The Night I Said Yes to the Invitation I'd Been Refusing My Whole Life
By Jennifer Brouwer of Whilewoods Retreats
Who do I think I am? Well, thankfully, I might finally have an answer.
I wanted to capture this story before time softened the truth; no polish, just honesty, humour, discomfort, and me, unfiltered.
The last months have been mind-blowing, fascinating, and entirely incompatible with who I used to believe I was. The old version of me would have said absolutely NOT to most of what you're about to read. Turns out she was wrong. She would've been speaking from her wounds, not her wealth.
But the woman I am now has done the work, healed old wounds, gone to therapy, set boundaries, and knows one thing for sure: comfort zones are a complete lie. Truth is truth, and God is real. There, I said it.
I'm writing this at 52 years young. I'm the first practicing Christian in five generations to accept this gift. So that, for sure, deserves a Hallelujah. I’m not here to convert or preach. I simply want to share a perspective I almost missed because I was afraid of the unknown, rejection, or pain. Everything amazing lives on the other side of fear and discomfort. My prayer is that by the end of this, you'll agree.
Before The Invitation
Here's what you need to know: a little context beyond not being raised in church.
In grade seven, a parish catholic priest pulled me out of class to tell me I had no business being confirmed. My parents weren't parishioners. I walked back down that hallway carrying something no twelve-year-old should: the quiet belief that God wasn’t for people like me. I didn't walk away from God. I was walked away from. And sadly, I believed it quietly and completely for four decades.
I attempted everything short of a séance: energy work, meditation. I was fluent in healing language yet still avoiding the one door I hadn't tried. I wasn't looking for God. I was trying to be less broken.
Here's what nobody puts on the rock bottom brochure: it has an upside. Life lifed, as it does. Full upheaval. Identity crisis. The whole messy package. I reached that place we don't talk about enough. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I was done. I had teenagers at home. I knew I needed to show up as the best parent I could be. I knew I was a cycle breaker: fear, shame, addiction to the stuff that was quietly handed down and ultimately repeated. I thought that was the assignment. I had no idea how much bigger it was about to get.
Turns out your body keeps score and eventually stops asking nicely. Hair loss. Adrenal failure. A depression that made it seem like every room in the house had gone dark at once.
The world stopped; it was 2020, and for the first time in my life, I couldn't outrun what was chasing me. So I began the work: real work. Therapy. Ugly cries. Unglamorous journaling. Digging into past hurt and cleaning inside the attic of time in the nobody-sees-this way. I got genuinely better. But there was still one door I hadn't touched. Not because I forgot it was there, but because I'd been told it wasn't for me. The "us and them" wound. Trauma trained into me so quietly I mistook it for truth.
A few years before my family implosion, my one Christian friend Stacy mailed me a Bible. Beautiful leather. Monogrammed with my name in gold. The designer in me couldn't put it in a drawer; it was too beautiful. So it lived on my nightstand for almost ten years. A design element for the unchosen. Unopened. A styling prop I never cracked open. I later learned she had been praying for me the entire time - consistently, for years, without mentioning it, pressuring me, or making her love conditional on my arrival or participation.
When I asked her recently why she had my name inscribed, she laughed and said: "So you wouldn't throw it out." She knew me. She loved me. And she kept the light on anyway.
That? Absolutely God.
The Invitation
In the December that just passed, I almost said no to the trip that would upend everything I thought I knew.
That same dear friend, sister from another mother, invited me to New York City for a book launch with a group of women, most of whom I'd never met. But here's the catch: it was a Christian women's group. My immediate response? Analyze. Overthink. Identify at least 147 possible pitfalls before considering what to pack. I said NO.
I'm the girl who likes to know exactly who I'm staying with, what I'm walking into, and where the exits are mentally, emotionally, and physically. I don't typically share rooms, especially not with strangers. And a Christian group? That scratched the old wound. The "us and them" wound. The "I don't belong with those people" wound. The one that had been running quietly in the background since that hallway in grade seven. So yeah, I said no.
