Today I received a gift I wasn’t expecting. Roger texted asking for my Zelle and said he was selling my washer and dryer to a couple for $500. A few minutes later I received the alert that the money had been received and immediately I thought it odd that just yesterday I was scrambling for ideas to raise some cash. I have spent a lot on my son over the last few weeks since he arrived in California. And then I learned that my second home I’ve ever sold is interested in listing with me for sale. That would be a huge victory to list and sell such a property when I’m in such dire need to make ends meet and figure out a plan for Josh and I to live.

It seems as soon as he arrived in California, things started looking up for me. I received a way to buy a car after months of crying and praying for God to help me get a loan and find something I could afford. Then I was blessed with the film festival project from Glenn offering to hire me to make extra money. And Tamera even offered to make Josh a room so he could stay with me in LA if things don’t work out in Orange County where Josh is staying with the man on his couch.

This all started when I went to Florida on the last weekend of May. My daughter picked me up and took me to the beach where we collected sand and seashells together for a new prayer box I’m making at Tamera’s. There me and Kenna prayed together over Josh. Within 48 hours I received a call from Texas when Josh woke me up at 3 a.m. to let me know he was in his car and driving to me. I panicked. I didn’t have anywhere for him to stay as I myself am renting a room from a woman I met in the galley of an airplane. Then Glenn called asking if I wanted to go surfing with him. I was crying and told him the news of Josh’s phone call and impossible trip on a 25 hour drive in a car that isn’t sound enough to make it across the city let alone across the country. “Send him here,” Glenn said.

So many miracles have happened in big ways and small and as I sit here preparing to digest the conversation I just had over the phone with a woman named Sarah, who is the recipient of my washer and dryer, I feel ashamed of myself. I thank God in words in letters I write nightly but it seems I’m just going through the motions. I’m doing what I was taught to do and what I think is the right thing to do – seek gratitude and speak praise for good news. But my heart isn’t convinced. I’ve been full of fear – contemplating everyone’s motives, what will fall apart next and frustrated that Josh doesn’t yet have a job or opportunity, he doesn’t yet have a home and he’s still so far away from me as I jump on airplanes and shuffle back and forth between two cities to see him and also try to rest on my short stays in California between trips.

I feel like I’m paddling as hard as I can and getting pummeled by the waves rather than enjoying the ride and allowing the tides to uplift me and carry me safely to the shore. By the way that imagery is exactly what happened to me when I attempted surfing for the first time this week with Glenn, Josh and Glenn’s friend.

When I talk to Tamera I’m murmuring and complaining about Glenn. When I talk to Glenn I’m murmuring and complaining about what’s not working out – the big laundry list of things that I need to be perfectly in place before I can focus on anything and breath with a normal heart rate. When I talk to my Mom I’m angry she’s trying to tell me who I should date or owe my love to, (namely Glenn). When I talk to Josh I’m telling him he should respect me and speak sweetly to me. I seem to be judging everything and everyone rather than following the very advice I gave to a woman over this phone call about 20 minutes ago.

Sarah’s husband was diagnosed with Leukemia and moved to MD Anderson in Houston weeks ago. “They say he’s now braindead,” she told me as my heart leaped out of my chest and tears filled my eyes. I remember being in her shoes not that long ago. I remember praying 24/7 without ceasing over my children’s father and I remember God performing miracle upon miracle that defied logic and shamed the expertise of modern science as a man with a tragically damaged brain made leaps and strides in a miraculous recovery. As I told Sarah the story I felt ashamed again when I said, “And then he divorced me 3 years after his stroke.” It makes no sense. Even still today I don’t understand why that man’s brain healed well enough to drive a car and go to the gym but not enough to try to love me and fight for me.

