Many of us can look back in time and pinpoint a crucial moment in our life, an instant when our entire direction shifted. Had events been otherwise, the unfolding of our journey would have been different altogether.

That fateful day with the old woman developed into the girl’s lifelong search for answers to the questions that event elicited, plus all her other queries about Jesus—who he was while he was on Earth some 2,000 years earlier, and why she felt so drawn to him. She also yearned to find others whom she felt were on the same quest and then to share with them. She not only studied gnosis but continued to investigate many sources of esoteric, metaphysical, and psychological learning.

Around the age of 16, she met a man whom she married two years later. He, as an American citizen, was the conduit for her moving to the United States after they wed. She came to his country, grew into womanhood, became a mother, and lived like a regular American citizen herself, yet never did she forget her roots. She was always in search of the answer, which she knew somehow included a different Jesus than the traditional one she also found in this new culture. The American interpretation was a bit kinder, perhaps, yet Jesus was still the same “bookkeeper of sins” from yesteryear and not quite what she was hoping for.

Adventures and misadventures came and went over the next 25 years. During this period, her search never let up. She moved through various spiritual schools of thought, returning eventually to her Christian roots but this time as a born-again Christian. Tears poured down her face on Sunday mornings in church each time she sang, “Open my eyes, Lord. I want to see Jesus, to tell Him I love Him . . .”

She’d continued in her need for answers from God and for more clarity about Jesus himself. She’d accepted him as her savior more than once, but saving her from what? Why did she have to get saved every time she met a new spiritual group? What were this “sin” and “hell” that most churches taught? She wanted to see and to know Jesus and his real relationship to God and all of us, and to share with him this thing that she felt when she really thought about Him in her heart. But she couldn’t describe it in a way that made sense to anyone else.

She yearned to know God and not just know of Him. She longed to experience the Divine and often wondered what it would have been like to live 2,000 years ago, when Jesus walked the earth—to hear the sweet word of God’s love spring from his sacred holy lips, his love permeating her being in his sweet embrace, his presence real and tangible. What would it be like, to look into his loving eyes? Would she see the infinite?

Her eyes began to tear every time she thought like this. She often asked Jesus why he’d left, why he was here just that once. Why couldn’t he come back? She would wash his feet if he did. It would take only one word from him for her to heal—this was her favorite prayer.

After searching and praying for years, she began to think more and more deeply about what it would be like to be with Jesus back then, when he taught his disciples. She read the Bible several times, both in English and Spanish, and began to pray to him directly and to ask for help in hearing him more clearly. She yearned for communion with others who had a different understanding of spiritual matters than what the world presented, and she felt moved to seek more spiritual literature.

Someone at a church had mentioned a book series written by a couple of Christian authors. They were novels that used the story of Revelation as the backdrop for its characters to move through the story of the end of the world, according to their interpretation of this biblical book. She read four of the first five volumes, each of them increasing her unease. In the middle of reading the fifth one, she stopped. A vengeful God, Who would cruelly kill and send His creatures to eternal pain and sorrow in an awful place of His own design, particularly if they happened to be the wrong race and culture (which presumably He had given them), seemed simply irrational.

From where she stood, at age thirtysomething, there was great conflict in traditional Christianity, particularly that which was often called “fundamentalist.” There was a sharp contrast between the God of love Who was professed and the God of vengeance Who was hailed and sometimes blamed for all of humanity’s woes and made accountable for righteous evils perpetrated by some groups upon others, by many people upon many others.

She found solace and refuge in newer non-Christian, yet deeply spiritual books while keeping up her search. On this new quest, she had increasingly telling experiences that indicated she was approaching something new that was not to be feared, that was completely benign. For example, on a plane ride she was reading a book from a new author who assured readers that he was conversing with God. The passenger next to her noticed the title of the book and asked her what she might be searching for. A perfect stranger was asking her the deepest question of her life!

She replied that she was looking for the truth. He politely asked if he could offer her a gift and gave her an audiocassette. Coincidentally, her hotel room that night just happened to be furnished with a tape player, which never happens. She took this unusual furnishing to mean she should go ahead and listen to the material, and so she did.

It turned out to be a recording from a retired Catholic priest who was introducing his new series of novels that explored the adventures of a modern-day, wandering Jesus, now called Joshua. What he might be like; how he might talk, dress, act, and relate to others; what he might do to right all the wrongs that everyone is so painfully aware of, yet are accustomed to; and the changes that people experience as he enters a town and stays a little while before moving on to the next one.

She bought and read every one of the books in the Joshua series and sometimes fantasized about meeting the hero herself, all the while still reading the work of the man who was talking with God—the author of the book she’d been reading on the plane.

She decided to attend a seminar led by this “conversations” author in an attempt to learn his technique and to reach out and try to have her very own dialogue with God. Sure enough, in the middle of an exercise at this event, she decided to try and communicate with Him in the form of Jesus. She asked, Why did you leave us here in this mess and all this suffering? Why did you come here with your message of love just to leave again?

The answer came undeniably fast, clear, and to the point. Her hand wrote I NEVER LEFT, as if by a will that wasn’t her own. The words came in all uppercase, which she’d never used as a handwriting style before. She felt in her heart that she’d heard from him, and it seemed as though there was nothing more to write. She waited, but nothing came. That inspired statement was unlike any of her thoughts. It was also quite releasing and imbued with a unique sense of comfort, elicited by the thought itself from within her being. It soothed her immediately, offering her a deep calm and contentment that she’d never felt before.

Sure that she’d heard Jesus reply, she talked to the seminar leader, the well-known author of the conversations books. She told him that as much as she loved his work, she felt that there was no Jesus in his material. She needed Jesus in her life, but not the traditional one of most religions.