I rested my head against the fabric of the bus seat, watching the lush green hills and valleys roll alongside us as we drove through the countryside of Galway, Ireland. Rivers and loughs on either side of us glimmered like gold in the warm sunlight. Our hearty Irish bus driver turned down his folk music to tell us we were almost to the cliffs but that there was something he wanted to show us first. I still could barely believe that I was in Ireland. From the desire to travel to this amazing country in my heart as a child to sitting right next to my husband on an Irish coach eight years later, it all seemed so surreal. I closed my eyes and breathed in the cool, crisp air of the magical green Island. I had no idea that in five minutes I would step off that bus and have my heart changed forever and connect with God’s heart in a very intimate and emotional way. The whole trip was incredible but it was that moment, when I stepped off the bus in the open valleys of Galway Ireland, which became a defining moment in my faith and calling. It was a moment in my life where my relationship with God became more real than ever.

I was twelve years old, sitting on my parent’s living room couch on a Saturday morning when God first called me to Ireland. In my hand, opened, I held my new favorite book of that time, Nory Ryan’s Song by Patricia Reilly Giff. The book, in short, was about a young girl and her family and friends living in old Ireland in the 1800s and their inspiring story about surviving the Great Potato Famine and the rule of the English. “I want to go there.” I said to myself. “I want to go to Ireland.” Something about that book filled me with such love for those people that I could barely contain it. Their struggles and never-ending courage struck me deep and that year, Jesus planted a small but powerful seed in my heart. He had called me to the Irish. Not to pass out devotionals or knock on doors, but to hug, kiss, laugh and share memories with these beautiful people; to explore their culture and learn their stories. To simply, love them with every fiber of my being.

Fast forward eight years of my life, I still had not gone to Ireland but the dream and calling was still burning as bright as ever in my heart. I had gotten married to my best friend and high school sweetheart in a small and quaint Christmas ceremony halfway through my sophomore year of college and two months later moved from Minnesota to the sun-shining state of California. A few months later, Bill, my husband, and I decided to take a late honeymoon trip. We were, at last, going to Ireland. That July, we boarded the largest airplane I had ever seen and made our way from the land of red, white, and blue, to the emerald isles.

I will never forget what is was like to look out that small, scratched up, airplane window onto the rolling green bluffs and centuries old castles of Dublin, Ireland. It was like coming home, except instead of returning to somewhere real, it was as if I was returning to a dream of some far off place from my imagination. It was more beautiful than I ever believed it would be. Sometimes you imagine a place for so long and so strongly, that you end up disappointed by the reality. That wasn’t the case with Ireland. It was all I had imagined and more! I could feel myself choking back tears of joy as I heard God in the wind whisper to me, “Welcome home, daughter.”

We spent about three and a half days exploring the city of Dublin and its’ surrounding areas. It was amazing to be immersed in the Irish culture I already loved so much, and to find myself loving that place and the people more and more. My husband often describes it as a “happier America.” This is a very accurate statement. The everyday life was almost as modern as our own but the Irish people were always smiling and the streets were never quiet. They were always filled with music and dancing or people showing off their various talents in the arts. It was a truly magical place. On day four, we hopped on a train that took us from the beautiful modern city of Dublin, to the enchanting city of Galway.

It was a small town but people were everywhere. Some were out on their boats, some in the town river fishing for trout, others were all dressed up sitting in cafes with a book or talking with a group of friends, but most were either shopping or dancing like crazy in the town’s center green with their instruments and CD players. What struck me most were the colors! The all the buildings and housed were painted bright vibrant reds, greens, yellows, pinks and some were even covered in murals. It was like a giant rainbow. The old cobble-stoned streets were packed with fire performers, jugglers, soccer players, and traditional Irish musicians. It was like watching a circus except this was their everyday life. This was their reality, and all the while you could hear choir singers or church bells in the background coming from the town Cathedral. I had fallen in love with the city, now I was more ready than ever to see its “old-Ireland” outskirts.