“His ways are not our ways and his understanding not our understanding,” the Bible says. The cross is a plus sign – literally a sign of positivity and positive charge. Jesus is the author that holds the power to take any story, no matter how negative and dire the situation and he can rewrite it (in the sand) at any given moment to turn it all around. “Be positive,” I hear the Holy Spirit say to me as I ponder what it means to actually believe in the cross of Christ. To raise Lazarus from the dead, to defeat death, to set the captives free, cause the lame to walk, give sight to the blind and raise the dead back to life again. This is positive stuff. This is what the Lord’s power can do and has done in my experiences.

The woman cried soulful tears to me and spoke out loud, “I don’t want to be a widow.” I prayed with her and then I told her this:

“The best advice I can give to you is to focus on the positive. No matter how bad it is – even if you’re told 80 things in bad news from those doctors, you seek the good news and you shout it from the roof tops and celebrate it!” She then told me about how today at the hospital, Sam’s heart rate went down and he was breathing on his own in the ventilator. That’s exactly the kind of news I cringed to when I was faced with teams of doctors reading off pages of deficits over Josh’s hospital bed. I would find the one diamond in their reports, even in the face of remarks like, “There’s a good chance he won’t live through the night.” I’d respond with, “Praise God his temperature is down today!”

So tonight I’m grateful not just for the $500 unexpected gift and the opportunity to list a million dollar home but I’m grateful for the lesson I received in speaking to Sarah as she walks through a type of storm few can relate to at her age. I can. I’ve been her. God answered my prayers and responded to my praise in positivity.

Within seconds after I ended the call with Sarah I received a text message from the paraplegic man I met on an airplane last year in Florida. He said that I was on his heart and resent a song called “Let go and let God” that he texted to me last week, without a response from me. I know God is using him to speak a message to be about the powerlessness I felt in ICU room #79 when I laid on the floor and pleaded for God to gift me a miracle and let Josh live. It’s when I gave up the fight and allowed myself to let go – when I knew I’d done everything I could and the doctors had done everything they could and the outcome belonged to God and God alone – only then did I get to see God’s mighty hand move because my perspective changed. I saw that he is truly sovereign and that all people and all things belong to him ultimately, not me.

So tonight, I pray for God to move powerfully in all the moving pieces of my life and my son’s life and my daughter’s and all the love he’s given me in my heart. I ask for miracle upon miracle to flow in like rain and I ask for the Prince of Peace to give me rest in my weary soul.

I keep trying to find a way to move Josh to LA and what if that’s not what God is doing? What if God wants Josh there with those men and what if that’s the exact situation he’s crafted for my son to give him a new door open? What if Glenn is good for Josh in ways that I can’t understand or perceive? What if something is about to happen that will blow my mind with all the glory of God working in our circumstances?

I know this. My daughter and I prayed for a miracle for Josh and he’s now in California. He’s alive and seems to be in a much better place than he was 3 weeks ago. He’s being very sweet and telling me he loves me. I’m getting money from unexpected places and job offers. I have a car finally. I have a place to live. I have a job and opportunities opening up. My daughter is independent and safe and has friends and making it all alone in Florida. My mom has bridged an amazing relationship with her. I have a new friend Tamera who’s treating me like family. My dog is safe and sound in Texas. My ex-husband is still alive 9 years after death tried to take him (and doing well according to my daughter). I am 24 to 48 hours from spending more beautiful moments with my boy. This is pretty amazing.

Thank you God. Thank you JESUS. You are the positive sign. You are here and you are working miracles in the midst of us. The Malibu Miracle is unfolding now and I am so blessed to get to witness all you are doing and testify of it in these words I type tonight.

Isaiah 53.5 says “by HIS stripes we are healed” and Jesus is healing my son and me too. Our hearts. Our relationship. Our bodies. Our souls.

Isaiah 29:11 says “for I know the plans I have for you says the Lord – plans to give you hope and a future.” Jesus is giving me hope and Josh is going to have a beautiful future with me in California. I’ve seen it. He’s seen it too. He and I received the same vision of us together in the future happy, healed with more love around us than we can even imagine. We both saw him with a beautiful girl he loves. This is happening now just as the Lord showed us in the visions.

