He Told Me to Gather My Stories
I thought I was writing down memories. I didn’t know He was about to show me the thread running through my entire life.
Not long ago, I felt the Lord say something very simple to me:
Gather your stories.
That was it.
Not write a book.
Not figure out what it all means.
Not turn your life into a message.
Just—
Gather your stories.
So I began.
I went back through journals.
I remembered dreams I had carried for years.
I revisited strange encounters I never quite knew what to do with.
I thought about prayers that had been answered in ways I almost missed.
There were mountain roads and hummingbirds. Trees and storms. Shabbat candles and quiet mornings. Unexpected people. Closed doors. Open ones. Long seasons of waiting. Moments of unmistakable wonder.
There were things God had spoken years apart that, at the time, seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with one another.
And there were ordinary moments I had almost forgotten.
I thought I was gathering memories.
But somewhere along the way, I began to see something I hadn't seen before.
They weren't separate stories.
There was a thread.
And once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it.
The Ladders Were Everywhere
I kept coming back to Jacob.
In Genesis 28, Jacob is traveling when night falls. He stops, takes a stone for a pillow, lies down on the ground, and goes to sleep.
There is no temple.
No worship service.
No carefully prepared spiritual atmosphere.
He's simply a man sleeping on the ground in the middle of a journey.
And then he dreams.
He sees a ladder—or stairway—set upon the earth, its top reaching into heaven. Angels are ascending and descending upon it, and the Lord speaks to him.
When Jacob wakes up, he says:
“Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.”
— Genesis 28:16 AMP
Those words have stayed with me.
And I did not know it.
God had been there.
Jacob simply hadn't recognized it.
The ladder didn't suddenly make God present.
The ladder revealed a reality that was already there.
And as I began gathering my own stories, I started wondering:
How many times have I stood in my own Bethel and did not know it?
How many ordinary roads were actually holy ground?
How many interruptions were mercy?
How many things did I dismiss as coincidence because I didn't yet have eyes to see the pattern?
How many closed doors were actually protection?
How many delays were positioning?
How many seemingly insignificant encounters carried something from Heaven that I wouldn't understand until years later?
How many times was Heaven touching earth while I was waiting for something more obviously "spiritual" to happen?
And perhaps the question underneath all of those questions was even simpler:
How many times had He asked for my Yes?
Looking Back Changes Things
There is something that happens when you stop looking at your life as a collection of isolated events and begin asking God to show you the thread.
Things begin connecting.
Not everything.
I don't believe we have to force meaning onto every detail of our lives or pretend we understand things God hasn't explained.
There are still things I don't understand.
There are prayers I cannot neatly wrap up.
There are chapters I wouldn't have chosen.
There are places where I still have questions.
But there are also moments I can see differently now because I am no longer standing inside of them.
I can look back.
And sometimes, looking back reveals what living through it could not.
I can see the prayer before the answer.
The invitation before the provision.
The surrender before the opening.
The road before the destination.
The seed before the fruit.
And over and over again, I can see Him.
Seeking.
Calling.
Inviting.
Waiting for my response.
And then, somehow, after one small Yes—
another ladder.
Another invitation.
Another place where Heaven touched earth.
Another revelation.
Another step.
Another Yes.
Another ladder.
I Didn't Know I Was Writing a Book
That's the funny part.
I really didn't begin this by deciding to write another book.
I was gathering my stories because I believed God told me to gather them.
But eventually the stories began gathering themselves into something.
A pattern emerged.
And slowly, I realized I wasn't simply looking at a collection of things that had happened to me.
I was looking at the evidence of a relationship.
A long conversation between Heaven and one very ordinary woman who has spent much of her life learning that obedience doesn't always begin with understanding.
Sometimes it simply begins with:
Yes.
And that is how this book was born.
Its name is:
One Yes, A Thousand Ladders
I don't want to tell you everything about it yet.
Some things need to remain tucked between the pages for a little while longer.
But I will tell you this:
It is the most personal thing I have ever written.
There are stories in these pages I never imagined telling publicly.
Dreams I carried for years without understanding them.
There are mountain roads, Shabbat candles, hummingbirds, trees, tunnels, storms, relationships, loss, restoration, strange encounters, answered prayers, and moments so ordinary that I nearly missed what God was saying through them.
But when I gathered them, I discovered something.
They were never really separate stories.
They were one story.
A God who seeks.
A woman learning to say Yes.
And somewhere between those two things—
ladders began appearing everywhere.
Maybe You Have Ladders, Too
And this is the part I wasn't expecting.
As I have written this book, I've found myself thinking less about my stories and more about yours.
Because I don't believe I'm the only one who has missed Bethel while standing right in the middle of it.
Maybe you have, too.
Maybe there are things in your life you've never connected.
A Scripture that found you at exactly the right moment.
A dream you wrote down and forgot about.
A prayer you whispered years before the answer arrived.
A person who appeared at a strangely precise time.
A door you begged God to open that stayed firmly shut.
A place you felt drawn toward without understanding why.
A conversation that seemed insignificant then but looks completely different now.
A moment when you knew God was near.
Or perhaps a moment when you thought He was nowhere to be found.
What if you gathered those stories?
Not to make something out of them.
Not to manufacture a meaning.
Not to turn every coincidence into a sign.
Simply to lay them before Him and ask:
Father, where were You?
Where were You moving when I didn't recognize You?
Where were You protecting me?
Where were You calling me?
Where did You invite me to trust You?
Where did I say Yes without realizing what that Yes would eventually open?
And where might I be standing right now that I won't recognize as Bethel until later?
Gather Your Stories
So while I finish gathering mine, maybe this is an invitation for you to begin gathering yours.
Look back.
Pull out the old journals.
Remember the prayers.
Revisit the dreams.
Think about the roads you didn't intend to travel.
The people you didn't expect to meet.
The things that ended.
The things that began.
The Scriptures that wouldn't leave you alone.
The prayers that seemed unanswered.
The answers that arrived wearing clothing you didn't recognize.
The tiny obediences.
The impossible ones.
The moments when you said Yes while having absolutely no idea where that Yes would lead.
Lay them out before Him.
And then ask:
“Where were You that I did not know?”
Because perhaps some of the places you have called ordinary were never ordinary at all.
Perhaps there are Bethels scattered throughout your story.
Perhaps Heaven has been touching earth in places you haven't recognized yet.
Perhaps what looked like a thousand disconnected moments was actually one long conversation.
And perhaps—
when you gather your stories—
you'll discover the ladders were there all along.
One Yes, A Thousand Ladders is coming soon!
But before I tell you more about my stories, I have a feeling there may be something beautiful waiting for you inside your own.
Go gather them.
Shalom,
Beth