I’ve been thinking lately about the different ways I have experienced guidance and connection throughout my life. I’m going through this exercise because, quite honestly, I’ve been feeling physically and energetically drained. Things feel stagnant, and any forward motion can be likened to trying to walk through a pool of Jell-O.
As I explored these memories, one childhood moment resurfaced—one I hadn’t thought about in years—and I wanted to share it because of how deeply it ties into this topic.
I grew up on a private lane with only a few houses scattered at the end of the road. One side of it was flanked by acres of peach orchard, the other by an expanse of pine woods and thick brush. I never knew why the city didn’t own the road, but as a child, I remember bouncing around in the back seat as my daddy turned off the larger, paved neighborhood road and onto our graveled, pothole-ridden lane.
The day I’m recalling began with me making the long walk home down that gravel road in the smoldering heat of a heavy, humid summer afternoon. I had spent the morning with my friends who lived in the main neighborhood—running through backyards, playing hide-and-seek, digging in the dirt, skinning our knees—doing all the carefree things that made up so many of my childhood memories.
I remember looking down, counting steps as my little nine-year-old feet crushed the gravel beneath the dirt-stained rubber soles of my worn white tennis shoes. I heard a car slowly approaching behind me, and my ears alerted me as it got close enough for me to raise my head and wave to the passing neighbor.
But instead of passing me, the car rolled to a stop beside me. I looked over and saw a familiar face smiling out the driver’s window, watching the muscles in his shoulder pulse as he reached to roll it down. I knew the face and the car. He was a neighbor I’d seen before and had always been on the periphery of my childhood—not an immediate family friend, but an extension of a family I’d known my whole life, someone I’d been around on several occasions.
As the window came down, he leaned his head toward me. I can still remember the way the summer sun washed over the surface of his shoulder-length auburn hair and the way his bearded chin jutted upward as he firmly said, “Hey. Come here,” motioning for me to approach the car.
Guided by the learned behavior of always being polite when an adult made a request, I attempted to take a step forward.
But my foot wouldn’t move.
I was frozen—unable to lift my leg from the spot where I stood.
Seeing my lack of movement, he repeated himself, raising his hand again, his pointer finger curling back and forth in a “come here” motion.
And then, in an instant, a voice I had never heard before entered my mind and screamed:
“RUN!”
It wasn’t a whisper. It wasn’t gentle.
It was a command—so powerful, so absolute, that it startled me into motion.
I watched my legs propel me forward, sailing across the drainage ditch that bordered my neighbor’s backyard. I tore through grass and the tall privacy pines separating the lots and didn’t stop until I made it up the brick back steps, across the kitchen linoleum, and into the safety of my bedroom.
The entire time I was running, the dominant emotion I remember was embarrassment. What I had done felt rude. I was terrified I would get in trouble for deliberately disobeying an adult. It was that fear—of being scolded or disappointing my parents—that kept me from ever telling anyone in my family about what happened.
For years, I replayed that moment—the way my body wouldn’t move, the way that voice reverberated through every cell in me, the absolute authority in it. I never understood why I reacted like that. It puzzled me well into early adulthood.
A few months or so after that day, I remember asking my mom if I could go up to the neighborhood to play. She said no. Testing the boundaries of the “no back talk” rule, I cautiously pressed her for a reason, confused by what felt like an unnecessary punishment.
She finally relented and told me something had happened in a wooded cut-through bordering the larger neighborhood, and that I needed to stay close to home until the police found the person responsible.
Feeling scared, I called my best friend, who told me she also wasn’t allowed to leave her yard.
We later learned—through the unaged sharpness of children listening through closed doors—that a young girl had been raped in a nearby wooded lot. But the police had caught the man who did it.
Several years later, after I’d moved out, I was sitting at my mom’s kitchen table, drinking a cup of coffee. She was at the stove cooking with her back to me. We’d been reminiscing about old neighborhood stories when I was reminded of how strangely I’d reacted on the day that— for the purposes of anonymity—we will call him “Ben” stopped to say hello.
Believing it was now just a strange childhood anecdote, I decided it was safe to tell the story.
As I recounted it, my tone was light, even amused. I expected she would get a kick out of my odd reaction and the irrational fear of “getting in trouble” that I had carried with me all those years. That we would both laugh at the thought of how puzzled Ben must have been at my reaction to him.
But as I spoke, I noticed a subtle shift in her energy—the way her tiny shoulders stiffened, how her arm stilled mid-motion above the skillet of eggs. When I finished the story, silence filled the room. As I waited for some kind of response in the too-long of her stillness, I could feel an unexpected ping of panic in my stomach…. Was she really mad after all this time?
She slowly turned toward me, her brown eyes wide and brimming with tears.
And then she told me:
Ben—the same man who had stopped beside me that day—was the man the police had arrested for raping the girl in the woods
When I look back on that moment now, I understand it in a way I couldn’t as a child. I wasn’t just reacting. I wasn’t being rude. I wasn’t being dramatic. I was being protected. Something greater than me stepped in—loudly, unmistakably, unapologetically.
And what I’ve come to learn is that guidance doesn’t always arrive like that.
Sometimes your Higher Power speaks in a voice that shakes your entire being.
Sometimes He whispers so softly it feels like a faint tug in your gut.
Sometimes He nudges you through discomfort or restlessness.
Sometimes He speaks through people, patterns, opportunities, or blocks.
And sometimes… He is silent—not because He’s absent, but because He’s letting you lead. Because He wants to guide from behind. Because He trusts that what He placed inside you is enough for the step you’re on.
The truth is:
Guidance isn’t always dramatic. It isn’t always obvious. It isn’t always what we expect.
But it is always there.
That day on the gravel road was one of the rare moments when God’s voice was unmistakably loud—so loud it overrode fear, politeness, confusion, and conditioning.
But most days… most days the guidance shows up in quieter ways.
A gut feeling.
A hesitation.
A knowing you can’t explain.
A peace that comes from nowhere.
A sense of “don’t go there,” or “yes, this is yours.”
A closed door you didn’t want but desperately needed.
Sometimes it’s a whisper.
Sometimes it’s a roar.
And sometimes it’s silence that calls you deeper into trust.
That’s the piece of this story I want to share most:
Your Higher Power is always communicating—sometimes loudly, sometimes softly, and sometimes by stepping aside so you can learn to recognize the voice that already lives within you.
The challenge, and the invitation, is simply this:
Pay attention to the way guidance feels in your body.
Trust the subtlety.
Honor the whispers.
Respond to the nudges.
And when the voice is loud, don’t hesitate—RUN.
If this story stirred something in you, I invite you to take a moment and share your own experience.
Whether your guidance arrived as a whisper, a gut feeling, or a voice you couldn’t ignore, your story matters.
Share your reflection below—your words might be exactly what someone else needs to hear today.