I was sitting in a church outside of Rennes, France when it happened.

My grandma was on one side of me. My mom was on the other. A translator’s voice flowed through an earpiece as a French pastor preached. I was there celebrating my grandma’s ninety-second birthday after surprising her with a visit. My French family had been in on the secret. It had already been an emotional trip.

For days, I had been listening to stories.

Stories about how my French family came to be.

Stories about faith.

Stories about love.

Stories about obedience.

Just a few days earlier, I had asked my uncle to tell me how he and my aunt fell in love. He told me how he first noticed her at a Bible study hosted by my grandparents. He told me how he fell for her before he ever took her on a date. Unsure what to do, he sought advice from my grandpa without mentioning that the young woman consuming his thoughts happened to be his daughter.

My grandpa told him to write her a letter.

So he did.

Today they have six children and nineteen grandchildren.

Entire branches of a family tree grew from one young man writing a letter.

I was also thinking about my grandpa.

The last time I saw him before he died, he told me the story of how he became a missionary.

He had been a pastor in Oklahoma with five children and a comfortable life. He loved missionaries. Invited them to speak at his church. Encouraged people to support them. Then one day, while attending a missions conference, someone suggested that perhaps he should become a missionary himself.

The idea seemed absurd.

He was nearly forty years old. He had a wife and five children. His life was already established.

But on the drive home he passed fields ready for harvest and remembered the verse:

“The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.”

When he arrived home, he shared what was stirring in his heart with my grandma.

To his surprise, the same thing had been stirring in hers.

They began taking prayer walks together every morning.

Eventually they resigned from their church, sold everything they had, traveled around the country raising support, and prepared to leave for India.

Their visas were denied.

Then denied again.

Then denied a third time.

People told him to give up.

To go back to pastoring.

Instead, he told the mission board:

“Send me wherever there’s a need.”

The need was France.

So my grandparents boarded a ship with five children and crossed an ocean.

As I sat in that church decades later, I found myself thinking about ripple effects.

I thought about my grandparents.

I thought about my uncle writing a letter.

I thought about the countless lives touched because one person responded to what they believed God was asking them to do.

And then something happened.

As I looked around the room, I no longer saw people sitting in chairs.

Instead, I saw candles.

One candle was lit.

Then that candle lit another.

Then both of those candles lit another.

And another.

And another.

The light spread quietly across the room until every candle was burning.

Every candle lit.

Every candle carrying the same flame.

I wasn’t thinking about platforms or influence.

I was thinking about generations.

I was thinking about how one act of courage can become another person’s opportunity.

How one life can illuminate another.

And another.

And another.

There are people who literally would not exist had my grandparents not responded to what they believed God was asking them to do.

Entire families.

Entire stories.

Entire legacies.

And sitting there in that church, feeling tender and connected to something larger than myself, a message cut through everything else.

Purify your life so I can use you.

I knew immediately what it meant.

And I was terrified.

Not because I disagreed.

Because I understood.

There was someone waiting for me at home.

A man I loved deeply.

A man who had awakened parts of me I thought had gone dormant.

A man with whom I shared the most profound physical and emotional connection I had ever experienced.

And if I’m going to tell this story honestly, I need to tell all of it honestly.

For much of my life, my sexuality had been a source of confusion and pain.

My first husband struggled with a secret addiction to pornography and rejected me regularly.

My second husband eventually revealed that there was another man.

Twice I had committed my life to someone.

Twice I had watched that life unravel.

Then came the man who was supposed to be nothing more than a rebound.

Instead, he became one of the great loves of my life.

Our relationship was messy from the beginning.

Complicated.

Imperfect.

At times deeply unhealthy.

But it was also incredibly alive.

One day, while we were together, one of my employees watched him leave the market and then looked at me with wide eyes.

“Is something going on between you two?” she asked.

I tried to play dumb.

She laughed.

“I could feel the heat from over here.”

