DAY 4 — The Longing That Called You Forward Before you had a plan… before you had a dream… what deep longing stirred you into motion?
For a long time, I told people I didn’t have dreams.
And I didn’t.
Not because I was hopeless —
but because I was just so damn grateful to still be breathing.
After all I had been through, simply waking up felt like enough.
Some days, that was everything.
Survival was sacred.
But it, by itself, wasn’t sustainable.
Gratitude without movement eventually calcifies—
it becomes rituals that try to repay the miracle
while sidestepping the risk of hope.
Something inside me groaned—
a low, ancient, and undeniable recognition—
when I first saw a trailer for the film Into the Wild.
It wasn’t intellectual. It was cellular.
It was a tug I couldn’t explain,
like something old and true was waking up from a long sleep
brought on by decades of detachment and numbness.
Overcome with anticipation, I found it in theaters as quickly as possible.
As the story unfolded, I felt it in my bones—like I knew this character—I knew Alex.
His longing to disappear, to test himself, to prove his worth apart from the systems that shaped him—it hit me like a mirror.
Not the clean kind—
The kind you find cracked and buried in a locked chest,
in the back room of a forgotten attic at the edge of the world.
As the film ends, Alex dies, and I wept.
It was a deep, guttural cry — the kind that comes from the depths of human existence.
I wasn’t crying just for him though —
It was also for the part of me that ached to be alive—
And finally knew: I had to go.
I didn’t know where.
I didn’t have a dream.
But I did have fire.
Something in me needed to be tested.
To be emptied.
To be redefined.
To be set free
in the wild.
I didn’t know it yet, but that moment planted the seed:
Paris.
Departure.
The long unraveling of everything I thought I needed to survive.
And now — years later — when I look back on that season with more clarity and less romanticism, I realize the part that speaks to me even louder now:
The wild was never meant to be endured alone.
It was the story being shared that made it sacred.
Moments don’t just grow when shared—
They take root.
They live longer and wider
in community.
I used to think the longing was about escape.
Now I see it was about connection.
Even then, I wasn’t trying to disappear.
I was trying to be found—
not by a crowd,
not by a cause,
and not by God.
He already had me.
I was trying to find the me He saw.
It wasn’t rebellion.
It wasn’t even escape.
It was grace pulling me into the wild—
not to prove I was worthy,
but to show me I already was.
This post is part 4 of 7 of The Voice Between the Lines —
a 7-day return to your Sacred Story.
You can start at Day 1 or jump in wherever the whisper finds you.
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I wasn’t really clear on what my calling was when I was growing up. I think I chased the desire of being wanted (meaning wanting my dad to chose me over his affair) and being financially stable because of that lack I had growing up.
I think I needed more challenge which lead to deeper meaning, and I found that as an adult. I’m still finding it. Still learning what I want to be when I grow up.
I have found so much love and meaning in my challenge. But still searching for clarity on how to make it more impactful. Turning my mess into my message as it were.