So if “Faith is the substance of what we hope for but don’t yet see,” then perhaps those visions are a piece of the substance of faith. Maybe all of my moves that seem crazy to others as I’ve walked away from everything I ever knew or had worked for in order to chase visions and dreams I believed were from God are the true essence of what it means to walk by faith. When we do something that makes no sense because we believe it’s what God is calling us to do.

I may not see how anything will work out in this present moment as I try to bridge the gap between where we are today and the beautiful vision I hold onto that God gifted me before I moved to California, but I do believe I will see that day. So maybe I don’t know the way because I’m not meant to. Maybe I’m being called to let go and just ride this wave as far as it takes me – praying and believing that EVERYTHING is working for our good. All the delays, setbacks and challenges aren’t mine to fix. But GOD is doing this…… and it will be done.

In Jesus Name,

Amen.

As I arrived in Spokane today after a night that was extremely difficult, I picked up the pen and started to write God a letter. I told him thank you for sending people in my life who are willing to help me and my son. Then my phone rang and distracted me into conversations with one of those angels. After hanging up the phone call I received a text from a man I met who produces stories for Channel 4. He accidentally texted me about his production van – “oops wrong Jodi,” he said. And then my phone showed me that magical number “37” hovering over my Facebook icon.

I honestly can’t remember the last time I opened Facebook. In my face was a post by a young man named Desmond Benjamin. He quoted Phillips 1: 9-10; and posted a prayer asking for God’s discernment. I felt like it was my own prayer from my heart now as I seek guidance from God in a difficult situation.

It was 2015 and our last season playing in the competitve youth circuits of Texas football. We made the decision to move from a league called Humble to a neighboring community in a town called Kingwood. As a predominately white, higher income area we assumed the season would be less intense and far less dramatic than the Humble league, where football games often turned to violence and parental arguments. We couldn’t have been more wrong.

My ex-husband Jake had signed up as a coach in the Kingwood Football league and because of the end-of-season All Star tournaments, the other fathers in the sport knew us well. We always had a winning team and my son’s reputation as a stand-out quarterback had made him somewhat of a local celebrity among Friday Night Lights lovers. In fact, just a few weeks before the draft, he appeared on a Sunday Night Football highlight real on ESPN and was featured in a HBO Documentary called Rising Stars. His fame as a little kid quarterback and youtube phenomenon, while very exciting to watch as a proud mother, also came with a new level of worry and danger. Kids were jealous and Dad’s hated him.

On draft day, there was another new face to the league at try-outs named Desmond. Despite his lack of experience in playing the sport, Jake picked him very first in the draft. The other coaches in the room laughed in mockery at what they presumed to be a horrible decision on his part. “I know an athlete when I see one,” Jake told me. “I can train him to be great.” But a few days after the completion of the teams, Jake received a call from the President of the Kingwood Football League. He claimed that the board had voted to not allow Desmond to play in this year’s football season because he had not completed the payment requirements on time. Panicked that he would lose his number one draft pick, he asked me if we could pay the boy’s $360 fee. I agreed to it.

The next day at practice I met Desmond’s mother. She immediately ran up with tears in her eyes and thanked me for the gesture. She explained that Desmond and her had just driven to Texas from LA a few weeks before to stay with a distant aunt, who was her only living family member. Desmond’s father wasn’t active in his life and the single mother of 2 had fallen into hard times. Meanwhile she explained that her 11 year old son wasn’t in a very good place mentally. He was timid, shy and had been through quite a bit of trauma, making it difficult for him to socialize at school. She thought football would be a saving grace to help him meet new friends and distract his mind from all that had happened back in California. In this conversation I also found out that she was struggling to find a job and the kids were living out of a suitcase of only a few items in their car. I put her in contact with several friends to help her find employment, and over the next few days went shopping for Desmond to have clothes for practice, a new helmet, football pads and cleats.

