Florence Was Never Just a City
How a prophetic detail in my manuscript became a real invitation—and the flavor that woke me up to it
Dear friend,
Before I ever began writing my manuscript, my publisher needed an outline. I had wrestled for months with where the story was going. And although it’s fiction (wink), I hadn’t really seen the story unfold—not up close. I knew where her heart was. It was where mine was, too—learning to trust the God who made me. Who made me creative.
After years of trying to be other people—fitting into jobs that didn’t want me, sacrificing art in the name of survival—I finally surrendered. To the Lord’s compositions. To the call to paint. And eventually, to write what He was showing me. I had no idea where it would lead. Where He would lead.
So I prayed. I kept praying. Because by then, I already knew His way was better—I just didn’t know how much better.
When I was praying over the outline, unsure where to send my protagonist next, the Lord so gently, so clearly said:
“I asked you to be creative. You already know where to take her.”
And I did.
It was Florence.
It had always been Florence.
A city my man had once lived in, years before we met. A place I only knew through the stories he shared, the journal entries he let me read, the teasing way he’d say he’d stood in front of my favorite paintings long before I ever could. I used to beg him to take me back there.
“One day,” he’d always say.
“Kiss me in all the places you kissed someone else,” I’d whisper desperately-serious.
He’d laugh and remind me he wasn’t nearly as promiscuous as I had imagined him in my cinematic mind.
Eventually, even the “one days” began to wear thin. Life was heavy. Finances were tight. I was painting again, writing in faith, saying yes with nothing concrete in return—except the joy of creating again.
Florence has always been my most desired city. Not because it’s trendy or romantic, but because of what it holds—what it’s kept. The legacy of the Renaissance, the colors those masters used, the revelation of light they captured on canvas. Florence was the birthplace of devotion to skill. To mastery. To art as sacred language. And Leonardo—my hero—stood at the intersection of science and spirit, his precision held sincere wonder. He never separated the two. His dedication to craft, his way of seeing—of testing, drawing, questioning, creating—captured everything I could only hope to recover in myself.
Then, a few weeks after submitting that outline, I was dropping our son off at school. It was the day of his biggest project yet—a biography he’d chosen to write on none other than Leonardo da Vinci. Not because I’d pushed him to (though I had, of course, told him about my hero)—but because he’d picked the artist on his own, well in advance of his deadline. Even his teacher was surprised.
That morning, just before he stepped out of the car, I got the email.
An invitation to the Florence Biennale—the city’s most prestigious art show.
In Florence.
Italy.
The place I had written into the final pages of my fictional manuscript.
The place I never thought I’d be called to go.
We didn’t make pasta.
We didn’t toast with Chianti or lean into anything obviously Italian.
Instead, we chose comfort. Something earthy and warm. Something with artichoke hearts. I can’t remember the full dish—what protein we used or what grain it sat beside—but I remember the vinegar.
The spark of it.
The way it cut through the richness and settled something in me.
It kept reassuring my senses: this is real.
It was balsamic—thick and slow, with cherry notes and something like honey at the edge. The kind of vinegar that doesn’t rush, doesn’t pierce, but lingers. It tasted like time. Like sweetness that had surrendered itself to transformation. Wine that had become something else—sharp, layered, patient.
That mouthful brought me into my body like nothing else could. It held me there. Reminded me I was here, in this life, in this moment. That I wasn’t drifting in hope or grasping in fear—I was living the answer to a prayer I had barely known how to shape. Balsamic doesn’t beg. It simply stays—complex, slow-moving, thick enough to consume on purpose. That night, it didn’t just flavor the meal. It marked the moment. Like Him saying, “This is real, my love. Drink it in.”
That floaty feeling of being carried—not by manipulation or force, just receiving—moved through my whole self. I felt held. Not just by my man, or by the work, but by the God who started it in me. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t performing. I wasn’t hustling. I wasn’t trying to prove I was worthy of the invitation.
I just was.
Exactly who He made me to be.
And what I didn’t expect—what completely undid me—was my kids’ pride. My son’s eyes when I told him. My daughter’s giddy, fidgety excitement. Like they knew this was a big deal because it was a piece of me they had seen slowly come alive. That moment felt like balsamic in my mouth too—one of my favorite flavors. Bright. Sharp. True. A flavor that wakes you up and makes everything else make sense.
It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t even a goal I had written down. It was a holy echo—a thread stitched into the story before I ever named it.
And for the first time in years, I didn’t feel like I was chasing something.
I felt here.
Fully alive.
Lucid.
Awake in the life God had written for me.
Not performing, not proving—just tasting it. Receiving it. Letting it nourish me from the inside out.
🎥 Painting Jack’s Mona Lisa with him for the Leonardo project.
He didn’t know he was painting his way into this story, too.
God weaves every thread of our existence together, with such kindess.