When You Don't Know Who You Are, You Simply Do the Next Thing

There are moments in life that only make sense when you look back.

At the time, they simply feel confusing.

When I left boarding school and returned home, I felt as though I had stepped into someone else's life. I missed the friendships that had surrounded me every day and suddenly found myself trying to settle back into family life with parents who loved me deeply but didn't always understand me. My father was gentle but rarely spoke. My mother loved me fiercely and wanted the very best for me, but her way of expressing that love was often through guidance and direction. Looking back, I can see how much they cared. At the time, I only knew that I felt misunderstood.

As I entered my final years at school, everyone seemed to be asking the same question.

"What are you going to do with your life?"

I didn't have an answer that made sense.

There was only one thing that stirred something deep inside me.

I wanted to go to Bible College and become a missionary.

Even now, that makes me smile because it made absolutely no sense.

I hadn't grown up in church. Although my parents believed in God, faith wasn't woven into the rhythm of our family life. We didn't belong to a church community. I didn't have Christian friends. I didn't know what it meant to follow Jesus, and I certainly wasn't surrounded by people talking about ministry or missionary work.

Yet despite all of that, there was something inside me that refused to go away.

Looking back now, I believe God had already planted a seed in my heart. Alongside the many spiritual experiences that had confused me since childhood was another reality I couldn't explain. I wanted to know Him. I couldn't have explained why, and I certainly couldn't have defended it. I simply knew there had to be more than the life I could see.

My parents couldn't understand it, and I don't blame them. They wanted security for me, opportunity, a future they could feel confident about. Bible College wasn't part of the future they had imagined for their daughter. Their concerns came from love, not rejection.

The difficulty was that I didn't know how to express what was happening inside me. I had no language for longing. No confidence in my own instincts. No understanding that God sometimes places desires within us long before we recognise His voice.

So I did what many teenagers do.

I simply did the next thing.

I made friends. I dated. I smoked. I drank. I learned how to fit into the world around me because fitting in felt easier than trying to explain a longing I didn't understand myself.

Looking back now, I realise there is a difference between living intentionally and simply drifting wherever life takes you. One is rooted in conviction. The other is often rooted in uncertainty.

I don't look back on that young girl with disappointment.

I look back with compassion.

She wasn't trying to rebel against God.

She was trying to survive a life she didn't yet understand while carrying a longing she couldn't yet name.

One of the greatest lessons I've learned is that God often begins His work in us long before we recognise Him. Sometimes He places desires in our hearts years before we understand where they came from. What felt confusing to me as a teenager eventually became one of the clearest signs that He had never stopped pursuing me.

Standing on the Edge - A Fight For Freedom is the story of discovering that those longings weren't an accident. They were the beginning of a journey that would eventually lead me to the truth, although the road there was far more painful than I could ever have imagined.

I couldn’t put the book down as Kim’s words resonated deeply with experiences and accounts from friends who have shared their fear and shame, through their alcoholism, addictions and satanic ritual abuse and the power of the Holy Spirit and prayer to fight to be free.

—    Hazel