THE LONG WAY HOME

Let me paint you a picture because I don't think I fully understood it until years later. I was seven months pregnant, waking up at six every morning while it was still dark, walking to Heathfield Station to catch a train to Kenilworth and then walking from the station to Rosmead Avenue where I worked at Medicross.

Every morning. Monday to Friday. By then I was carrying more than just a baby. I was carrying uncertainty, responsibility, fear and the quiet determination that somehow we were going to be okay. I never stopped to think about whether I had the strength for it. I simply got up, got dressed and walked, because sometimes life doesn't give you the luxury of asking how you feel. It simply asks you to keep moving.

When my shift ended at one or two in the afternoon, I would make the same journey all the way back home. By the time I reached the house, I had nothing left to give anyone. Without saying much, I would walk straight to my parents room, find the warm patch of sunlight that stretched across their bed and lie down in it. I can still see it. That little square of afternoon sun became my place of rest before I even knew I needed one.

Looking back now, I don't remember feeling brave. I remember feeling tired. It settled into my bones until I no longer noticed I was carrying it because it has simply become part of who I was. The funny thing about life is that we only recognise those significant moments when we're standing on the other side of them. At the time, I wasn't thinking that God was preparing me.

I wasn't thinking that one day these ordinary walks would become part of my story. I wasn't looking for lessons. I was just trying to get through another day but God has a way of doing His deepest work in the places that feel the most ordinary. While I thought I was simply walking to work, He was teaching me endurance. While I thought I was just surviving another day, He was quietly building a woman who would one day need to know that even when the road feels long, you keep putting one foot in front of the other because He never asks you to walk it alone.

Isn't that the mystery of grace? We spend so much of our lives asking God to show us what He's doing, only to understand years later that He was there in the train rides, the dark mornings, the lonely walks and the patch of sunlight on my parent's bed.

He was there long before I knew how to recognise Him.