I could pray for you. Somewhere along the way, asking you to pray for me became much harder.

It hadn’t always been that way. I used to go forward when there was an invitation for prayer. But through some painful years, I grew quieter. Over time, I withdrew.

If people in the room knew me, I usually stayed in my seat. I didn’t want anyone to see how much I was struggling. I wanted to hide, even from people who cared about me.

I still encouraged, prayed, helped, and carried on. But I was saying less about what I needed.

It happened gradually, over years. Looking back, I can see it more clearly, and it has me thinking differently about a dream I had more than fifteen years ago.

A dream about mountains, fields, and streams

It didn’t feel like an ordinary dream. I woke knowing it mattered, and I’ve never lost it.

There were big mountains, fields, and streams, and a stillness I can still feel. I understood, the way you sometimes just know, that God was showing me a place of rest and refreshing, and that people with wounded hearts would come to us there.

I carried that dream for years. I pictured a retreat centre: us welcoming people, listening, making room for them to recover. I could see it. I held it loosely and tightly at the same time, waiting to find out what it meant.

It never occurred to me that Dave and I might be among the people who needed that rest and refreshing.

The years we were barely getting through

Earlier this year, I wrote about the choices we made to protect our family life. We made time for holidays, laughter, and being together. Those choices mattered.

But making time for our family didn’t mean I found it easy to let someone care for me. I could take a break and still struggle to admit I needed prayer. There were things I carried quietly, even around people who loved us.

Planning the handover

In 2016, Dave and I started the discussion for our transition out of the church he planted in 1993. We wanted to hand it over well. “Healthy and with God’s assistance” was how Dave put it, and we hoped to have someone in place by 2018.

Then we spent years looking for the WHO. Who could carry it forward? We prayed, we met with people, we tried to engineer the right answer. We meant it when we said “with God’s assistance.” But we kept trying to settle the WHO before we could consider anything else.

By the time we began that conversation, we had already come through some of the hardest years we’d known. We’d lost both of Dave’s parents when the kids were little, spent years in a painful legal dispute following his dad’s death, and watched my business partnership fall apart. Then my dad was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. We spent the summer of 2015 with him in BC. He died the following February, at 69.

Good friends stood with us through those years, and I remain grateful for them. I was much better at telling people some of what had happened than at asking them to carry any of it with me. I could explain the circumstances without saying, “I need prayer. I’m struggling.”

Slowly, things began to lift. By 2020, I joined a marketing agency with a supportive team. My creativity came back, and even through the pandemic, I began to thrive again.

The question I should have asked sooner

Then, in 2021, I asked God a different question.

Were we ever going to move home to BC?

Dave and I had talked about it when we were dating. He’d promised my dad before we married that he would bring me home one day. Somewhere in all those years of searching for the WHO, I’d stopped asking about us.

It felt like God had been waiting for me to get there.

Now you’re asking the right question.

I never asked you for the WHO. WHEN do you want to go?

Before my mom turned 80 in October 2022, I said.

And then, that same night, I did what I always did. I went online and started working it out.

We looked at real estate, trying to find something we could buy outright. The listings in our price range kept taking us to Kamloops, Salmon Arm, and other places five or six hours from my mom.

We were trying to move home, and somehow we were already planning to live hours away from it.

The next day, Mom called.

Were we ever going to move back, she wanted to know? She’d been out on her daily walk, she said, and God had spoken to her: we could have her house. She was offering us the opportunity to buy the family home.

Within 24 hours of letting God know the WHEN, we had the WHERE.

The house my dad built. The one place we hadn’t thought to look.

The following week came the WHO: the pastors of a church we’d walked alongside for more than twenty years, who also happened to be Dave’s nephew and his wife. We had purposely not considered them, because we didn’t want even the appearance of nepotism.

But that was our rule, not God’s.

The answers about when and where we would go and who would take over came within days. The handover itself took over a year of behind-the-scenes preparation. In May 2022, two churches became one family in one of the most meaningful services I’ve ever been part of. We left surrounded by love, and watching the church continue to grow under its new pastors brings us great joy.

(I wrote about the handover at the time, if you’d like the fuller story.)

A different kind of life in BC

We moved west at the end of that summer. Our Ontario house sale closed two days before Mom’s 80th birthday.

We were home. We were also tired.

Dave had never had a sabbatical. The summer we spent caring for my dad was the longest time he’d been away from pastoring since he started at 21.

The house my dad built needed extensive restoration, and Dave spent the next two years fixing it up. Those years gave him a break from the responsibilities of leading a church, but they were full of work.

Moving didn’t make life easy. There was work to do, a home to restore, and a whole new life to find our way into. We also left people we loved, including our oldest son and his growing family.

I’m grateful we came. I still grieve what we left.

The church we now call home wasn’t even on our list when we moved to BC. Looking back, I believe God brought us here for such a time as this.

Dave returned to pastoral ministry in 2024, serving seniors, men’s ministry, and missions. It is so good to see him in his element again. He enjoys the work, and he enjoys the people he gets to do it with. It has brought so much friendship, encouragement, and laughter into this season of our lives.

I see it in him. He’s content. He’s at peace. We have room to breathe, and we’re enjoying it.

We also carry deep gratitude for the people who faithfully stood with us in Kitchener. They prayed, served, loved our family, and shared nearly thirty years of life and ministry with us. Those relationships remain a treasured part of our story.

And here we are, being welcomed and cared for by another church family. There is something beautiful about discovering that God still has people for you to meet, friendships to enjoy, and work you can love.

I’ve found meaningful work and community too, and Mom is happy we’re close. This is a good season. I’m learning to receive it without immediately looking for the next thing that needs me.

The view I’d seen before

And that old dream came back to me last summer.

We were driving home from a work camping trip near Boston Bar. We came around the corner towards Agassiz / Harrison Mills, and there it was in all its glory: the mountains, the fields, the streams. It reminded me of the view I’d seen in my dream, 15+ years ago, right in front of me.

I still don’t know whether the dream meant a physical retreat centre or something else. I don’t need to settle that to see what I overlooked.

When I pictured people finding rest, I always pictured us helping them.

I had left us out of the rest.

Perhaps there was room for us too.

Making room for us, too

I wish I could say I’ve become completely comfortable asking for prayer. I’m still learning.

Looking back, I can see how easily I confused being able to keep going with being okay. I could love my family, enjoy good moments, do meaningful work, and still need someone to sit with me in the harder things.

I didn’t have to wait until I couldn’t carry on before asking.

The peace we’re experiencing now doesn’t make those years less painful. I wouldn’t choose the losses or pretend they were easy because life is good today. Some things still hurt.

But I can see the difference care has made in us. I can see it in Dave’s face. I recognize it in my own willingness to enjoy this season.

I still want our home and our lives to be welcoming. I still want to encourage people, pray with them, and make room for them to recover.

I’m learning to make room for us, too.

It took me years to ask the right question about our move. I wonder what else I haven’t asked yet.

For now, I’m starting here: when I need prayer, I want to be willing to say so.

Is there something you’ve been helping everyone else with while quietly carrying it yourself? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.