Devon and Josh were a quartrback – runningback match made in Heaven at the season opener – taking turns running up the scoreboard on the previous season’s undefeated team. We won our first game by a shut out, prompting the board of competitive fathers to meet again and raise issue with Desmond’s participation. Dads hate to lose and will stop at nothing to shut down what stands in their way of victory. After a long political fight on a weekday night at the fields, the board voted in favor of Desmond continuing to play and found no rules in the bylaws that prohibited the family of a coach from sponsoring another kid financially. The next day after practice I found a letter tucked into the windshield wiper of my Yukon from an anonymous author. It was full of hateful remarks and threats towards my son. The angry parent who’d left the racially charged note showed extreme hatred towards my family, stating, “Go back to your side of the bridge. We don’t want our kids around your ghetto trash.” The letter continued on with cruel remarks about my son and Desmond and concluded with threats towards my son and my family.

We played on and the kids finished the season undefeated and titled “Superbowl Champions” despite the drama, the threats, the continual chatter and name calling from the stands to the kids on the football field and a list of setbacks along the way, (even to include benching my son for a game after he made a block for Desmond the parents complained was too hard of a hit). We were proud of the boys not only for how they played, but in the inner strength they displayed to fight through difficult circumstances under the influence of discord and hatred.

The very last time the boys played together was January of 2016 during a 7 on 7 state championship tournament held at Cowboy Stadium in Dallas. They didn’t win the tournament that day. But it was a great weekend trip full of fun, laughter and good times. I recall feeling so proud of our son and our family for the close bond formed with the strangers from LA who showed up in dire need of help and a little bit of love.

That March Jake had a traumatic brain injury and almost lost his life. The very first visitor to see him after he was stabilized and transferred to a rehabilitation center was Desmond. When the young boy entered the room he broke down in tears, leaning over Jake’s bed to give him a big hug and a letter he’d written. I read it out loud to Jake as all of our eyes were full of tears. His letter was written on the subject of gratitude for Jake and me and the kids. He told us how much we’d impacted his life and how we felt like family to him. That was the last time I saw Desmond and his mom.

Ten years later, on June 4th in 2025, I received a call from my son in Texas to let me know that he’s on his way to California. It’s been 6 years since I’ve had a permanent placement in his life and words can’t begin to explain the hurt my heart has endured in watching my sweet boy dwindle away into a place much like the little Desmond that I’d met all those years ago. After his Dad’s brain injury, our family fell apart – piece by piece. His father’s memory never recovered, he lost his emotional attachments to me and the kids and hasn’t been capable of playing the role of a good dad. Yet my son refused to leave him – isolating in a room where he hasn’t had friends, a job or any normalcy in years. He pushed away me and his sister, the ones who love him and wish more than anything to see him healed.

This phone call was an answer to years of prayers. But it didn’t exactly come at a time of ease for me. I’ve only been in California for a few weeks now and am renting a room with a beautiful woman I met in the galley of an airplane months back. I have no place for my son to live. In fact it’s the first time in my life that I’ve had nothing to offer my kids. I don’t even have a car to get myself to and from work – taking Ubers and borrowing my roommate’s vehicle when I could. I don’t have the money to support him and I’m an emotional wreck myself after many years of falling deeper into a dark place as I’ve watched my baby boy’s physical and emotional health dwindle away.

A friend in Dana Point that I met a few years ago through real estate called me on that morning when my son set his broken down, barely operational car in the direction of west. “Send him here. I have a couch he can sleep on,” Glenn said – as if an angel had whispered in his ear an assignment to help. And now two weeks later my roomate, who is the most loving mother I’ve ever seen towards her own son is now offering to make him a bedroom out of the spare space on the first floor.

I know we have a long way to go and I’m not sure how we will get there. But today, something magical gave me a shimmer of hope. You see, about a year ago, my son who is quite imaginative and spiritually connected, told me that he keeps seeing the repetitive number 37. “When I see it, I have this strange feeling that God is telling me it has to do with a promise. And it has something to do with you Mom,” he explained. Today I saw the #37 pop up on my cell phone, hovering above the Facebook Icon. I clicked it and the first thing on my page was a message written by Desmond.

