How Do You Know What God Wants?

The moment I realized my devotion was my hiding place.

Today’s piece is about the moment I stopped hiding behind devotion and started trusting myself. About the friend who asked the question I couldn’t unhear. About the cost of finally taking the helm of my own life.

This is the kind of essay that finds its readers slowly, person by person. If it lands for you, would you help it travel? A like, a comment, a restack - whatever feels right. Let’s get this in front of the people who need permission to stop waiting for permission.

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“How do you know what God wants?”

My friend Karan’s question hung in the air between us. I stopped breathing. Had I just committed sacrilege? Did I think myself equal to God?

Who did I think I was?

I felt the floor drop out. I’d been speaking for God—claiming to know His will—for twenty years. The humility I thought I’d been practicing was actually the ultimate arrogance.

It was this moment when everything changed.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. 

Earlier in the day, I’d left the Emergency Room crestfallen. The doctors couldn’t locate the source of my abdominal pain, and let me go home with the words, “We can’t find anything wrong.”

Because the problem wasn’t in my body, it was in my life.

I called my friend Karan to see what she thought.

She knew about the pain, but also that there was a lot more going on besides the physical symptoms. I was in the midst of a crisis—a full-blown nervous breakdown. I couldn’t sleep or eat, and I had lost 20 pounds over a couple of months.

She’d been the only friend I’d confided in. I hadn’t planned on telling anyone, but she was the only one to notice how unhinged I’d become. But instead of sympathy for my trip to the ER, she said,

“This is crazy. You have to decide.”

She’d been pressuring me to figure out whether to leave my husband. Each time, I found the idea preposterous and bristled whenever she brought it up. What decision was she even asking?

She and I had met in a Catholic Ministry lay program for adults, where we had taken a three-year-long deep dive into our faith. Karan knew I took my religion seriously. I was a Eucharistic Minister and a religious education teacher for adults wanting to convert. I’d organized a Catholic women’s retreat for over 200 women for two years in a row. I was Mrs. Catholic, whom she was asking to consider leaving her marriage.

I liked it there in my ivory tower. I knew more about the faith than most in the pew because I had studied. I committed myself to hyper-religiosity long ago, after realizing I had made bad decisions. I knew I was with the wrong man early on in the marriage. My husband and I didn’t have a flourishing, loving relationship, so I let the Church decide everything else.

Karan knew about the quandary I’d manufactured for myself by sending a LinkedIn message to an old boyfriend. We last saw each other over 20 years ago, but this old boyfriend hadn’t floated easily into the current with the other old flames.

This time I hoped to end her repeated question.

“There is no decision to be made,” I insisted. “I don’t think God would want me to break up my family.”

“How do you know what God wants?” Karan asked.

A couple of months earlier, my daughters had been raving about stories they’d been reading about teenage vampires. Not really my cup of tea, but I picked up the first book to share in my daughters’ excitement.

After devouring all three of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight books back-to-back, old memories of a youthful romance surfaced. Little did I know Meyer’s words would unleash a deluge of emotions that were not easily pressed back down. The Twilight books had reminded me I was still capable of those feelings-just not for my husband.

With Larry now haunting my mind, I decided to reach out. It was 2009, and the internet had become the place for rekindling old relationships. I found him easily on LinkedIn. At first, I tried to talk myself out of sending him a message, mostly because I was scared. I didn’t know what I was scared of, but I was so worn down from feeling afraid all the time. When I turned 40, I had made a conscious decision that this would be the decade to face my fears. Now six years later, I knew I had to hit the send button.

Our first exchange was polite, with me stating I was happily married with three kids. Of course, it wasn’t true, but I wasn’t admitting that to anyone at the time, especially myself. But then Larry unburdened himself, saying he’d never married and that I was the one he should have married.

His words flattened me like a freight train, his words a confirmation of what I’d repressed all these years. He was the one I had always wanted to marry. He’d not met my “boyfriend” expectations when we were in college. We both had a lot of growing up to do, and after our split, he was the one I could never displace from my heart.

How do you know what God wants?

That question unmoored me from the person I thought I was. Hanging up, I never answered her question. I didn’t know what God wanted, except maybe he wanted me to have joy again. To live fully. To know myself. To love myself.

My carefully curated snow globe world was in freefall, shattering everything I believed about myself. Who was I without my husband, my parents, my Church, my community?

Was I brave enough to find out? Was I willing to pay the price?

I was. And I did.

I left.

Instantly, I lost my parents’ support, many friends, and the Church. I had the enormous task of rebuilding trust with my kids. It took years to stop second-guessing every choice, to learn that trusting myself didn’t mean I’d never make mistakes again - it meant I’d own them.

At age 46, I became the director of my life. I was taking the helm and not looking back.

I’m not suggesting you blow up your life.

I’m asking: Are you living it? Or are you waiting for permission that will never come?