I met my ex-husband on a blustery Friday night in February, at an indie record store in the neighborhood where we both lived.
The first words I ever said to him were, “Don’t think I followed you.”
Which isn’t untrue. I didn’t ditch my half-eaten burrito at the restaurant where I first spotted him, a complete stranger, to track where he was going under the cover of darkness. (I wouldn’t do that for a guy; I hate wasting good food. Also, I had planned to go to the record store afterward before I ordered dinner.)
So, I didn’t follow the guy. But I did follow something, which serendipitously led me to him. That something was a voice. It had said, in no uncertain terms—while I chomped on my Thai Chicken wrap and glanced vaguely in the man’s direction—
“There you go.”
I’ll back the scene up a few hours so the message from the voice makes sense.
It was about 7:30pm. My boss called me into his office. (Actually no, he didn’t call me in, he emailed me in from eight feet away.) Remember, this is a Friday night. I thought he wanted to congratulate me for meeting a self-imposed project deadline and wish me a good weekend.
“You didn’t get this right,” he said as soon as I walked in, gesturing to his monitor. Our department’s very first internal website, the one I was voluntarily building from scratch (yes, in HTML, because this was the late 90s) was on display. I’d stayed late to deliver a working draft I felt good about.
My eyes followed his pointer finger, which was practically touching a word. I can’t remember exactly what it was, but it was something like teh instead of the.
This boss’s management style was all about attention to room for improvement, not levels of effort or initiative. I knew this, and still, I was startled. When I returned my wide-eyed gaze from the screen, back to his finger, up his arm and to his face, I saw pride and determination in his eyes.
Then, very involuntarily, I screamed. “IS ANYTHING EVER GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU????” And I stormed out of the building as a torrent of tears rolled down my face.
I couldn’t stop crying. It’s a damned miracle I drove home safely in the pouring rain across Lake Washington and back to my tiny studio apartment on Capitol Hill. The wailing got even louder once I was safely ensconced indoors.
I was 25-years-old then. And learning that I’d been lied to that hard work begets reward. Reward, as in safety and security, because people in power will like you and give you permission slips to do bigger and better things. Suddenly, my world lost cause and effect. It was all chaos and I felt desperate.
And so, when the wailing paused, I prayed to a God I didn’t even believe existed for help. With all sincerity, I asked for a sign, for something to follow that would quell the fear and anger throbbing through my veins.
“PLEEEEZE” I, said, my hands clasped in front of my tight chest.
A half-hour later, I heard my stomach rumble. I wiped off the snot, pulled on some boots, and walked up the street to get some grub (and then, a new CD).
An hour later, I heard, “There you go.”
—-
I love “God moment” stories. I seek them out and devour them, especially when they come from women I admire who are deeply connected to their hearts.
There’s Elizabeth Gilbert’s famous example of kneeling on the cold tiles of her bathroom floor in Eat, Pray, Love (and we all know how well that book did). Just yesterday, my gorgeous friend Enrika graced me with a story of quietly speaking aloud her tiny, big dream. Which led to a series of beautiful things, including getting a call from Seth Godin.
I so believe in the magic of God moment stories that I’ve hid this one away until now. As you can tell from the start, I eventually married the guy but the story didn’t turn out happily-ever-after. It went off-script.
Over the course of the relationship, I dismissed red flag after red flag, thinking, “But the voice! The voice led me here!” I grasped the cliff’s edge like a climber with no harness. In the end, I had to conclude, “the voice was wrong” or “I was wrong about the voice” to give myself permission to get out.
And that was devastating. I am still, to this day, in love with God moment stories and want them to all work out.
So, it’s a deep pleasure to tell you I’ve had an epiphany (no voices were involved this time around.)
It turns out, the “there” in “there you go” wasn’t a dude (duh). Or a new world order with guarantees of if-you-do-this-then-you’ll-get-that. These were the only happy outcomes my young adult self could imagine when I first heard those words.
The “there” I’ve come to know? It has blazing sunsets and crescent moons and furry pets and tasty snacks and books that make you laugh and cry at the same time AND people who smile at you when you pass them on the sidewalk like they mean it, even if your hair’s a mess, your socks don’t match, your pants are saggy in the butt, and you’re scowling because someone scolded you unreasonably earlier in the day.
There is no meritocracy in “there.” Beauty is beauty, and it’s all yours, all the time.
Sadly, one truly does not know what tomorrow brings, either. It can be deep sorrow, which is unsettling, but the mystery is very much integral to the expansive beauty of “there.”
It’s okay that I mistook the six-foot-five human as the object of my pursuit, the thing to follow, when he was merely an attention-getting and intriguing-looking arrow. It’s okay that I mistook the middle of the God moment story for the end years ago, and spent a good long while questioning if God moments can be trusted.
It’s okay, because I listened when the message came. And I never gave up on being curious about it.
And if you’re at a crossroads, have felt blindsided or betrayed by life, or feel you’ve lost your way in any way, I hope you’ll think of my story, and take comfort in it.
My hearty recommendation to you:
If you’ve experienced a God moment, trust it to guide your next career, relationship, or general life move. Even if it makes no sense or it’s wacky.
Be willing to follow the story that unfolds with curiosity, for decades if you must, and not let go if you suspect the story still has something to offer you. You never know what beautiful surprise awaits.