He quoted Philippians and shared a prayer about discernment. I felt as if he was speaking directly to my own heart as I’ve been battling with decisions in trying to find the best path for me and my son forward. I need him to find a foot forward with good friends, a job, healing in his body and hope for a future. I need this for me too.

Just yesterday I journaled about a scripture that was heavy on my heart. It says, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” I’ve struggled with this text because for the longest time now I’ve felt like my life was in some sort of punishment phase. I wondered what I’ve done so wrong to reap such horrible circumstances for me and my children. But today, seeing this message from Desmond and the reminder of how God’s love placed on my heart impacted a single mother who had driven across the country from LA to Houston ten years ago is now being activated in other hearts towards me and my son.

In a world that seems dark and full of selfishness and greed, it’s not easy to keep walking in faith – believing that God has a plan to restore all that I’ve lost. But there is still good out there. He’s still on the throne and the spirit of Love (which is God) is alive and well today in these angels who have been placed in my path here in California. Perhaps we truly do reap what we sow and I’m grateful that in my times of plenty, God moved through me to help others and in my time of need and despair God is moving in the hearts of others to help me and my son find a light at the end of this dark tunnel.

To be continued…..

I was called out today, leaving Dana Point on essentially no sleep at 1:30 a.m. wake up to report for standby at 4:30 in LA. Then immediately after my check-in I was assigned a turn to New York where I worked the first flight and did a deadhead on the one home; seated in 37A. I didn’t notice it until I was boarding and perhaps the excitement is what prompted me to strike up a conversation with the man next to me. I knew he would be instrumental in some sort of way.

Well, as it turned out, he was working security for a rapper named Big Sean who was seated in first class. The conversation firstly went down a path that made my skin crawl. He shared stories with me about things he’d seen in the industry with past assignments and then we talked about the greed, heartlessness and culturally unsound direction of the US and the youth in particular. Then, I snuck off to try to get into the crew rest compartment under the airplane but was warned against doing so by a guy who was jumpseating – saying that I could get into trouble.

I found a middle seat in the back to take a nap for a couple of hours and then rejoined the security guard an hour before landing as we started our descent. This is when I would find out the reason he was seated next to me and the angels wanted to be sure they had my attention by first flashing the word “Sparks” on the screen as a city we were crossing over (that I’ve never heard of) and then with a time stamp of 37 on the corner and then finally a screen reset placing the image 37A in big bold text in front of me. They come in 3’s I know. But this one was fast and furious – like a siren of the emergency broadcast system speaking to my soul, “Hey girl! Listen up!”

He told me his name was Paul (and that he was named after the Apostle Paul) and how is mother always reminded him that the scripture over his life was to “fight the good fight of faith and finish his race well.” It was an immediate and strange turning of topics from the conversation I’d left hours earlier with an image in my mind of this big guy drinking 40’s at big celebrity parties surrounded by naked women. He talked about where he was from (the islands near Fuji) and the way he was brought up. His mother and her 11 siblings are all independant businesswomen and he never had much of a relationship with his dad. The more he spoke, the more I could feel the soul bond connecting between us. He was a kindred spirit to me and one who had suffered through many trials and near death encounters on his journey to the here and now. With each story he unpacked he ended with, “My mother prayed me through that,” as if there were no doubt in his mind that he had an enemy after his life and a mother holding the weaponry to slay demons. And she did, claimed the big tough guy with a softening heart that became more beautiful and vibrant as he spoke.

When I got off the plane Paul and Big Sean were standing at the end of the jetbride as he opened his big arms and said, “Miss Jodi, I have to give you a hug before I leave.”

It’s not until now as I’m back home in a bed sitting in front of this computer screen do I see a big picture becoming clearer in hindsight 2020 of this 37 meeting. He truly is one of me; a warrior on a mission beyond what he even can understand as he says he’s learning more each day to pray, “God your will not my will be done.”

