For a while, Val had not only discipled me but counseled me. I was going to professional counseling here and there, but Val was my friend and sounding board outside of that professional setting. Still, there was a deep current running within me, unresolved hurt and misunderstood views of God. My relationship with him was still suffering, but I didn’t know how bad it was until he struck me with a final blow. Like Jacob wrestling with the Lord, I went down hard. Of all things, it was a post traumatic dream that took me down. I couldn’t get back up. I looked to the Lord with surprise and confusion. In his sovereignty he allowed it, if not caused it. Why would he humble me when I was trying so hard to please him?
I met with Val again, this time to walk around the pond. I told her what happened, and that I couldn’t move forward unless the Lord picked me up himself. However, I did think it was time to trust she and Ray with the biblical counseling training they had each been working on (Ray with his master’s degree). This was a big step for me, because I had been suspicious of whether biblical counseling was truly helpful and that Ray was the man for the job. It wasn’t due to his degree or anything about him, except for the fact that he was a man. That was all that disqualified him in my mind. I didn’t trust any man. But with Val sitting next to me, I thought I could try trusting the one man she trusted—her husband.
For twelve weeks, I met with both Ray and Val. Simultaneously, my Bible study group was studying Ephesians together. It was through God’s word that I actually began to trust God. I was a believer, but I had hard time trusting him. I worked hard to please him, but Ephesians tells us that he loved us before we could even sing or dance (or write a blog) to impress him. He loved me before he even created the world for me to live in! He loved me and planned to rescue me before I was even knit in my mother’s womb. He loved me and knew me before I ever cared to see him for the glorious, gracious, generous, husband-kids-farmhouse-pond-England God that he is toward me.
But what about my trauma? Where did it go? Trauma can be a long-suffering, dark journey, and shouldn’t be summed up in one paragraph. I can’t say that my trauma has zero effect on me today. But I can say that because of long periods of discipleship, the dream, counseling, and coming to a right understanding of God’s love, that my trauma has about 90% less control of me than it did. It wasn’t all tidied up like a nicely wrapped gift with a bow at the end of twelve weeks. It was through various experiences of having to trust God, of choosing to see his love, and believing that the King of Heaven would be faithful in his love toward me again and again, that healing really took root and grew. Like Jacob, I still walk with a gimp. I still work through anxiety and depression with God’s word, medication, supplements, lifestyle changes, walks, gobs of journaling, and I still pray through a lot of fears.
But if God had not brought me to Martinsville in 2015 like he did, I wouldn’t have had much time to grow in friendship with Val. But because he did, I had ten years of friendship with, many miles in walks, talks, discipleship and counseling sessions, before she broke the news to me and said she and Ray would be joining the mission field abroad again—this time in Prague. Of course, it broke my heart. But in that same moment I began to plan and pray for how I would be able to visit her. I couldn’t go a year without a walk-talk sesh with Val!
As for the variety of experiences I had to work through anxiety and trusting God? They mostly came in the form of travel. In 2024, I stayed in Nashville three times! I had never stayed there before. I had a fear of cities, heavy traffic, getting lost, and just assumed I’d be crippled by fear. By the third trip to Nashville, I cried on an off for days after, amazed at the mystery of God’s love toward me, and how I enjoyed myself more than any other time in my life.
Then, in 2025, Eric was sent to England for work, and I accompanied him! It was part enjoyment, part practice. I knew I needed to practice traveling internationally and venturing off by myself to visit Val when she would move. God provided the training field. Hello Oxford! Several months later, he provided again by seeing me through my entire trip to and from Prague, where I traveled alone, visited Ray and Val, enjoyed sweet friendship, many walks, lots of talks, and in a city of all places!
So why did God move me to Martinsville five years before putting me in the farmhouse of my dreams? Why did God care to send me to Prague? I could answer the same questions about the farmhouse, Prague, about meeting Eric, the three kids I get to parent, and the life I’m living no matter the location. The first answer is always the same: because he loves me.
Because God loves me, he was not willing to let me continue misunderstanding things about him. He was very willing to help me understand the truth about him, so that I would enjoy glorifying him, and he was delighted when I leaned into that through discipleship. Because God loves me, he was willing to hear my cries and my pleas for healing from the anxiety and depression that ruled my life. Because he loves me, he not only planned to give me my heart’s desires of marrying a man and raising kids alongside their cousins, of living in my church community, of living in a farmhouse in the country, of traveling abroad—to England, of all places—of telling about his wondrous works, and to enjoy him in those desires! Because he loves me, he brought me to Val, so that I would get the discipleship I needed and grow in my enjoyment of God.
Of all the places and people in the world, God caused my world to intersect with Val’s. As a result, he gave me a friend and mentor who points me back to my need for Christ again and again and again. He gave me someone to exemplify how Jesus walks with us in the dark valleys. He gave me someone who, like Christ, left home to meet the needs of others. So why Prague? Because he loves me. Because Val. And if John Piper is correct, I’ve only got nine thousand-nine hundred-ninety eight things left to explore.
12 Stones Farmhouse 