The road we never planned

We had imagined beginning our life together with plans for marriage, a home, and a family. Instead, we found ourselves trying to decide where we could go to be safe.

It was 2012. Opposition to our relationship had grown into pressure and threats, and our hope of settling peacefully into a life together was slipping away. We had applied to register our marriage, believing that we could follow the proper process and build our future. Now we feared what might happen if we stayed.

We looked for help. We approached the authorities and hoped the legal system would offer protection. We wanted someone to listen, understand our situation, and help us live without fear. We kept believing that there must be a person who could put things right.

But the protection we sought did not come when we needed it. Eventually, we felt we had no safe choice except to leave.

We took the bare minimum: a few clothes, a small amount of money, and what we could carry. We had our car, but we had no secure place waiting for us and no one who could promise to keep us safe. The money was our own, and we had to make it last. No one was financing our journey.

Even then, we hoped our departure would be temporary. Perhaps we could reach somewhere safe, find help, and return to the life we had been planning. We still wanted those dreams. Leaving did not mean that we had stopped wanting them.

The route we followed would take us close to a thousand kilometres in all, across a state border and through unfamiliar towns. We could measure the distance we travelled, but we could not measure how far we were from feeling safe.

Travelling in 2012 was different from the experience many people know today. Google Maps was not something we routinely depended on for every journey. More importantly, we had given up access to the devices that might have helped us. Because we feared being traced through them, we discarded our phones and other gadgets.

That decision left us without a working phone to call for help or a map on a screen to guide us. On an unfamiliar road, we had to depend on whatever directions we could find and whoever might be willing to stop.

We were together, but we felt terribly alone in trying to work out what to do next.

Looking back, we believe God was with us through every part of those days. At the time, we could not see how the journey would unfold. We were frightened, tired, and still searching for a way to make our lives stable again.

A brief stay along the way gave us shelter, but it did not bring lasting safety. Soon we had to move again. Once more, we set out without knowing what the next place would hold.

One night, we found ourselves on dark roads through unfamiliar villages and stretches of forest. It was past midnight, and rain was falling. Our headlights lit the road ahead, but we did not know how to reach the highway.

There was nobody around to ask.

We had no useful directions and no working navigation. Every uncertain turn made the road feel longer. We needed to reach the highway, yet we did not know which way would take us there.

Then a man appeared on a motorcycle.

We had not seen anyone else nearby. He stopped and asked what had happened, and we explained that we were trying to find the highway. We only asked him for directions.

“Follow me,” he said.

He rode ahead, and we followed in our car. For six or seven kilometres, he led us through roads we could not have confidently navigated on our own. He continued until we reached the highway.

He was a stranger. He had no obligation to take us anywhere, yet he gave his time to make sure we found our way.

We remember that kindness with a gratitude that has never left us. In the middle of our uncertainty, someone had stopped. Someone had understood what we needed and helped us reach the next part of the road.

To us, that encounter was a miracle of God’s care. We had been unable to find our way, and help had reached us at an hour when we could see no one to turn to.

Reaching the highway did not answer all our questions, but it allowed us to continue. We eventually reached a city, still hoping to find protection and some stability. Our efforts to seek help continued, and so did the need to move.

The next stage took us towards another town by the coast. By then, the strain of the journey had left us deeply exhausted. Fear and uncertainty had followed us from place to place, and our bodies could no longer keep going as though we had rested.

During that drive, both of us fell asleep.

Even now, it is difficult to put that memory into words. We remember travelling, and then we remember waking to see a sign welcoming us to the town we had been trying to reach. The car had continued along the highway while we were asleep.

We cannot say how long we had slept or how far the car had travelled during that time. There is a part of that journey we cannot account for.

What we remember is waking, seeing the sign, and realising that we had reached the town alive.

We understood how dangerous our exhaustion had become. We could not credit our own alertness or strength for bringing us through that moment. We received our survival with profound gratitude, believing that God had preserved our lives when we had reached the limits of our strength.

That experience, like the stranger’s help at midnight, became one of the moments we would carry with us long after the journey itself.

These were only a few of the occasions on which we came to recognise God’s protection. We were beginning to understand that His care could reach us even when we had no idea where help would come from.

We had spent so much energy hoping that someone would finally take responsibility for our safety. We had looked to people and to the legal system for an answer. Seeking protection had been necessary, but we were learning that we could not make our peace depend entirely on a person’s willingness or ability to help.

God was teaching us to trust Him.

That trust did not arrive all at once. We still felt afraid. We still counted the money we had left and wondered where we could stay. Yet we now had moments to remember when fear returned: the man who had guided us to the highway, the sign we saw when we awoke, and the fact that we were still together.

Our weakness had become impossible to ignore. Through it, we were learning that God’s power was not limited by what we could manage or understand. A situation that seemed impossible to us was never beyond His power.

By the time we reached the coastal town, hundreds of kilometres lay behind us. We had brought very little with us, and the life we longed for still seemed far away. We could not yet say that our troubles were over.

But we could say that God had carried us through another part of the journey.

We arrived weary and uncertain about what would happen next. Alongside that uncertainty was a growing gratitude. We had needed help on roads we did not know, and we had received it. We had reached the limits of our strength, and we were still alive.

We had left because we were afraid.

We were beginning to learn whom we could trust.