The Geography of Our Healing
“Truly, my heart waits silently for God; My deliverance comes from Him. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress—I will not be shaken. Trust in Him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts before Him. God is our refuge.”
If I had known then what I know now—what I would walk through in my marriage and in motherhood—my heart might have hesitated. The future felt daunting, and the path ahead was unknown.
There are some stories you can only tell once you’ve seen what God was doing.
But God, in His mercy, does not reveal everything at once.
He does not ask us to carry the whole weight.
He simply asks us to take the next small, manageable step.
It was during our time in North Carolina—while I was pregnant with our third child—that the Lord asked me to stay. I had reason to leave—good reason—but there was a quiet steadiness in my spirit that I could not ignore. So I stayed.
We welcomed our third baby. We bought our first home—yellow and full of light. My husband completed his special operations training, and we waited to learn which language he would be assigned to, knowing it would determine where we would go next.
I hoped for French.
I hoped to stay.
We had roots—six years, friends, church, familiar playgrounds. It felt like a place where a family could grow gently.
I said it out loud more than once, almost joking—
“No Spanish. Never Florida.”
I had heard the stories. The quiet warnings that circle certain communities. I knew my opinion didn’t ultimately matter, but he always asked me anyway.
And still—
Spanish.
Florida.
God’s providence is not swayed by our preferences.
I grieved—a grief deeper than I expected, overtaking me as reality set in.
More than I expected to.
(I even cried over the loss of my gas stove—small things sometimes carry the weight of bigger ones.)
But the Gulf met me there.
The salt water and white sands of Destin became a place of quiet surrender, where I began to let go of the life I thought we would live.
The deployments came.
The separations stretched longer.
We welcomed our fourth child.
And slowly, quietly, something unseen began to take root.
Not all wounds bleed where you can see them.
There were layers forming—unspoken, unnamed. Slowly, an invisible heaviness settled in, changing the air in our home.
Alcohol became the easiest relief.
Compartmentalization became survival.
Strength—at least the appearance of it—was expected.
Not just for the men.
For the women, too.
We can do it.
We will be fine.
We are strong enough.
But strength without surrender has an end.
Somewhere between a toddler climbing out of windows to wander Christmas lights unnoticed and a baby who refused to sleep through the night, I reached my spiritual breaking point. The cracks beneath the surface finally showed.
I found myself crying out—
not for control, not for answers—
but simply to be hidden.
“I cannot do this.”
And that was the beginning.
I had stayed.
I had been faithful.
But I had not been leaning.
So I began again—this time at the foot of the cross.
And slowly, as I surrendered, things that once felt immovable began to shift.
Not immediately, but gradually.
Not dramatically.
But faithfully.
Then came Louisiana.
Then, in Louisiana, my emotional breaking point arrived. Whether it was hormones or something deeper, emotions I had held back surfaced sharply: Anger. Weariness. Words I wished I could gather back once spoken.
Afternoons found me on my knees, asking God for a clean heart.
For a guarded mouth.
For the kind of spirit my children could one day rise and call blessed.
And somehow—by grace alone—Louisiana became one of our children’s favorite places.
God is kind like that.
He brought us back to Destin after that season—back to the Gulf, back to the water. The return felt like a balm to a soul worn thin, shifting us gently toward healing.
While He was healing me, He was also beginning something in my husband.
I remember the day he came home from a seminar and finally found the words to describe what he had been carrying.
“Operator’s syndrome,” he called it.
A name gentler than the clinical one.
Easier to accept.
Easier to say out loud.
But even then, full surrender was still ahead—a fragile new hope in the midst of the struggle.
Healing, like grief, comes in layers.
Like an onion—each one bringing tears.
And somehow, those tears are part of the healing.
Two more years passed.
Then suddenly—Hawaii.
Out of many, only a few were chosen. He was one of them.
And even he would say he would not have chosen himself.
But God did.
The Pacific was different.
Not familiar like the Atlantic.
Not comforting like the Gulf.
It was vast.
Isolating.
Unavoidable.
There, in the middle of the ocean, there was nowhere left to hide.
And finally—
The tears came.
The kind that don’t stay contained.
The kind that strips everything down to what is true.
That was where surrender became complete.
For eight years, I had diligently prayed for redemption.
And there, surrounded by water on every side, God answered.
Not all at once.
But fully.
Yet, surrender continues.
Daily.
Quietly.
We joke sometimes that there’s nothing left to give up but coffee and dark chocolate—but the Lord is always gentle in revealing what comes next.
And still, I see it now—
He takes the broken, scattered pieces.
and weaves them into something whole.
The Atlantic carried our beginnings.
The Gulf held our grief.
The Pacific witnessed our surrender.
And through it all—
He was there.
Working all things together.
Not wasting a single tear.
If there is anything I know now, it is this:
You must surrender.
Surrender your plans.
Surrender your heart.
Surrender your family.
Lay it all at the foot of the cross—
And He will meet you there.
