Why Malibu?

When people ask me what made me decide to move to California, I tens up and don’t know what to say. I mean, I’ve come up with all kinds of colorful little stories but the truth is, I don’t actually know the answer to this question.

There was first an experience:

On the night my Granny passed over as I first stood at Magu Point looking up at the stars with a man I thought I might be falling in love with. I later learned that we took pictures of the alignments in the Heaven at the exact time of her crossing over into Heaven exactly 3 years to the date.

Then there were dreams and visions:

I had many messages that I didn’t understand. Dreams that my ancestors were urging me to leave Houston. A vision of Christ holding a purple suitcase in his hand. And at last an open door for a job opportunity in California.

Fear drug me back:

After a few short months in my new space, the fear of my son falling apart took me back to Houston. I felt I had abandoned the one thing that mattered the most to me and he was going down the wrong path in my absence. But when I moved back I helped nothing. Everything I tried failed and I became very depressed and confused – feeling helpless and out of sorts.

Dreams took me away again:

I began having dreams again but this time about airplanes. With no other door open; even though I’d knocked on hundreds at that point, I accepted a job with an airline, went off to training and started a new chapter of life in the sky. It’s been since very lonely, trying and confusing still. I believed I was doing what God was showing me to do but I had no evidence of anything good happening in this decision.

An Open Door to Cali (again):

I felt my heart was calling me to California. I didn’t want to fully admit to myself that it was a guy who I was chasing after but he was the only voice of kindness I’d had to speak over me through these years in the wilderness alone. I had put my name in for transfers for over 2 years and had given up on LA. In fact, I decided that I might go back to Salt Lake and become a trainer. But to my surprise, I didn’t get Vegas or Salt Lake. I got LA – and exactly 1 day after my daughter had made a decision to move to another town in Florida alone. It’s as if the very day after she decided to move on and away from me, another door opened for me to come here.

May 2025 – The Script Writer:

I landed in a Roomate situation with a woman I met on a plane from LA to Miami back in February of 2024. Even that was too strange to be a coincidence. She broke up with her boyfriend on my birthday and called me out of the blue to see if I wanted to move in with her. Our common interest is storytelling and I’ve since learned she too has been through many of the trials I’ve endured – especially with her son. She didn’t know then that was my hardest heartbreak in this season.

June 2025 – The Return to Florida & The Return of the Son:

I met my daughter in Boca Raton and we went to the beach where I collected sand for a prayer box. There we held hands and prayed together for my son and her brother. That night back in LA around 2 a.m. my phone rang. It was him. He said he was in the car headed to LA and no one could stop him. We were all terrified his car would never make it. I then received a call from a friend in Dana Point who invited him to stay there with him. He arrived safely after we prayed all night with a lit candle, asking the angels to protect him and guide him. The very next morning his check engine light came on. It was quite divine I felt.

Peter and Jesus – Walking on Water:

Tonight I read through many bible passages. But when I arrived on the story of Jesus appearing as a spirit on the water, I felt something stirring inside of me. They were scared of him at first – as seeing a ghost. Then Jesus said, “Fear not, it’s me.” Peter then asked if he could come walk with Christ on that water and Christ said to him, “Come.” Peter stepped out of the boat and began walking toward Christ but when the wind picked up Peter became scared and realized he was sinking. He then cried out to Jesus, “Help me!” And Jesus did. He reached out a hand and caught him but then spoke to Peter, “You of little faith. Why did you doubt me?”

I remember Jesus saying to me in 2016 as I laid in a puddle of tears and panic on my bathroom floor searching for my phone to call 911, “How can you doubt me? I was the one who woke you.” And in that moment, he took me back to 17 years old, laying on the floor of my parents house where I was dying alone. I called out in prayer to God for help and I don’t remember seeing Jesus. But there I was nearly 20 years later with a voice of the Lord making himself fully known. He wanted me to know that it was him who saved me that night, performed a miracle and resurrected me in that teenage body.

In 2024, just before Christmas Jesus came to me in a dream. He held out his hand before me as I sat alone on the beach crying with a candle lit in prayer. I took his hand and he led me out upon the waters, across the ocean and to a faraway land where he then dusted me off (as if to dust the past off of me) and he lifted my head to the heavens where fireworks went off in the sky above. The very next night after that I was in Long Beach California where I’d just awoken from a nap after working a long flight from Miami. While on the phone with the guy from LA who I was seeing, I prayed and asked God to put a hedge of protection around me in the form of a mirror where all attacks aimed at me would bounce back to sender. The man suddenly got silent and asked out loud, “Why am I treating you like this? I’m sorry I have to go.” Then I heard the loud fireworks going off outside of the window of my hotel.

I understood that I was following a story in the Bible about a woman in the sand who everyone shamed and blamed. They stood over her as a mob holding stones chanting her death. Jesus defended her by writing in the dirt and telling the mob, “He who is without sin cast the first stone.” He only said such a thing after he had convicted them all in their own hearts and then they all left her alone. He sat that woman free from her past, a husband who couldn’t love her, men who used her and all of her accusers.

As many times as I’ve read that story and thought through the strange messages I’ve received from God in the past to do things like, build a sandbox and surrender my worries to him in that space, I’ve continually asked the question to God, “What happened to the woman after they all left and no one was left to condemn her?” And I’ve never felt like I received an answer. But I suppose this dream gives me some insight. Maybe the only answer is, “She became free and began again.” Isn’t that what the fireworks display represents to us here? Independence Day? New Year?

But it seems the coming of my son has brought the hardest trial of all. He was the one I thought belonged here with me. I’ve had visions of this too. I saw him happy and in love at what seemed like a celebration at my house (a home where I was with my person who hasn’t yet been revealed to me). And my inner guidance felt very much that the vision was in California. So why would my baby boy come to California spewing accusations, hatred and blame upon me? Just as all the others before him but with more vengeance and pain than all of them combined.

I’ve felt the guilt pulling me back where I was before in a mindset of giving up and going back to Texas. But I did that last time and I learned that nothing changed. I fixed nothing by moving there and re-entering the past. Well, almost nothing. It was in this season I discovered that I may be walking inside of a prophecy given to me years ago – a story I wrote in the form of a novel idea 10 years ago. That just made me feel more crazy and confused however. It was a feeling of a hope fleeting. Well I guess that’s what Peter experienced too when Christ said, “Come.” and then the winds began to roar as our thoughts stir violently with doubts. And that’s when we start sinking.

Tonight I just hope to remind myself that Christ said come. In so many ways on so many occasions he said “Come.” Through strange appearances of the cross during epic moments like the Evenescence concert and the full moon from the Getty with a cross lit up bright and the Hollywood sign burned out. These little things seem small to anyone other than me but it’s not so much the signs as it is the arrival upon the asking. When I’m feeling the most at awe with God I seem to see these little winks from Heaven in my path.

So why am I in California?

I saw a ghost in a dream who said “Come.” And so here I am. I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know what happens next. I pray continuously for my son to be healed and for the accuser to be removed from him over me. I pray for love and a new chapter where I’m no longer the woman who carries the burden and blame of others as they cast stones with their mouths at me. I pray for purpose and a season of celebration in my life in which I can truly feel appreciated, not for performance but just because I exist as God made me. I pray for the vision to come into my real life where I’m in that beautiful backyard with a man who cherishes me, treats me kindly, makes me laugh and loves me, really loves me. And to see my son there visiting us too with love and joy in his heart and in his life too.

And until that day comes, I pray for the faith to keep walking with my eyes fixed on Jesus, ignoring the noise and the wind (satan is the prince of the air) and a sound mind that only hears the call of the Lord who commanded me to “come.”