Sometimes God meets us in the most unexpected places, through people we didn't know we needed.
I've been thinking about a stranger named Beryl.
A woman who, through what appeared to be a random connection, a simple exchange and a willingness to sit and hear what was on my heart, became part of a moment I haven't forgotten. I can't help but think about the timing. And I can't help but believe God was in that encounter.
Today has been rough, for entirely different reasons. And somewhere in the heaviness of it all, I found myself thinking, where is that Beryl who soothed my storm before? Then, as I was scrolling through Instagram, there was a man I don't follow. I don't even know why he appeared on my screen. But it wasn't the man who caught my attention.
It was the image behind him.
The very same image I had noticed on the book tucked beneath Beryl's arm when we first met and almost instantly,
I felt that familiar response within my body.
Let me go back a little.
A small image, a doorway and a stranger
When I first met Beryl, I didn't know what the book she was carrying was about. I didn't know the author or even the title.
What caught my attention was a small image on the cover, barely visible beneath her arm. I knew it was a Christian book, but it wasn't the words that drew me in.
Something in me wanted to connect.
So I simply said, "Oh, your book looks nice." It was an opening. A small one.
But what I find fascinating is that my body seemed to recognise something before my mind had any information to work with. Living with aphantasia has made me curious about these things.
When you don't have mental imagery in the way others do, you can become more aware of other ways you recognise, connect and respond.
Sometimes there is a knowing that doesn't arrive through words or mental pictures. A signal, a sense, something that draws your attention before you understand why.
For me, that little image was enough.
This woman is Christian.
Now, some Christians might describe that as hearing the voice of God, others might talk about intuition, the nervous system recognising familiar cues, or even the similar frequency or energy of two women who share a love for their faith. I find myself curious about all of it.
But I also believe God meets us through the very bodies and lives we inhabit and the timing of this particular encounter was something else.
I had just finished typing a message to a pastor about some concerns that had been weighing on my heart. I hadn't sent it yet. I was going to let Matt read it first. There I was, carrying all these thoughts, when a woman appeared in the little doorway of the café.
She had only stepped inside to get out of the cold and have a look.
No appointment. No introduction. No reason for either of us to expect a conversation.
Yet somehow, there we were.
When a stranger understands what others cannot
As we began talking, I found myself sharing things I hadn't expected to share. I told Beryl that I didn't believe our meeting was by chance, particularly given what I had been carrying that day. I listened to her own faith journey, there were these beautiful threads of familiarity.
She shared how, after years of watching her live out her faith, her husband had finally begun his own journey. She spoke about how COVID had brought changes to her place of worship, following a season of emptiness.
And I understood that.
Because COVID was also a turning point in my own faith. A time when I had reached a place of emptiness, where so much of what I had known and practised no longer felt like the faith I was yearning for.
It was a season of letting go.
Letting go of what I thought faith was supposed to look like. Letting go of the structures and expectations I had carried for so long and, in many ways, finally letting God in.
Not through doing more, knowing more or proving more.
But through allowing myself to encounter Him beyond all of that.
If you've read some of my previous blogs, you'll know I come from a background of conservative, organised religion and not simply a mainstream denomination that most people would recognise. I'm talking about a religious community that many people have never heard of, let alone understand.
When I mention it, the usual response is, "What's that?"
I smile as I write that.
Because I'm sure, for many who belong to such communities, that question is welcomed. After all, it becomes an opportunity to explain what you believe.
But explaining a religion and sharing your personal encounter with Christ are not necessarily the same thing.
And leaving such a community isn't always as simple as deciding to attend another church.
There are relationships, family histories, deeply embedded beliefs, loyalties, fears and questions about who you are outside everything you've ever known. There can be an enormous conflict within and sometimes, unless someone has experienced that world, it's incredibly difficult to explain why leaving can be so significant.
But Beryl understood.
Her father had once belonged to that same religion. Now, that might not sound extraordinary to someone reading this.
But when you've come from a relatively closed religious community, where most people have never even heard of it, meeting someone who already understands is quite somethingalmost instinctively, I found myself asking, "Oh, what's his surname? Who is he related to?"
Because that's what happens in these communities.
You start connecting families, surnames, generations.