She wasn’t wrong.

I’ve spent years trying to find language for what existed between us.

Chemistry feels too small.

Attraction feels too shallow.

What happened between us touched every part of me.

Body.

Mind.

Soul.

I often described our lovemaking as a soul’s kiss.

There were moments when it felt as though our very beings merged together.

As though we were connected emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually all at once.

The sex was extraordinary.

But it wasn’t just the sex.

It was the affection.

The kisses.

The way we sat together on the couch.

The way we rode around together.

The attunement.

The sense of being fully met.

I used to joke that if we could bottle what we had and sell it, we’d be billionaires.

What happened between us felt primal and tender at the same time.

Wild and safe.

Feral and intimate.

And when I received that message in France, I immediately knew what it would require of me.

Not because sex was bad.

Not because desire was bad.

But because I felt deeply convicted that I could not continue living in conflict with what I believed God was asking of me.

I talked with my cousin Laura first.

Then my aunt and uncle.

None of them judged me.

None of them shamed me.

They simply listened.

When I returned home, reality arrived.

And that’s when I started arguing with God.

“Are you saying I need to get married for a third time or never have sex again?”

I was genuinely indignant.

“Do you know me, God? Do you KNOW me?”

The response came immediately.

Almost with a gentle laugh.

Honey, I created you.

Touché, God.

Touché.

He wasn’t misunderstanding me.

He knew exactly who He was talking to.

He knew my desires.

He knew my hopes.

He knew my longing.

He knew how much I loved this man.

He knew how difficult this would be.

And still, the message remained.

The next day I tried to ignore it.

I went grocery shopping.

Planned a steak dinner.

Ran errands.

Tried to convince myself I could somehow avoid the conversation.

Meanwhile the message played on repeat.

Purify your life so I can use you.

Over and over and over again.

That evening he came home joking about wrestling.

I tried to deflect.

Instead, I found myself sitting in his lap with tears streaming down my face.

Everything spilled out.

The message.

The fear.

The confusion.

The impossibility of what I felt I was being asked to do.

I told him I didn’t know how we could continue without sex.

I told him I didn’t know how I could be strong enough.

I told him I was scared.

The best way I’ve ever been able to describe that moment is this:

I felt like Abraham standing on a mountain with Isaac.

Not because the relationship was perfect.

Not because the man was perfect.

But because he represented something precious.

Something I had waited for.

Something I didn’t want to lose.

And lose it I did.

That night he slept in the guest room.

The next morning he asked if I wanted him to leave.

I said no.

I wanted to talk.

I wanted to find another way.

After he left for work, I saw trash bags filled with clothes by the door.

That evening he moved out.

And just like that, he was gone.

I was devastated.

For a long time, I believed his leaving confirmed my deepest fear.

That my desirability was the most valuable thing about me.

That if sex was removed from the equation, I wasn’t worth staying for.

Looking back, I don’t believe that’s what he was saying.

But it is what I heard.

And it nearly broke me.

Then came the road trip.

The sleepless nights.

The grief.

The healing.

The wrestling.

The questions.

And somewhere along the way, another image arrived.

I saw my heart inside a cage.

The strange thing was that the cage wasn’t ugly.

It was beautiful.

Perfectly shaped to my heart.

Every curve matched.

Every contour fit.

It fit so perfectly that I hadn’t realized it was a cage at all.

Then the lock released.

The cage opened.

And it fell away.

My heart remained.

Free.

No longer constricted.

No longer confined.

Able to grow.

At the time, I didn’t fully understand what I was seeing.

Now I think I do.

The relationship that felt like everything had also become something that restricted me.

He was jealous.

Possessive.

Protective in ways that often felt confining.

While I was in France, he became angry because I couldn’t answer his calls while I was sitting at dinner with family members I rarely saw.

The cage wasn’t just about the relationship.

It was about the shrinking of my world.

And when it fell away, my heart didn’t die.

