We met in a church neither of us belonged to-and neither of us stayed. If you had looked at the map of our lives in 2021, that building would have seemed like a temporary stop — a passing through. A brief overlap. Not a destination.
But sometimes the Lord doesn’t bring you somewhere to join it.
Sometimes He brings you somewhere to encounter someone. We met in the spaces in between.
In between churches.In between versions of ourselves.
In between heartbreak and healing.In between who we had been and who we were becoming.
And somehow, in a place neither of us would call home, we found each other. Travel has taught me that the most meaningful moments rarely make it onto an itinerary.
They happen in conversations.
Shared meals. Wrong turns. The pauses between the big things.
Abby is one of those pauses. She began pouring into my life before she knew how deeply our stories would intertwine. She began supporting Whispers of Hope not out of obligation, but belief. She prayed for my family before she knew how fiercely she would come to love us. She has seen the deep, dark, unpolished parts of my story — and she has never once stepped back.
There is something sacred about being fully known and fully loved anyway.
She loves me the way she cooks — intentionally, generously, without measuring. In loaves of sourdough on ordinary days. In homemade vanilla. In German pancakes made from scratch. In groceries delivered to my door when COVID kept me in bed.
She has loved me through her kitchen more times than I can count. And in those meals, in those small gestures, I’ve learned something about the long way. The long way looks like showing up.
The long way looks like staying.
The long way looks like celebrating every win like it’s your own and mourning every loss as if it were shared — because it is. We now sit side by side behind microphones for Whispers of Hope, but long before she was my cohost, she was my whisper of hope. She has celebrated every breakthrough. She has carried every ache. She has prayed when I was too tired to find the words.
Travel for meaning, not miles. If that is true for the roads we choose, it is even more true for the people we are given.
Abby is not a destination I planned.
She is a sacred wrong turn. A divine reroute.
A reminder that the richest parts of life happen in the spaces in between. Some journeys are measured in miles. The best ones are measured in faithfulness. And if I have learned anything on this long way thru — it is that the holiest ground is often not a place at all.
It’s a friendship.
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