And tonight as I stare at these websites and blogs I’ve been crafting for years as if the contents were a life or death mission I have a hint of clarity in the story that my soul came here to tell. Maybe it never was about me finding my one true love after my heart was trampled repeatedly throughout my hearts – maybe it’s in the mystery that I still believe God is good. I still believe God is love even though I admit I may not have ever been truly on this earth to set an example of such and I still believe He’s on the throne, writing in the sand called me with new grace each day and a purpose to be here for his Glory.

I see the darkness in people and places. I can feel it when I walk in a room as the energy shifts and the demons are exposed and I keep trying to run away from everything and everyone to find a place of peace and joy where love is the mainstay of the hearts I entertain. But in talking to Paul tonight, I understand that’s not the calling upon someone who’s walked through the fire. Our lives don’t belong to us anymore and we’ve chosen the path less traveled or it chose us. We’re both on borrowed time. We both have been snatched out of the hands of death over and over again. We both are warriors walking by the Spirit of he who sent us.

I’m tired of being silent. Far too much is being shown to me, gifted to me and I won’t take it for granted.

Just last week I was in Florida collecting sand on the beach with my daughter to bring back to California so I could finish my prayer box and get back into the routine of lighting candles and writing letters to God as I send my hopes to heaven. We both have the same nightly prayer; my daughter and I. We want her brother healed and onto a new abundant and fulfilling chapter in his life. And just one day after that, my son woke up with a fire in him to drive to California. He didn’t even stop to take a nap – just drove straight through for 24 hours as we all prayed through the night that his car could make it here and he’d be kept safe. My mom texted me a song from the Judds called “Guardian Angels” as I put my make-up on ready to greet him with tears streaming down my face. And here I am tonight meeting people like Paul who I know too was sent from the angels to let me know that my prayers are powerful. I’m seen. I’m heard. I’m loved. I will be victorious as a warrior with a pen and a mother’s heart determined to see her baby boy rise to the top and walk in his purpose too.

I hope I don’t fly out tomorrow and get to return to Dana Point to see them. But more than anything I hope God’s perfect will is done exactly to plot as His word says that he is giving my son HOPE and a FUTURE.

It’s 11:17 (my kids bdays) and I’m going to sleep with hope in my heart tonight for the first time in a long time.

Dear God,

Thank you for all you are doing. You truly do paint beauty from our ashes and I just want to thank you that Josh is here and that something big is happening. Please guide our hearts – me and Glenn and his father and my daughter and Tamra too. Stir in us all your love and purpose and gift us your divine guidance and care. Show us the way as you light the path before our feet and let this be a story of your Glory in pulling my son out of a dark place and into greatness by the power that can only be granted by your hands.

Thank you Father.

In Jesus Name.

Amen.

I could hardly breathe last night trying to bring myself to a place of calm where I could drift away into sleep – the place where I don’t have to think through the revelations that are washing over me as a tidal wave now.

On his way home, Leefe sent me a clip of a song he was downloading from CD’s he’d received from his favorite band Hybrid. And as I listened the intro I received a vision from a time past, walking through the Batman Escape exhibit from Astroworld as the entrance and line to the last roller coaster built before they tore the park down.

This was the second connection to a theme park I heard last night. The first came as a man I was working with told me of his days as an employee of Disney world. “It was very common for people to die there,” he said. “Because the rides malfunctioned,” I asked? He shook his head no, “Suicide. People would climb the rides and jump from the top of the roller coasters. The strangest occurrence was when one night we all heard a woman scream. We knew by the way the sound carried that she had jumped from the top of a roller coaster near by. But we never did find her body.” His testimony immediately sent me into the scripts of the book Remember Skyla as she climbed to her final destination at the top of the Texas Cyclone Roller Coaster where she was prepared to take her last flight and step off the ledge from the very place where her greatest and most terrible day had occurred. Astroworld was the best memory she held onto from her childhood – keeping the keychain with a peephole picture inside of her and her dad on the bamboo shoot boat together. That was also the day he dropped her off on the foot of the driveway of her mother’s house, handed her the suitcase of her clothing and articles she’d spent 2 weeks planning an packing for their weekend together. Then he told goodbye – for good. He never returned. She spent the next 6 years writing letters and poems as her way of praying for the future they would spend together when he would one day come back. But that day never came and at the age of 12, she burnt the letters, along with the only picture she had of them together.

