Have you had enough yet? Or do you actually have the stomach to keep going down this road with me?
Because let me be completely honest with you I am tired of looking back at the comfortable parts of my life. The cozy, safe chapters of this story are officially finished. From here on out, the air gets thin, the water gets deep, and we are throwing away the safety net. So adjust yourself in that chair, focus your mind, and look me dead in the eye, because I need to know if you're actually ready for what comes next.
Let me ask you a question that gets right down into the marrow of your bones: What do you do when the world tells you that your past makes you completely useless to your future? Do you believe them? Do you unpack your bags, sit on your hands, and spend the rest of your life wondering what if?
Because as I stood there on the salted timbers of that British port, watching the gulls fight over fish guts, I was right on the edge of breaking. The high council of British bishops had just dug up a mistake from my childhood a stupid, reckless confession I’d shared with a trusted friend decades ago and used it like a dagger to cancel my mission to Ireland. They called me unfit. A rustic fraud. A sinner who had no right to wear a priest's robe, let alone carry a message across the sea.
For a few hours, watching the gray waves crash against the rotting wood of the piers, I almost believed them. I sat on a wooden crate, the bishops' letter crumbling in my fist, feeling that old, suffocating mountain shame creeping back into my throat. Maybe they’re right, the dark whisper in my head said. You’re just a slave boy. You don't know enough Latin to save anyone.
But that is the exact second where the mystery finally shattered. That is the exact moment I realized this calling wasn’t a haunting, and it wasn’t a madness.
It was God.
And let me tell you something about the Almighty that those bishops in their gold embroidered silk robes will never understand: He doesn't check with a committee before He chooses a man.
Right there in the howling wind of the harbor, the spirit didn't just whisper comfort to me it roared. I closed my eyes and I didn't see the text of the bishops' denunciation anymore. I saw that magical, deep green forest of Foclut from my dreams, the ancient moss breathing under the starlight, and the voices of the pagan children crying out from the branches, begging for me. God hadn't sent me to that freezing mountain as a teenager to punish me; He had sent me there to learn the language and the heart of the people He wanted me to save.
He didn't need a polished scholar who could write flawless Latin poetry. He needed a survivor. He needed a shepherd who knew how to talk to wolves.
A grim, sharp laugh rattled out of my chest, surprising a couple of dockworkers carrying sacks of grain past me.
Your guess is as good as mine as to what those sailors thought of a man in a tattered cloak laughing at the sea. But I stood up, took the bishops' letter, and let the wind tear it right out of my fingers, watching the fragments drift into the dirty harbor water.
"They didn't choose me," I whispered into the salt spray, my voice turning to iron. "So they can't unchoose me."
But let’s not romanticize this. Knowing God wants you to move doesn't magically put gold in your pockets or a ship under your feet. I was still an outcast. If the British church wouldn't back me, I had to find another way.
I didn't stay in Britain to beg for a second chance. I turned my back on my father's estate, walked down to the lower slips where the sketchy, unlicensed merchant ships docked, and started looking for a captain who cared more about silver than church politics.
It took weeks of hustling, sleeping on the straw of seaside taverns, and using every bit of the bartering grit I’d learned from the pagan traders on the Irish sand. I had to sell the last few family heirlooms I had left a silver buckle, a Roman signet ring just to buy a crate of basic supplies and a corner of a deck on a leaky trading vessel heading northwest.
I wasn't traveling with a grand entourage of holy men. I was traveling with a handful of rough, superstitious sailors who looked at my worn robes and muttered curses about bad luck at sea.
So, look across at me as the sailors start untying the heavy hemp ropes from the iron rings on the dock. Picture the scene: the sun is setting, the sky is turning the color of a bruised plum, and I am standing at the bow of a ship that smells of rotting fish and wet timber, looking out at an ocean that wants to swallow me whole.
What do you think is going through a man's head in that exact moment? Are you terrified? Or are you finally, truly free? Because the next time my feet touch the soil of that green island, the boy who ran away in chains is gone forever.
Are you ready to step onto the deck with me, or do you want to stay safe on the shore?
Chapter 8