E12 | When God Claims You Before Your Life Is Ready: Baptism, Heartbreak, and the Gold Thread Running Through It All

I was baptized at sunrise on the beach with my church community. 

One week later, the relationship ended. 

Same week. Same breath. 

If you have ever had a chapter that cost you more than you thought you had to give and still cannot quite explain what God was doing inside it, this is that episode. 

This is my full testimony. 

From the accident that took my voice to the fifty books that held me to the ocean that changed everything. The gold thread was running through all of it. I just could not see it yet.

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

What if the chapter that cost you everything was the one God used the most? I've been sitting with that question for a long time because the chapter I'm about to tell you about cost me more than I expected, and it was also the chapter where everything changed. So let me take you back a little further than you might expect. I've been a teacher for over 20 years. I have spent my professional life in the space of story teaching students how to find themselves in books, how to read a character and recognize something true about their own lives. How to understand that the best stories are not the ones with the tidiest endings, but the one that tells the most honest truth about what it means to be human. I started the book Advantage. A podcast about the power of books and what they teach us about life, which then became Teach Hustle, grow a space for educators who were also building something beyond the classroom, Then came the accident. I will not go into every detail today, but what I will tell you is that that accident took my ability to write. The thing I had built my whole identity around, gone, not permanently, but long enough to make me question who I was without it. And in that season of forced stillness, I read 50 books In the silence of a season. I did not choose. And something in me was being prepared for something I could not yet see a man came into my life. I wanna be careful how I tell this part because the story is layered and it is not mine alone. But here is what I know is true and what I can say. He brought me to a church I never would've found on my own. A primarily Spanish speaking church. I had no idea existed. I would not have chosen it myself because my Spanish, to be honest, was okay, but it's not great. And yet there I was Sunday after Sunday, sitting in a row of chairs in a room. That became the place where I kept believing pieces of what I have been carrying the relationship, had beautiful moments, But it had rocky ones too. We were both navigating our own wounds, both carrying stories that had been written in seasons long before we met, and in the middle of all of that, something else was happening. God was using this chapter for a purpose that had nothing to do with what I thought the chapter was about. I started to know God in that church. Not just know about him, but know him through my pastor, through my mentor who spoke truth over me when I was still mostly fluent in the language of the old stories, through a dear friend who became my Bible study teacher through a community that was placed around me. With intention. In January, he brought me to the church. By April, things were at their rockiest, and in May we were both baptized. I discussed the baptism in season three, episode five, where I talk about the song that carried me through that season. Now I'm just gonna give a quick recap. Because now with the time and the distance that has happened, I'm able to see that story in a new light. it was a Saturday morning, my church gathered on the beach at sunrise, and I went into that water. I cannot fully describe what that morning was, the light, the community around me, the weight of everything I have been carrying, and the strange sense that I was leaving some of it in the ocean. I had been saying yes to God in the quiet for months. This was a yes out loud, and it was beautiful. But one week later, the rSelah,tionship ended. I want to sit here for a moment because I know that might land hard, the most significant spiritual moment of my life, and seven days later, the ending. God did not wait for my life to be stable before he claimed me. He did not wait for the timing to make sense or for the painful chapter to be resolved. He met me in the middle of the unresolved and put his name on me while I was still carrying something. I had not finished grieving. That is who he is. After the baptism, the podcast rebrand happened. The promotion to a new position happened, the restoration of family and friendships happened, and the real work of healing began not before, after he sent me that man, But not for the reason I thought He sent him to bring me through a door and then God walked me through what was on the other side. I do not know what God has written for that chapter going forward. What I know is that my trust is in the author. The one who can see every page of the story from beginning to end. The one who was weaving the gold thread through every chapter I thought was a detour.

Speaker 2 6:20

So SSelah,h, if you listen to the last episode, you already know what Selah means, but if this is your first time here, Selah, is a word from Psalms, a pause and invitation to stop before you move on and let what was just said actually land. I'm going to ask you to write one word that is it one word that is sitting in your chest right now. We will go from there. I want you to sit with that for a moment before we keep going. Selah, write one word. What chapter of your life are you finally ready to see the gold thread in? And if you are driving or taking a walk right now, hold that word in your mind. Come back to it, write it down when you can. Follow through on the promise you're making to yourself in this moment. Because the word matters, that word matters. It might stay one word or it might crack open into something that becomes a sentence, even a paragraph, the thing you have needed to say for a long time, let it come on. because what you're willing to look back at with new eyes is what you're ready to move forward from with new freedom. I wanna say something to the woman who just wrote that word, whatever word it was. It took courage, not the dramatic kind, the quiet kind, the kind that when you're sitting alone with your phone or your journal or a napkin from the kitchen counter and you wrote down that thing, that one thing you have been carrying and you let it be real for a second. That is not a small thing. That is actually everything, and I want to tell you something about what happens next. Because I know you might be sitting there wondering if anything is actually going to shift. If naming it means anything. If this moment translates into something that looks different tomorrow or next week, or even six months from now, here's what I can tell you. Honestly, the shift was slow for me. It did not happen in one episode or one conversation or one sunrise on a beach. It happened in glimpses, a moment in Bible study where something landed differently than it had The week before, a conversation with my pastor, where a sentence she said, stayed with me for days. A morning where I woke up and realized the story I had been telling myself was a little quieter than it had been the week before. Glimpses, not transformation, glimpses, And I want to say to you, if you stay with me, if you keep showing up to this space and bringing your honest word and sitting in the moments and letting the truth get a little louder each week, you are going to see glimpses too, not because I have it all figured out, because I am in the middle of it with you. Still healing, still learning, still watching God write chapters I did not see coming. That is what this space is for. Not the finished version of the story. The middle of it. That part that is still being written, and if you want more of that, if you want to come sit with me in the longer, slower, more personal version of these conversations, I have a space on Substack where I go deeper. Then any episode allows. It is where I write what I could not fit in 25 minutes. It's where I share what is happening in my own chapter in real time where the middle of the story gets more room to breathe. So come hang with me there. the link is in the show notes. I would love to see you there and if you are not yet at the place of surrender. If you are still in the Trying Everything season, and I've been there. Still looking for the thing that finally makes it click. I want you to know something. This story started there too. I did not arrive at surrender because I had it together. I arrived because I had exhausted everything else, and in that exhaustion, something opened up that had not been available to me before. Not because I finally deserved it or I worked hard enough for it, but because I finally stopped long enough. To hear it. If that is where you are right now, tired and searching and not quite sure what you believe or whether any of this is real for you, you are not on the outside of the story. You are in the middle of it. And this space was built for you too. so the gold thread was running through every chapter of this story. The accident, the books, the church, I did not choose. The baptism, the ending that came one week later, the promotion, the restoration, none of it was wasted. Not a single chapter. And whatever chapter you are in right now, whatever the cost has been, whatever you are still trying to understand about what God is doing, the thread is running through yours too. I want to leave you with this, that you are seen, you are loved, and your story is still being written by God's hands. Until next time, grace and peace.