The Place I Said I’d Never Go Back To
There was a time in my life when I said I would never go back.
Not casually. Not jokingly.
I meant it.
I had made up my mind that whatever God had for me, it wouldn’t be there. That chapter was closed. That place belonged to a different version of me—a younger version, a different season, a different life.
And I was done with it.
Life has a way of moving forward.
The Army took me places I never expected to go. Ministry brought me into spaces I never planned to be. Over time, distance has a way of convincing you that what’s behind you is finished.
That you’ve moved on.
That you’ve outgrown it.
That God has too.
But God doesn’t always work in straight lines.
Sometimes He circles back.
Not because He ran out of ideas.
Not because He changed His mind.
But because we’re not the same person we were when we left.
Lately, I’ve been facing something I never thought I would.
A return.
Not just a visit. Not just passing through.
A calling back to the very place I once said I would never go again.
If I’m honest, that kind of transition doesn’t feel exciting at first.
It feels uncomfortable.
It raises questions I didn’t expect to ask again:
Why here?
Why now?
Didn’t we already move on from this?
There’s a part of me that wants to argue with it. To remind God of the plans I had made. The direction I thought I was going.
But calling doesn’t always ask for your agreement.
It asks for your obedience.
Looking back, I realize something I didn’t see before.
When I said I would never go back, I wasn’t just talking about a place.
I was talking about memories.
About difficulty.
About things I didn’t want to revisit.
Sometimes “never again” isn’t about geography.
It’s about protection.
But God doesn’t just send us back to places.
He sends us back as different people.
What once felt like something to escape can become something to step into—with clarity, with purpose, and with a perspective you didn’t have the first time.
The truth is, I’m not going back to the same place.
Because I’m not the same person.
The years in the Army shaped me.
The years in ministry changed me.
The people I’ve walked with, the nights I didn’t plan for, the lessons I didn’t expect—those all come with me now.
So even if the location looks familiar, the mission is not.
Transitions like this are rarely clean.
They stretch you.
They expose the places where your plans were more rigid than your faith.
They remind you that following God isn’t about moving forward in a straight line—it’s about moving wherever He leads.
Even if that means turning around.
I don’t have every detail figured out yet.
But I know this:
If God is calling me back, then there’s something there that wasn’t finished.
Not because He forgot.
But because I wasn’t ready yet.
Sometimes the place you swore you’d never return to…
is exactly where God calls you next.
Scripture
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight.”
— Proverbs 3:5–6
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