The week after that Easter, I flew home for some PTO, carrying with me something far greater than just my luggage, I carried my newfound faith, a transformation so profound that I knew I couldn’t keep it to myself. Before I was baptized, I wanted to share this part of me with my mum. Not because I expected her to understand or even accept it, but because my faith was now woven into the very fabric of who I was. Keeping it from her would have felt like hiding a part of myself. And I didn’t want to hide anymore.
Still, I was nervous. My mum had always been supportive, but faith had never been a part of our relationship. She used to joke that it would be funny if I ever came back from the ship believing in God. And now, here I was, coming home to tell her that I did. That I loved Jesus. That everything in my life had shifted because of it. Would she laugh? Would she brush it off as just another phase? Would she see how deeply this had changed me?
I knew that nothing she said could shake what I had found, my love for Jesus was unwavering, but there was something vulnerable about saying it out loud to someone who had known me my whole life. I wasn’t the same person who had left. I had been found, redeemed, made new. And this was my first step in sharing that truth with the people I loved most. As the plane touched down, my heart pounded with anticipation. No matter how the conversation went, I knew one thing for certain: I wasn’t just coming home, I was stepping into my faith, fully and fearlessly, for the first time.
It’s amazing how much I had changed in barely a year. At first, the change felt internal, subtle, like a quiet shift in the foundation of my soul. But I don’t think I fully grasped just how profound it was until I went home. There, in the familiarity of my childhood surroundings, among the people who had known me my whole life, I saw it reflected back at me.
After just a couple of days, my mum noticed something different. She watched me the way only a mother can, with an intuition that saw beyond my words. I hadn’t even told her about my faith yet, but she could see it. She told me I seemed different, lighter, like for the first time in my life, I was truly content. Not just happy in the fleeting way I had been before, but something deeper. She saw the joy in me, a kind of joy that didn’t waver, that didn’t come and go with circumstances. But most of all, she saw the healing. She saw that I was healing from my past traumas, from the restless searching that had defined so much of my life.
When she said those words, my heart clenched. I had prayed for this moment, to have the courage to tell her, to share what had changed me. And yet, hearing her acknowledge it before I even spoke made my eyes well up with tears. It was as if God was already softening the path ahead, showing me that my faith was not just a hidden, private thing, it was visible. Tangible. I finally shared my faith with her, despite the fears that had gripped me for weeks. I had worried she wouldn’t understand, that she would dismiss it or see it as something foreign to who I was. But as I spoke, I saw something unexpected in her eyes, not confusion, not scepticism, but warmth. And then, she cried.
Not because she was sad, but because she was happy for me. She saw that I had found my purpose. She asked questions. Real, thoughtful questions, not just to be polite, but because she was curious. She wanted to understand what had changed me so completely. Since then, we have had some incredible conversations, conversations I never thought we would have.
The rest of my time at home was filled with catching up with friends and family, and while it was fulfilling, it was also strange. Familiar places, familiar faces, yet something felt different. Or maybe it was me. I had stepped back into a world that once felt like home, but now, it felt slightly out of focus, as if I were looking at it through a pane of glass. Close enough to touch, yet separate somehow.
I realised that I didn’t quite belong in Australia anymore. Maybe I had never really belonged. Life had moved on in my absence, just as I had moved on in my own way. My friends were getting married, buying houses, having children. Their lives were mapped out in milestones that made sense, steps that society expected. I was doing the complete opposite, volunteering on a Hospital Ship in Africa, serving in ways I had never imagined, walking a path that, to many, seemed unconventional. But I had found something greater than any dream I had once held for myself. I had found purpose. A purpose that had changed everything.
I’d be lying if I said my friendships hadn’t changed. Distance does that, it shifts things in quiet, unspoken ways. My friends back home will always be my best friends, especially Britt, she is my sister, my family, my anchor in so many ways. But after being overseas for five years, the space between us was undeniable. Not because we had stopped loving each other, but because life had simply taken us down different roads.
There were moments of disconnect, moments where I felt like a visitor in a life I had once been so immersed in. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, it was just the reality of growing up, of choosing different paths, of stepping into callings that sometimes led us in opposite directions. There were times when the conversations felt different, moments of silence where I wondered if my family and friends saw me as I was now or only as the person I used to be.
And yet, love remained. Even in the awkward moments of not fully understanding one another’s lives, even in the quiet realization that we were no longer the same people we had once been, the love between us never faded. It simply took on a new form, one that stretched across oceans, across time zones, across the different rhythms of our lives. And that was enough. Because true friendship, true love, isn’t about always walking the same road. It’s about always finding your way back to each other, no matter how far you’ve travelled.
Being home gave me the chance to say goodbye, to my old life, my old self, to the person I barely recognized anymore. As I walked familiar streets and sat in familiar places, I saw echoes of who I used to be. The restless girl who was always searching, always longing for something more. The girl who had carried an ache she couldn’t name, who had tried to fill the void with unhealthy relationships and habits, with movement, with anything that might quiet the gnawing feeling inside her.
But now, that ache was beginning to fade. That restless feeling, the urge to run, to escape, to search, it had been replaced with something entirely new. Something steady. Something certain. It was in those quiet moments, in the in-between spaces of my trip home, that I realized Australia, for now, wasn’t my home anymore. It would always be a part of me, but I no longer belonged there in the same way I once had. My heart had been called elsewhere. I was meant to be where I was, on a hospital ship in Sierra Leone, serving, growing, surrendering daily to God’s plan for me.
For the first time in my life, I wasn’t searching. I wasn’t running. I wasn’t chasing after something just out of reach. Instead, I felt a deep, steady hum of knowing. A peace that surpassed all understanding. I would come to know that feeling as Shalom, not just peace, but wholeness. The kind of peace that settles into your soul and stays. The kind of peace that tells you: You are exactly where you are meant to be.
When I finally returned to the ship, I knew. Knew with every fibre of my being that it was time. The field service was coming to an end, and the old me was being laid to rest. Now, it was time to step fully into the life God had given me. To declare, in front of the world, the love that had transformed me.
I had found my home. Not in a country. Not in a place.
But in Jesus.
AYLA IN AFRICA 