Then my therapist asked a question that changed everything: "Are you making this decision from your wound or your wealth?" She was right: wounded, afraid little Jenn was driving, not the adult who’d done the work and built a retreat center.
The irony: I value growth and relationships yet almost said no because I was uncomfortable with the unknown. So I said “yes”… not because I felt ready, but because staying comfortable only keeps you small. The new me is done with that.
That? Absolutely God.
The Wall That Was Only in My Mind
The first night was easy. Gentle. Lovely. I met the women. Four of us shared a room; college flashbacks activated, but I survived. Over the next three days, I met nine extraordinary women from Dallas, Louisiana, Florida, Kentucky, Germany, Switzerland, and Canada. And you know what? They were just kind. No judgment. No "holier-than-thou" energy. No divider between "real Christians" and me. Simply warmth. Joy. Laughter. Acceptance. The wall I'd built? It was only in my mind.
The next morning, we woke early to support another author on live morning television. Watching her speak about faith with such warmth and ease broke something open in me. I cried. Ugly cried. Not because it was dramatic, but because it was familiar in a way I hadn't had language for yet.
Before dinner, the girls asked if they could pray for me. Group prayer. Out loud. No hiding behind polite silence. But "yes" was my word of the day. So I took my position at the end of the bed and told the truth: I struggled to speak up, and I didn't always feel comfortable taking up space, especially in faith spaces. No one flinched. No one fixed me. Three women laid hands on me and prayed with a confidence that appeared ancient and steady. It was beautiful. Sacred. Safe.
That? Absolutely God.
And that was not the end. Not even close.
Times Square
That night, we celebrated our friend's book debut, her name and smile glowing on a billboard like a dream fulfilled. And then, because apparently this was now my life, someone suggested we worship. In public. In Times Square. I don't even worship at home with others. I immediately dissociated. My inner monologue was SCREAMING: Run! And then CeCe Winans' "Holy Forever" played on the massive speakers. The world contracted. Times Square became a whole lot less strange. We were in some bubble, oddly protected, hidden in plain sight, which is insane considering it's the least hideable place on earth. Strangers gathered. Hands lifted. Voices lifted. It was that kind of palpable beauty that makes your heart weep.
Then the girls started praying for strangers in the street, in the middle of New York City, where New Yorkers are famous for walking around literally anything in their path without breaking stride. Not going to lie, super weird for the non-Christian. To say my skin crawled is a wild understatement.
Strangers said yes. Tears flowed. It was beautiful to witness. My heart softened; it became less strange with every single moment.
Before I even realized what was happening, I was being led in to pray for them too. I remember thinking, clear as day: Fraud. Hypocrite. Who do you think you are? Another old wound rising to tell me all the reasons I don't belong. But love has momentum. So I prayed. I reached back to the one prayer I knew from grade school, the Our Father, and said it out loud. Yes, it felt unbelievable. It was wild. I trusted that even if my words appeared awkward or clumsy, something far greater was at work. And then, as if that wasn't enough, I was surrounded. The girls began praying for me while I was praying for someone else. My heart began to race. Fear and imposter syndrome rose again. Emotions engulfed my system. Tears poured. Ugly cries, shaking, shivering. Something ignited that I could not explain, manage, or verbalize. My mouth opened to speak. My jaw quivered uncontrollably. I’m pretty sure I meant to voice the awe in my heart. But that's not what came out. Sounds poured out. Not words. A frequency. A heavenly language moving faster than thought.
Right there, in Times Square in a foreign country, surrounded by strangers, I was speaking in tongues. I barely knew what this was before this trip, let alone imagined experiencing it. Weeping, laughing, shaking, fully aware and completely and utterly undone. And then the awareness fully returned: I am in Times Square. I sound like a Teletubby. I'm snotting and bawling in the most photographed intersection in the world, probably with seventeen TikToks being filmed, and I don’t care. All I could do was chuckle at the pure hilarity of it. God's got jokes. I laughed so hard I nearly peed my pants, all while still verbally processing aloud like a blabbering toddler finding their voice.
