✨ The Week That Woke Me Up ✨ aka “The Handshake Heard ‘Round My Nervous System”

Based on a true story, names and details may have been smoothed out to protect the innocent people I stumble into!

I was not expecting any of this.

Not the moment.
Not the way my stomach flipped.
Not the way his handshake felt like he was holding my hand… like really holding it.
We were only talking about singing bowls.

That’s it. Just sound bowls.
I wasn’t trying to meet anyone.
And I definitely wasn’t sitting there thinking, “God, please send me someone cute who gets neurology and Jesus.”
But God… He’s got a sense of humor.

Because just a few minutes before that handshake, I found out he was single.
And y’all—my system short-circuited.

I teared up!
I NEVER tear up over men.
But I did. Like, had to catch my breath kind of cry.
Not in front of him (thank God), but when I got to the car.
Because something in that moment felt like God hit play on a scene in a movie I didn’t even know I was in.

If I had known the hand shake was going to happen, I WOULD HAVE never mentioned, that my dog scratched my nipple so hard I thought it ripped off, and I peed my pants from pain. (why would I blurt something out like that, I'm probably and over sharer, we will talk about that later....)

So now it just looks like I wet myself on command.
Mystery solved. 😐🤣

The next day I was on my couch, staring at the ceiling, trying to talk myself down.
What even was that, handshake, some kind of voodoo?
Was it real?
Did I make it up?
Why am I emotional over a handshake?

I started spiraling.
Because that’s what I do when I don’t understand something—
especially when it feels spiritual but doesn’t make sense.

But here’s what I’ve realized over the last few days:

I’m not the same woman I used to be.

Years ago, after my divorce, I created a password that said “F my JOY”—and I meant it.
I was numb. Bitter. Done.
But somewhere along the way, God softened that part of me, and I flipped it.

Same letters.
New meaning: Find my JOY.

I’ve lived by that ever since.
Even made it part of my email signature.
It became a mission, not a mood.

And get this, this same man looked at me in a converstaion and said these exact words.
“It’s because you have JOY.”

He didn’t know anything about my life.
He didn’t know that JOY was my thing.
But somehow, he saw it.

So yeah, maybe I spiraled a little.
Maybe I cried more than I want to admit.
Maybe I told myself 300 different stories about what he was or wasn’t thinking.

But here’s what I know for sure:

I am intentional.
I am joyful.
I am deeply connected to God.
And I’m not putting anyone on a pedestal anymore.

If anything, I’m standing right beside it now.
Because I know what I carry.
I know how far I’ve come.
I know that my tender heart is not weakness, it’s sacred.

No one else has walked every second of my life.
No one knows the pain that used to bury me.
And no one gets credit for the light I now carry, except God.

This week reminded me:
I’m not chasing people.
I’m not waiting for validation.
I’m not letting silence rewrite my story.

If that moment was just meant to wake something up in me…
Praise God.

Because it did.

And I’m listening.

—Kimberly