It expanded.

There was room for more people.

More purpose.

More connection.

More life.

For a long time, I thought the message in France was about sex.

Now I think it was about something deeper.

I think it was about integrity.

I think it was about freedom.

I think it was about becoming fully myself.

The years that followed weren’t easy.

There were breakdowns.

There were seasons where the tiger inside me seemed buried beneath exhaustion, fear, grief, and survival.

There were moments when I wondered if I would always be alone.

There were moments when hope felt impossibly far away.

But there were other moments too.

Moments when God kept placing stories in front of me.

Sarah.

Rebekah.

Hannah.

Elizabeth.

Women who were old.

Women who were infertile.

Women who became mothers against all odds.

Finally I remember saying:

“God, quit putting these stories in front of me.”

And yet they kept appearing.

On that road trip, I finally stopped arguing with the knowing that had been quietly growing inside me.

The knowing that I was meant to have a child of my own.

When I returned home, the name Samuel Isaac came to me twice.

I wrote it on a Post-it note and placed it on my office window beside another name.

Christina Lea.

The child I had lost.

Months later, someone asked me whether I had children.

I replied:

“I lost one several years ago. I just told God that if He’d bring me a man I could trust enough to marry, I wouldn’t get in the way of a child being created.”

Six months later I was still single.

And my hope was beginning to fade.

Then another name came.

Hannah Ruth.

So I wrote that one down too.

Those names still represent hope.

Not certainty.

Not entitlement.

Hope.

Even now, I pray for my future husband.

I pray for my property.

I pray that this land will remain in my family and bless generations long after I am gone.

And I pray for my future children.

If one day I discover that biological motherhood is no longer possible, I will grieve honestly.

But until that day arrives, I remain quietly hopeful.

Not because I believe God owes me anything.

Because I have learned not to bury living things.

Over the years, I have also watched another thing evolve.

A list.

After my first divorce, I wrote a list called “My Mr. Right.”

It was simple.

• Responsible
• Intelligent
• Affectionate
• Trustworthy
• Respectful

Then life happened.

Heartbreak happened.

After that relationship ended, I added things I was finally brave enough to admit I wanted.

• Sensual
• Masculine
• Treats me like a treasure
• Open to trying for a baby

In the margin I wrote:

“Is that crazy? But it is a desire of my heart.”

The list kept evolving.

Eventually I added things like:

• Loves God
• Supportive of my sobriety
• Willing to wait
• Secure enough to let me be me

For years I thought I was writing a description of a future husband.

Now I think I was documenting my own growth.

Because I have worked hard to become many of those things myself.

And perhaps that’s the lesson hidden inside all of this.

There is something I want young women to know.

Your desires are not shameful.

Your longing is not shameful.

Your sensuality is not shameful.

The life force inside you is not something to suppress or fear.

I spent years believing I was somehow too much.

Too emotional.

Too intense.

Too sensual.

Too hopeful.

Too hungry for love.

Too hungry for connection.

Now I wonder if perhaps those things were never the problem.

Maybe the lesson was never to become less.

Maybe the lesson was to stop abandoning myself.

Because real love doesn’t require me to abandon myself.

Not my convictions.

Not my faith.

Not my dreams.

Not my integrity.

Not my freedom.

Not my relationship with God.

Real love is willing to wait.

And if the man I have prayed for is out there somewhere, searching for treasure hidden in a field, I hope he finds me.

And if together we get to welcome a child or two into this story, that would be lovely.

But whether that dream comes true or not, I know something now that I didn’t know sitting in that church in France.

I know that my worth was never tied to my desirability.

I know that my longing is not my enemy.

I know that my hope is not foolish.

And I know that God was never asking me to become less alive.

He was inviting me to become more fully myself.

Which is why I still smile when I remember arguing with Him.

“Do you know me, God? Do you KNOW me?”

And with what felt like a gentle laugh, He replied:

“Honey, I created you.”