I’m starting a new journey within my journey. This journey started out slowly but has recently been picking up the pace pretty quickly. It’s interesting to me to look back at the timing of things and see how things really played out. 

I was an intuitive nomad from July 2017-July 2020. That journey really began in February 2017 when I surrendered my life to God. I thought it would end with a partner, but when I left Phoenix to go to Utah and returned back to Phoenix in July 2020, I returned still single. I knew that journey was over, but it felt like an abrupt ending without a real conclusion. 

I couldn’t work on the next two books in the series because I couldn’t see the big picture (even though the first draft of Book Two has been written). While in Utah, the Bible nearly fell in my lap. I was already reading A Course in Love and writing to Jesus every day. I wanted to know Jesus and that was the only thing that made sense to me at the time, until the Bible entered my life. 

When I returned to Phoenix, I started my first Bible study. Little did I know, the man I spent three years on the road searching for was Jesus. It took me six months to realize that. Once I realized that was the source of the love I kept feeling in my most challenging times, I knew I never wanted anything else in my life. I didn’t need another path. 

A few weeks before that realization, I was out for a hike and Bible verses I hadn’t read first hand started to come to my mind:

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is there anything worth more than your soul?” 

Matthew 16:24-26

I reflected back on my nomadic journey and started to feel discouraged about all the things I hadn’t experienced. I had such a different level of awareness being on the other side of it and I wished that I could have experienced that level of travel through the new lens of understanding Christ. How would my journey have been different if I had known how to listen to the Holy Spirit versus my intuition? 

During the same hike in the middle of this reflection, while listening to Tasha Cobbs Leonard, lyrics started to confirm what I already knew:

I have decided to follow Jesus

I have decided to follow Jesus

I have decided to follow Jesus

No turning back

No turning back

The cross before me

The world behind me

The cross before me

The world behind

The cross before me

The world behind me

No turning back

No turning back

No turning back

No turning back

Tears immediately began welling up in my eyes because on a conscious level, I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to follow Jesus, but the pull was so strong and the love was so deep, I had to. 

While working with a mentor I had chosen to work with for a few weeks, before realizing the impact of that hiking experience, he said to me, “You’re trying to walk a road that very few or no one has walked and what you’re doing is you’re walking on the road that everyone is walking on. You’ll never belong on that road and you’ll never feel comfortable on that road. No one will ever see you on that road, because that’s not what you’re good at. You would be doing something to make money rather than doing what your calling is to do, which is exactly what you don’t want to do.”

Neither of us knew how impactful those words would be three months later (as I’m writing this). 

In our next session, I told him I was being called to follow Jesus. Our intention wasn’t necessarily to put our work on hold, but it ended up naturally happening. He left me with the message that I was becoming “a nomad of Christ” and his assignment was for me to find a church to get into a community.

That same week, I started watching the services online of the church I now attend in person. 

After two months of watching online, I finally decided to go in person. I filled out the new guest information, emailed one of the pastors so I could voice my fears and honestly, I committed to meeting with a pastor so I could no longer hide. I was holding myself accountable to what was being asked of me. 

While looking around on their website, I came across the 1:1 discipleship program. I watched the video, read the description and thought, “That sounds interesting. It would probably be helpful for me to be connected with someone who has been on their walk with Christ longer.” Within two weeks, I was paired with someone and during our first meeting, I started sharing how I came to Christ and I reflected on what my previous mentor had said to me about the path I needed to walk on versus the one I had been walking on.

She laughed and reminded me:

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

Matthew 7:13-14

I smiled and said to her, “I thought the same thing.”

During our meeting, she also said to me, “You’re a writer. I’m going to encourage you to write about this journey. I won’t ever ask to see it, but I’m going to ask how your journaling is going.”

At the end of the day, I settled in to do my evening reading. Part of the program is to each day read a few chapters of the Bible, chronologically, as well as the supplemental book with additional resources. Chapter 1 was all about the call to follow Jesus.

As I read through, it began to hit me harder and harder. There is not only a cost of discipleship, there is a cost when we refuse Jesus’ call. I already knew the cost of refusing Jesus’ call— the last four years of my spiritual journey, which had been the hardest years of my life. I could no longer afford to refuse the call any longer. There was a quote from Vernon McGee, “There is a difference between being a believer and being a disciple,” followed by four expectations for being a disciple of Jesus Christ:

1. Jesus must have the highest priority in our relationships.
2. Jesus demands the highest level of self-sacrifice.
3. Jesus asks us to take the greatest care in counting the cost.
4. Jesus requires a personal willingness to surrender all things to Him.

(Thru the Bible with J. Vernon McGee by J. Vernon McGee)

Something within me lit up. I can’t explain it and I don’t know how this will transform things in my life. I just know that when I surrendered my life to God in 2017, the three years that led me to Jesus prepared me for this, whatever this is. 

Who would’ve ever thought that the former preacher’s kid who used to bring Satanic music to Sunday School and denied God existed would years later surrender it all to become a disciple of Jesus? 

I guess He really does call the ones we’d least expect, huh?