As I listened to the orchestral piece of the second clip Leefe sent to me, I was forced into another memory of my father – the night before he took me to that wondrous trip to Astroworld. He played instrumental pieces and movie scores to help me sleep and said to me, “This type of music is the language of the angels. When you listen to it, they surround you to protect you. Never forget this ok? I hung on every word his kind lips spoke as I closed my eyes and pictured legions of angels dressed in white with beautiful fiery wings swarming around me.

“I think you remind of my dad,” I responded by text to Leefe, before elaborating on the man who once held my entire heart in his hand. I talked about how much he loved music, how kind and gentle he was and how he always made me laugh and did his best to show me a fun time when I visited him. “He was my calm,” I concluded in the short biography of the little bit of memory I retain today. “Nevermind that sounds dumb. I haven’t seen him since I was like 5.” Several minutes passed before Leefe responded again. “I read it and it’s not dumb.”

The remainder of my night I spent shaking as if something deeply buried in me was pounding against the surface of my heart, demanding to be let loose. I’ve known for years that my dad’s departure was my deepest wound. It was the milestone in my life that shifted my perception of the world, of people and of love. If I were an angel, I’d call that the day the angel broke her wings and fell into a dark pit. I loved again throughout my life to the. best of my ability. But to say to myself that I truly believe in a love that never fails, never leaves and never forsakes would be to speak a lie of my own heart.

“OK I see it! But what am I supposed to do with it? This is too heavy, I don’t know how to heal my own heart!” I screamed into a dark room – answered only by the breeze outside of my window, reminding me that I’m alone in the silence.

Just two days ago on my trip from Nashville to Boise Idaho I made a decision to write Leefe a goodbye letter. This isn’t something new. I’ve been writing this man goodbye letters since we first met in the Summer of 2019. It’s as if I’ve always known he’s a temporary placement in my life and I’ve been fighting a battle within myself to keep me from the fall I perceive ahead. The irony of my desperation lies within the mystery of my madness to achieve such a thing in the first place. If I’m truly cold to love and the broken pieces of my heart that were stolen from me at age 5, watching my father’s red truck disappear into the trees are truly hidden away to never surface again, then why are they here now, demanding that I look at them? Could it be true that the innocent little girl who once believed in miracles and a safe place to rest my heart could still exist even after all of the pain I’ve endure in the wake of abandonment? After my first father left, my step-dad Roger who raised me to age 17 fell in line – claiming that his new girlfriend had delivered an ultimatum, forcing him to never speak to me again. Then my mother moved off to Wisconsin taking with her my 3 year old little sister. And finally, after 19 years of marriage, my husband left too. Clearly I’m not meant to be loved in this life. I would be a fool to believe it any other way.

But the desire is there. I’ve tried everything to kill it. I’ve tried to drown it in distractions, addictions, self-help books, religious sermons and at last using the power of the pen that has always been my faithful friend in letting go. When I write, I make sense of things and face my emotions with courage. When I write, I destroy the demons that tempt me to keep believing in the strings of betrayal that hold me hostage to fables and fantasies of happily ever afters. In writing, my heart finds rest an peace in the surrender of letting go. But where is my power now?

A hundred letters sent and saved – some of which I even buried in the backyard of a rental home in Houston, telling myself that if my words can be a seed for the divine to water, then the day will soon come when this man can’t hurt me anymore. When I no longer care if he doesn’t’ love me, doesn’t need me, doesn’t seek a future with me by his side or even if he’s entertaining the company of other women. Yes, I’ve prayed a thousand prayers into the heavens begging God to please “release my heart from this man.” I can’t afford love because I can’t afford to be hurt again. Such a thing could kill me dead if loss came for me again and I have children on the earth who can’t bare the idea of their mother jumping off of a cliff in the aftermath of giving up on them.

