The Miracle of Being Discovered

I’ve always had this feeling that someday I would be discovered, like I was a secret the world hadn’t yet found. I have a hidden universe inside of myself that no one else could see. And then yesterday, I found myself living inside a scene that could rival any postcard.

I woke up in a gorgeous home perched high on a mountain with a view of Pikes Peak that took my breath away. Hummingbirds flitting through the air like winged punctuation marks. And coffee, warm in my hands, shared with four of my closest friends. At one point the conversation shifted naturally, and the topic became… me. They began speaking about who I am. What my friendship has meant to them. What my writing has stirred in their souls.

One of them told a story about how he crafted an entire morning adventure just to land somewhere beautiful, sit with my book, and read it in a beautiful place over coffee. He said something I wrote about my childhood helped him make sense of his own. And the others joined in. Sharing which words had imprinted on them. Which moments stayed. Which phrases changed them.

I was filled to the brim, to tears, with a sense of being fully, completely, lovingly discovered. Not for what I look like. Not for what I own or offer. But for who I am. For the part of me I always prayed someone would find.

And while all of this was unfolding, across the ocean, my friend in Great Britain sent me a message. An errant sunflower seed had made its way into her backyard planter. And now, a bright sunflower was blooming outside her window. She named it “Jennifer.” She said she feels me smiling into her day through that bloom, my own personal brand of sunshine warming her from afar.

How do you hold all that grace in one morning?

How do you stay human when so much divinity is being delivered to your doorstep?

I’ve never felt more alive, or more loved, or more aware of the miracle I’ve been living inside. This is what it means to be told how much you matter while you’re still here to hear it. This is what it means to let yourself be loved in the present tense.

And of course, every rose has its thorn. There are people I once begged to see me. There are people that I have wanted to love me, people that “should have” loved me that will never will never know who I truly am.

And I also have the bittersweet knowing that some people will cross over before anyone ever gathers to say what they meant to others, and before they ever hear how they were loved.

So if this morning gave me anything, it’s this: Love loud. Love now. Tell them. Tell them if they changed your life. Tell them while they’re still around to be changed by it.

When I arrived at my best friend’s home, he had yellow flowers in every room because they’re my favorite. I am being given flowers while I am wildly alive to smell them. That’s the real miracle. That’s the amazing grace I want to name.

Love is not a feeling. It’s a force. A generative, resurrectional force that brings people back to life. My people have loved me back to writing. Back to wonder. Back to mornings that feel like postcards.

And the secret to being discovered?

It’s not what you produce. Or how loudly you shout. It’s whether you can actually receive it when the moment comes. Whether you can recognize it as the answered prayer it is and let it wash over you without turning away. The truth is, I was never lost. I was just waiting for the version of me that could hold this much love without flinching.

And now she’s here drinking coffee on mountaintops, smiling through sunflowers, and letting herself be loved so fully, and so completely, that the rest of her story will be written in a brighter colored ink. It turns out, being discovered isn’t about being seen by the world. It’s about becoming lucid inside your own miracle, while you’re still alive enough to feel every precious drop of it. I wish this moment for every single one of us, to be fully awake in our own story, and so wildly loved that even the darkest parts of us begin to glow.