You know someone who knows someone and suddenly this stranger wasn't quite so unfamiliar. But it wasn't simply the connection to my past that mattered. It was that she understood something about the weight of it.
I didn't have to spend the conversation explaining why it was complicated, why leaving could be painful, or why finding your own relationship with Christ after years of organised religious practice can be both beautiful and confronting.
She understood.
And sometimes, being understood is enough to allow something within us to settle.
Sometimes we don't need someone to fix the storm
I've thought a lot about that conversation since.
Beryl didn't come into the café knowing what I was carrying. She didn't arrive with answers or solutions.
She simply took the time to listen.
To share.
To be present.
Somehow, in that little exchange, the storm I had been carrying felt a little quieter. It's something I come back to often in the work I do.
We can spend so much time trying to find the right words, the right answers, the right way to resolve what we're feeling.
Yet sometimes what reaches us most deeply isn't advice at all.
It's the experience of being heard, without having to defend or explain every part of our story.
Of someone sitting with us long enough for our body to recognise that, in this moment, we are not carrying it entirely alone.
And perhaps that's why I've been thinking about Beryl today. Because today I could have done with another one of those conversations.
And then there was that image again
Which brings me back to Instagram.
There it was, the image that had started our conversation and what struck me wasn't simply that I recognised it.
It was the timing.
On a day when I found myself longing for that same comfort and understanding, something so small had brought me back to that encounter.
I find that fascinating. Was it simply recognition? Was my body responding to something it had remembered? Was it coincidence?
Or was God reminding me of something I needed to remember today?
I don't know that I need to have an answer. But I do know how I felt when I saw it.
The book, I later discovered, was Into the Quiet: Following Jesus in a World of Noise, the new book by John Mark Comer.
Isn't that interesting?
Because so much of my own journey has been about learning what it means to follow Jesus beyond the noise of expectations, organised religion and all the things we are told we should be doing.
To discover what it means to simply be with Him.
To know Him, rather than only know about Him.
It's also one of the reasons I went on to study to become a meditation instructor.
Not to teach Christian women another thing they should be doing, another practice to get right, or another expectation to meet.
But to help create space for women to become still enough to encounter God's presence within. To move beyond what we've been taught to believe we should experience, and become curious about what it means to simply be present with Him.
Because for so many of us, particularly women who have spent years carrying expectations, responsibilities and the weight of doing, even being still can feel unfamiliar and perhaps that's part of the journey too.
Learning that we don't always have to strive to draw closer to God.
Sometimes we can simply allow ourselves to be with Him.
I haven't read the book yet.
But I want to, perhaps there's something quite beautiful in that title alone, Into the Quiet - because that's exactly what Beryl offered me that day.
Not answers. Not solutions.
Just a moment of quiet in the middle of my storm.
To Beryl
I don't know whether I'll ever cross paths with Beryl again but I'd really like to.
She told me about a connect group here in Seppeltsfield, where people come from all over to gather.
I'd love to learn more about it.
But more than that, I'd love to sit with her again. To hear more of her story, understand more of her own journey with Christ, and thank her.
For her kindness, her words and for taking the time to listen to a woman she had never met, who happened to be carrying more than she could see.
I don't know whether Beryl realised what that conversation meant to me.
Perhaps to her it was simply a lovely exchange with someone in a café.
But to me, it was something more.
I know some people would call it coincidence. Others might call it intuition, a meaningful connection or simply two women finding common ground.
I don't feel the need to dismiss any of those possibilities, but I do believe God was present in that moment.
Not because something extraordinary happened.
But perhaps because something so ordinary happened at exactly the right time.
A woman stepped through a doorway to escape the cold.
And somehow brought warmth to someone else's day.
Maybe that is what an angel really is.
Not always something we recognise as extraordinary. Sometimes just a stranger who stops long enough to listen.
So, to Beryl, wherever you are, thank you.
You may never know what that small encounter meant.
But I do.
Perhaps that is one of the most beautiful things about the way God works through people.
We don't always know whose prayers, whose storms or whose moments of need we are walking into. Sometimes we are simply stepping out of the cold.
And perhaps, without even knowing it, we become part of someone else's answer.
