indoorsy self — into the actual wilderness. Whenever I let fear lead, my imagination would spin out and my connection to the Voice would dim.
When I relaxed my shoulders and my breath, though, I was given images and messages of peace and hope. My fears of the worst, brightened by unmistakable Love, sent me into Preparation Mode.
I hadn’t yet told my husband my inner truth: that I considered myself free and was going to live that way. I couldn’t imagine saying out loud that I was listening to a Voice telling me to take our kids into the unknown. So the early parts of my preparation were in secret: backing up documents and photos onto portable drives, ordering camping gear to other addresses and storing it in holiday bins in the garage, stuffing small bills into envelopes, clearing excess books and clothes out of my office and closet. If I was going to leave, at least I would leave the house in a state that was easy for my husband to manage. I felt like a thoughtful bank robber preparing for my first heist.
I didn’t have a single adult I could tell. My closest friends had seen me change a lot this year, but they didn’t know the deep parts of how I had been living and listening. Sometimes I doubted everything — why would God spend so much time on me? Was I really hearing Him, or had I finally cracked under the pressure of suburban-mom-life?
This secret time — knowing I was going but not when or where, without feedback from anyone with a body — was lonely, terrifying, and very sad. I grieved what I would be walking away from: my sanctuary of a home, my dear friends, my beloved garden, my old self.
I also carried the weight of future grief for my kids: leaving their comfortable beds, best friends and crushes, lessons and sports, the magical childhood I had built for them. Not to mention their dad, who had just started treating them with more kindness. I grieved his loss of me and them. My tears filled my bathtub every evening and soaked my pillow every night. I slept little and worried much, without another soul knowing the dilemma I faced.
There was only one thing that kept the fear and grief from derailing my decision to go: He had called me Beloved and free, then watched over me in ways no one else ever had. He had made me new. So I would do anything He asked.
My to-do list was miles long, impossible for one person to accomplish. But I kept asking, “What’s next?” and doing just that, over and over again. One day, “What’s next?” was answered with “Tell him the truth now.”
A red-hot brick sat in my chest for three days, growing heavier every time I thought of what I had to say to my husband. Things had gone cold between us, but I hadn’t told him that I wasn’t going to keep pretending we were fine. When I finally spoke, it was unlike so many times before — he listened. The conversation held tears and words that I had longed to hear, but by then my heart was already gone. I had stayed far too long in a place where I wasn’t truly seen. And I knew God was letting me let him go, despite the mountain of expectations that had bound me for so long. No amount of begging or promising was going to clip the wings of this journey or the life I would now lead—alone in some ways, yes, but never wondering again if I was loved.
I told him the kids and I would be leaving, that we would be safe, and that I would be listening for where to go. We settled on our going away for a month, though I had the feeling we would be gone for much longer.
My son’s eleventh birthday was a “last” for our family — I could see it in my mind as a kind of goodbye. The way the Voice speaks, though, at least to me, is often symbolic and leaves room for interpretation about time. So I wasn’t sure how soon after his birthday we would go. I asked and waited, asked some more, waited some more.
Then I remembered the name of a wilderness and survival skills school north of home. It sounded like the right way to start a wilderness journey. I looked it up, and, of course they happened to be hosting a weekend family camp two weeks after my son’s birthday. I signed us up and planned to leave a few days before it started, so we wouldn’t show up to this outdoor gathering too fresh and clean.
The ten extra days after my son’s birthday—which had been shown to me as “goodbye”—were mercy: more time for me to prepare, and more time for their dad to spend with the kids. He and I both knew the sadness of those last days under one roof, but the kids were just happy to have his full attention and excited for the “homeschool camping adventure” ahead.
Leaving day came, and all of the last-minute final pieces fell into place a little too easily. I had packed a trailer (another provision story for another day) and filled the Jeep with way too much—everything we might need to live in the woods, on the road, or wherever God would lead.
I had cleansed myself out of the house as much as I could, all the while hearing, “Leave it done, not perfect. Pack enough, not everything,” and trying to trust that what I forgot would be provided, and that nothing I left undone would ruin my husband.
We said a tired and tearful goodbye to our home and the kids’ dad. I started the Jeep, towing a trailer for the second time ever, and we were gone.
The aching tiredness and teeth-clenching left my body almost immediately as we pulled out of the driveway. Preparing to go had weighed on all of us, but now there was time and space for curiosity about what was ahead. We went north, searching for the “prepared place” that had been promised.
To be continued.
I’m not brave or polished. But God asked me to lay down the comfort of the life I knew and let Him lead. Then He asked me to write about it. So I did. So I will. I hope my story helps light the way to your hearing Him, too.
Peace to you,
-Selaiah