For a long time, I wasn’t aware of your existence. Now I look back and I can see the perpetual protection and guidance you’ve provided.

For a long time, I thought of you as an external force: something achieved only by those with special gifts or skills I viewed as unachievable.

For a long time I felt that if you did exist within, I must have lost track of you somehow. Without knowing how or when I lost track, the investigation kept me up at night as I worried about you the way one must worry about a missing family member: terrifying, with endless questions, unnamable guilt, heartbreak.

I see now all the ways you’ve guided me to people, places, and things that without you I would have missed. Once you led me to a rural healing ranch where I met a woman who worked with Angels. She described this kind of energy as an external force, yet within that conversation, you presented yourself to me as an undulating mandala of gold, purple, and pink light. It was unexpected. You surprised me, but it was a tender reunion. This is the moment I understood my misperception. We are eternally unified.

You saved my life once during the birth of my first child. My daughter barely made it into our world, an experience which left a mark on her psyche and mine. She appears to be just like me: tender, empathetic, people-pleasing. When I listen carefully, you show me how to lead her, to help her, to teach her to find her own version of you.

You saved my life again soon after her birth, when my new motherhood depression was so dense I believed it was my new permanent reality. Up for a late night feeding, I begged for help out loud to the silent room, then felt an energy of unconditional love, clear and pure, encompass me. I saw that my only choice going forward was to humbly and completely surrender. To choose a pressurized path of healing and transformation.

Once you showed up on a date with a friend’s older brother. Drunk and laughing at a house party, he suggested we leave and head to a nearby park. A secluded area. You gave me an excuse to go home. Reminded me that I could call my dad. I did call, and he picked me up without question or judgment, and took me to an all-night grocery where he bought us an ice cream. I made it home intact. I think you saved my life again that time.

I recognized you the night I met my husband and you reminded me that you had already introduced he and me twice before: once a few months earlier outside a common area on our college campus, and once much, much earlier when I was 5 years old – a projection of my future happy life with a man who looked, and felt, just like him.

You show up in subtle ways too. You whisper daily gems like “take a different route today,” or “don’t forget your raincoat.” Sometimes I am late in my recognition of your voice and find myself wet and annoyed about the rainstorm the meteorologist hadn’t mentioned. Or stuck in traffic, anxious that I’ll be late to my next important thing. Just this week you reminded me to pack my favorite hat and my phone charger. I spent my weekend away from home out of whack, having left behind two of my essential comforts.

All the time now I think I could go on and on telling countless stories about how you’ve nurtured my physicality. How many of my wrong turns, hard falls, missed connections were actually ecstatic blessings in disguise. I’ve learned to listen, feel, and look closer. To take life with acceptance and bravery. Acceptance and peace.

I want to learn as much about you as I can. To tell anyone who will listen about the funny things you do, what makes you happy, your hopes and dreams. I want everyone to know the love you have for me, to have a personal experience of divine connection, blissful revelation, and expanding mistakes. You are the hardest thing I have ever studied, and the most fulfilling love of my life. Stay with me always as I stumble. You be the night beacon, and I vow to always keep watch.