How can the blueprint of my father’s essence be imprinted into a man who I’ve known most of my adult life but never even considered as a prospect for love? How did he know to enter my life just days after my ex-husband served me divorce papers? How did he know that I was about to have a heart attack or a nervous breakdown as I watched my family crumble and my son move out of my home – sending an invitation to take me away on a weekend escape to Vegas? Why was the song that I heard playing in my thoughts everytime I thought about the dream I had of him and I together written and performed by the band The Weeknd? Why did the world stop spinning as if I blacked out for 9 hours the first time we made love? Why did he say to me, “Please don’t ever disappear on me again?” when he dropped me off at the airport? Why am I now realizing that he’s triggered the loss of my father? Why does he reject me? Tell me that he never wants a relationship or to get married? Why does he share his dreams of a career move to a far away place and never once mention me in his future? Why has he never told me even once that he loves me? Did my dad ever say he loves me? I don’t remember.

Why would God send someone into my life to bring all of these things to the surface, knowing that I already have seen this movie and know how to ends? Does God want me the little bit of hope left inside of me to be utterly destroyed? Doesn’t God know this man has already promised to love me and leave me by his theory that “everything has an expiration date”? Why won’t God heal my heart? Will this be the death of me? Is this where I find my roller coaster to climb?

When I held my grandmother’s hands as her body prepared to pass over on February 23, 2017, I could see what she sees and feel what she felt. Like a little child walking into Disney Land for the very first time, she crossed over into the Heavenly realms of beauty, peace, splendor and love. She found her promised land and in a way I got to experience that with her in that beautiful moment of saying goodbye to the only woman who’d ever shown me unconditional love.

On the 3rd anniversary of her passing into her heavenly home I stood at the rocks of Point Magu in Malibu staring up at the star alignments with Leefe. It was the first time I’d ever visited the magical place of beauty and wonder with powerful waves crashing into the shores below the rocks. We watched lights from cars appear between the twin mountain peeks that hugged the Highway 1 and for a moment I felt like I was in a dream. That was also the night Leefe told me that he was not in love with me, emotionally unavailable and he would “never be the man who would say to me, Baby I love you I’ll see you in 12 days.” My heart ripped out of my chest that night and yet the hurt came with a strange sense of mystery on the next morning as I boarded my flight and received a notification from Facebook revealing that we had stood under the stars in Malibu at that sacred place at the exact moment my Granny passed over into Heaven exactly 3 years before.

What does that mean? Was this my sneak peak into a type of Disney Land my heart had always dreamed might exist here on earth? A new chapter and a new love, with him? I believed in this seed of hope from the next week when Covid shut the country down until my very last flight to California as a flight attendant based in Florida. That was the weekend the hills of Malibu were set to flames by the fires. Leefe stayed with me and then left the next morning to drive home in the chaos as the inferno burnt on. Then he blocked me without warning. He never gave me an explanation as to why he didn’t want to see me or talk to me anymore. He just disappeared. Just like my dad disappeared.

Here I am 4 months later, living in California with a script writer I met on a plane and I have plans to stay with him in Casabas tomorrow night. Why am I doing this to myself? Why am I still writing goodbye letters? Why am I meeting with him as if he’s still the man who could turn out to be the love of my life after all these years passed of renewed heartbreak and disappointments from him? When does this roller coaster end and give me peace and clarity?

I hope for change. I need it bad. I need to know why all of this has happened, what I’m not seeing and I need to know if this man is the man my soul loves and is meant to spend the rest of my life with or if she’s just another walk-away Joe in a red pickup truck about to disappear into the trees to never return again.

I need God to give me something real to hold onto – not the signs and strange encounters but something I can truly believe in for the sake of love – holding by a thin string of hope.

May 28, 2025.