It completely took my breath away. There is no possible way to fully describe what it was like to see those wide open fields and valleys covered in a blanket of the greenest grass anyone had ever seen accompanied by the occasional castle of the ancient world looming in the distance. The best way that I can think to describe the Galway country side is that it looks like something out of a children’s book. Everywhere we looked I felt as though a leprechaun would jump out at any moment or mermaids would come jumping out of the Irish loughs. It was truly a dream. Over the next two days, our especially chipper Irish bus driver graciously led us through the countryside and onto a variety of popular tourist spots. However, there was one place that we went, unpopular to tourists, but that stood out to me above all the rest. Our bus driver, to our surprise, pulled over and said that we were “in luck” having some extra time on our exploration and that there was something he wanted to show us.

Bill and I stepped out of the bus and my heart immediately leapt into my throat. We were surrounded by the same rolling green hills and valleys that we saw before but these were divided by stone walls. They did not look like the most stable of structures but the moss growing on them told us of their, clearly, old age. Within each walled off section stood a stone house. Each house had a firm base still standing but some walls were falling apart and every house had a roof missing. Moss and vines were growing on all of these structures as well. I knew what these were. These were the houses from my books. These were houses abandoned during the Great Famine. The tears welled up in my eyes before I could stop them. I could feel my heart stirring in a way I had never felt before. Bill and I walked up to each of the houses and stood inside some of them. They were so small yet carried so much history and strength. The walls that sectioned off each house were called “Penny Walls” because the English would make the Irish men build them for a penny a day during the famine. That is how many fathers would feed their families. The reason that no house had a roof was because back then the roofs were made of moss and straw and whatever else the Irish could find to keep out the rain. The English would burn the roofs if the family could not pay taxes or after the house was abandoned. Every one of these houses had been abandoned or burned. Though houses were near the ocean, there were other, newer yet traditional, Irish huts built further up the hill. These were beautiful little cottages, some even with stables. I was crying and smiling all at the same time.

I now fully understood why my heart was and still is so strongly drawn to these people. I should mention here that I am almost fifty percent Irish, so this is my history as well. They have experienced suffering on catastrophic levels. The Irish had their land taken from them, their houses were burned, they fought through a famine that killed half of their country’s population and sent even more fleeing for their lives to America where they were still treated as vermin. Yet, they rose above it all. Not only did this incredible group of people rebuild a nation destined to be lost, but they did it with joy. The Irish are the happiest and most joy filled people I have ever met. They have so much kindness to give and they give it so freely to everyone they meet. They have kept all of the old castles and “penny walls” and abandoned homes because they are proud of their history and proud of how far they have come. They know that it is because of that suffering that they became the people they are today, a great and loving folk, proud of their heritage and welcoming with open arms anyone who visits their land.

We had one last stop to make before heading home: The Cliffs of Moher. We reached the edge of the cliffs and looking down more than a thousand feet into the deep blue ocean, out onto the endless stretch of sun-kissed horizon, I breathed the deepest breath I could. I felt I was breathing in the heart of Ireland itself. Behind me, I could see the hills and valleys of the small towns and the old villages and the penny walls that separated them. In front of me I saw nothing but open-ocean and various birds, not flying, but floating and gliding on the wind. I held out my arms and closed my eyes. “This is what it is to be free,” I thought to myself. Here at the edge of a world, I was where I was supposed to be. To see the sunset I was seeing now, I understood why so many of the Irish still chose to stay in Ireland even through the trials, knowing that with the dawn brought a new day and a new start.

As Bill and I sat on the plane leaving for home, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a piece of laminated paper I had picked up on our way out of Keylmore Abby. It was an Irish Blessing that read, “May the road rise to meet you, may the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, and the rains fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His right hand.” I looked out my window and as the earth grew smaller and smaller and the penny walls blurred into the bright green valleys, I felt God’s right hand on my shoulder as the wind whispered, “Come back soon.” And I cannot wait for that day.