But here's the miracle part: I could not stop. And I could not rationalize any of it away. I finally surrendered.
That? Absolutely God.
The Walk to the News Station
The next morning was beyond surreal. I felt youthful. Freer than ever. The mask I'd worn for over forty years had lifted. I was still babbling, melting hot, menopausal-Mary hot, still being refined. Full of fire.
Ironically, I was booked for a segment on the retreat center, WhileWoods, at a news station that afternoon. So I decided to walk 30 blocks and release some excitement along the way. I texted the group chat that it was still happening and that I wasn't sure I could stop it — like a rolling train in sync with my walking pace.
I worried about meeting the producer and speaking like a crazy person. To the Holy Spirit–filled girls, this was normal: "Oh, it's fine, you'll be good shortly," they said with a huge smile and a "thank you, Jesus." To me, it was as foreign as waking up speaking Arabic, a language whose meaning I didn't know. Thankfully, it was winter so that I could conceal the crazy behind a scarf. I prayed: "Lord, I don't know what's what right now, but I have faith in You. Can You please help me stop so I don't scare the producer?" What's hilarious is that for one split second, I thought, I'm not sure I ever want this to end. What if I can't get it back? I was relieved and beyond grateful to find myself in the middle of what felt like a literal spiritual restoration.
What I Know Now
Something changed on that trip that I am still living into. I found my voice, both literally and metaphorically, a new language for the moments when I don't have the right words.
God never actually told me I didn't belong. People did. Systems did. Religion did. The division was only in my mind, a seed sown in a grade seven hallway, a wound scratched the moment I heard "Christian group." These beautiful women didn't even know there was a wall. They just saw Jenn and welcomed her in.
The Times Square moment wasn't about being chosen. I'd always been chosen. We all are. That's the big secret. It was about finally letting myself believe it, about giving myself permission to receive it. You don't have to be polished, holy, or fluent in church culture to belong to God. You need to be willing, willing to feel absurd, willing to be seen, willing to let go of control long enough for something holy to take its place. I didn't earn this. I didn't manufacture it. I still don't fully understand it. I stayed when all instinct told me to run, and I said yes when comfort would have been way easier. For years I taught women to trust their inner knowing while questioning my own. I encouraged bravery while negotiating my way around inconvenience. And yet, in the middle of noise and spectacle, God met me without ceremony and without conditions in a place where I could no longer curate the outcome.
If this story unsettles you, I understand. It unsettled me too. But if something in you stirred while reading, if you felt curiosity instead of dismissal, then this isn't about my experience at all. Maybe it's about the places in your own life where you've been standing on the edge, waiting for certainty before you move.
I don't have a formula. I only know this: everything I'd been searching for arrived the moment I stopped trying to manage how it looked. That night didn't make me special. It made me available. And availability, not perfection, not performance, is where everything real begins. For the first time in my life, I wasn't standing outside the glass. I was in the room. And the room had been awaiting me the whole time.
I never found God in church, in family, or in the places I thought He'd be. He found me in Times Square. And I thank Him every single day that He did.
The Bible on my nightstand wasn't decor. It was a ten-year whisper, a ten-year visual reminder sitting in plain sight. This stood as a promise already made. It was already done.
The Relatable Revivalist
I don't need to stand above you and tell you how to live. I'll stand beside you and tell you what I've learned.
I learned to keep things secret. To keep the peace. I became very good at functioning while quietly disappearing. And somewhere along the way, I believed the lie that my story was something to hide.
Now I see it differently. The story I was ashamed of became the story I was called to share. Stories set us free. And perhaps the most beautiful irony of all is this: you are not your wound. Your past is not your present. And nothing you've done, hidden, or survived has disqualified you from healing, hope, or God — no matter what the lies have been telling you.
You can learn more about Jennifer and WhileWoods Retreats - a place to pause, get curious, tell the truth (to yourself), rest without earning it, and reconnect with nature, and maybe, carefully, with God again too - at www.whilewoodsretreats.com.
