The Chapters | One

How it all began.

The Chapters | One

Adding Words to Dreams

I’ve started this letter a few times. Deleted it. Started again.

I think what kept stopping me was that I wanted to get the story right — when the truth is, it’s not that kind of story. It’s the kind you just have to start telling.

So here I am. Finally doing the telling:

I was in Bali a couple of years ago — leading two back-to-back retreats, doing what I do. This one, particular morning, a couple of the girls and I took Vespa taxis into a small artist’s village we’d found.

After taking a brief walk around to explore, we decided on this adorable little cafe overlooking a small rice field. After being seated, I noticed a woman sitting across the way from me. She was writing something in a journal, and it was clear that she was pouring her heart onto the paper. She wasn’t performing it. She was just there. Deep in it. Of course the wind was blowing through her hair, and the entire scene felt like a movie and inspired me. All of us, really.

I pulled out my camera and snapped a few candid photos of her.

Afterwards, I approached her table to show her the images. I asked if she’d like me to send the photos her way. Delighted, she accepted my offer. We did a quick air drop.

And then, intrigued by the filled pages I saw up close, I asked her, “What are you writing about?”

She looked up and answered with a smile and accent I didn’t recognize, “I’m adding words to my dreams.”

That’s all I remember hearing her say. I stood there for a second longer than I needed to, thinking: Oh wow. Words to dreams. Something about it landed in me in a way I wasn’t expecting.

I went and bought a journal that same day from a small shop in the same village. The shop was owned by a book binder / photographer husband and his wife, who was an artist. They had a beautiful story. In fact, while we were there, three women came into the shop. They were from Kenya, I believe. And when he heard their native tongue, he excitedly greeted them in the language! In the most unexpected twist of fate you can even imagine, this white man was speaking to three sistas from the continent in a language I would’ve never thought he even cared existed!

I witnessed the entire scene silently with uncontrollable tears falling from my eyes. It was just too beautiful for words.

* And let me just say: Bali feels this magical. This whole story I’m telling you? It has Bali and Spirit and Supernatural and Purpose and Design and God — all over and through it.

---

After looking through each book in the store, I finally found the one that was clearly designed for me. It matched my brand new tattoo perfectly.

That evening I opened it and wrote on the first page:

---

In Bali, our retreat villa was extra special. It was being stewarded by a woman named Anima. She was actually from The Bay Area but was the current guardian of this property in the most literal sense. She was making sure it remained in the right hands to protect multiple acres of land and villages surrounding it. She’d happened upon this mission while “house sitting” for some associates, and after learning about the families who would be impacted if it was sold to the business men who had taken interest in it, she made it her mission to do everything within her power to keep the land in the hands of the people who had tended to it for centuries.

She needed to raise money. So she began hosting her own retreats on the property and then renting it out for other bookings and retreats in the remaining months. We were one of the first to book the villa and got an insane deal on the rental. It went up by at least 3x after us. All divine timing. We would’ve never been able to afford this property otherwise. Not at this trip’s price point anyway. But God.

I remember sitting in one of the common spaces one evening and thinking — I want this. A place that holds people. A place that has a reason to exist beyond just being available.

I wasn’t necessarily wishing I had what she had. It was more like — oh. There’s a name for what I’ve been quietly imagining. I just hadn’t seen it yet.

Before I left Bali, I wrote in my new journal:

I want my own retreat space — where I can host my own retreats and also host hosts for their own retreats.

Three months after I got home, my parents called me about cforty acres of land they’d found and were considering purchasing.

We weren’t looking. That’s what I always come back to. I wasn’t actively working towards that dream, and my parents weren’t in the middle of some big search.

It just... appeared. This land. And when they told me about it, something in me went completely still and completely certain at the same time.

Three months after I put words to my dreams.

What a scary and wild and wonderful thing.

I remember immediately looking to the sky with a half smirk and half look of disbelief: God, are you even serious right now?

Ah. It makes me want to cry right in this very moment, because I knew right then and there. I understood. I fully accepted that: my steps in this crazy world are ordered.

And there’s nothing I can do about it. I can get off track. I can take unnecessary detours. I can even get lost, but my steps will never not be ordered. And I’ll never not find my way back to where I am meant to be.

I’ve looked at that first page of that Bali journal more than once over the last few years. It still moves me when I think about the master-level (God) orchestration of that whole entire experience.

Words to dreams.

When I wrote it, I thought I was writing about a far off vision. I wrote it with absolutely no expectation attached to it. No idea how, when, where. Just a vision. And a very subtle, but real, belief.

God said: Watch this.

---

I have so much more to tell you. And show you. About the land, about what we found, about what I’m building on it. I’ll continue share in this mini series, “The Chapters”. But I wanted you to have the beginning first — because it’s the first undeniable evidence of God being in the mix and in the midst. In a village in Bali. With a stranger. With a few, simple words I wrote down but didn’t fully understand yet. I was living inside a miracle.

And I still am.

More soon.

I encourage you to take this as your miraculous sign to add words to your dreams.

Brandie

If something in this resonated, I’d genuinely love to hear it.