That time a random visit to a small town changed my life...

Sometimes – maybe most of the time – it's the thing we don't anticipate that makes all the difference.

Twelve years ago this week, thanks to the amazing Tom Bruff, I saw Beaufort, SC for the first time.

It was 2013, and he suggested, at the absolute last minute, that we add a quick “side trip” to the lowcountry after a graduation trip to Chapel Hill.

So we did. More like a portal than a side- trip, we might as well have tumbled through the wardrobe of Narnia. We were in a new world.

The beauty of the landscape changed my soul. A detail of the history changed my life.

163 years ago this week, in 1862, a young enslaved man waited until the sky was dark and the tide was right. Knowing he'd either succeed or die – along with 15 others – he took the confederate arms boat on which he was enslaved and steered it past all the heavily armed forts of Charleston Harbor.

Think about that. Go outside and stand in the dark and ponder this:

What would you risk your life for? What would risk your friends’ lives for? Or the lives of their children? It’s painful to even consider the question.

Before dawn the next morning, May 13, 1862, Robert Smalls piloted the CSA Planter toward the Union blockade and surrendered the boat and its cargo to the Union ship USS Onward.

Smalls liberated himself, the people he loved, the other enslaved crewmen and the people they loved.

I don't know about you, but I can't imagine that kind of courage, or the desperation that fuels it.

I heard about Smalls on that first visit to Beaufort in 2013. I didn't know he would change my life, but he did.

Six years ago this week, in 2019, Trouble the Water - a novel based on the life and legacy of Robert Smalls, was introduced right here in Beaufort. On May 13, we honored him at the Tabernacle Baptist Church and celebrated his story at the Pat Conroy Literary Center.

Book signing at the Pat Conroy Literary Center; Tabernacle Baptist Church; Tom, Jeffrey, and Jeanne.

Now, 2025. Beaufort is home; this is my community; I love these people.

My heart overflows with gratitude.

A dozen years. A cross-country move. Countless moments of beauty and laughter, great neighbors and new friendships and memories. Weddings, new babies. Hurricane threats, a pandemic, illness and isolation. Countless heartaches and fears and losses and questions. Love and loneliness and learning to lean on one another. Learning to let go, sometimes.

This life, y’all – mystery and magic, scary and sacred, broken and beautiful –taking us on the occasional random “side trip” that catapults us into more than we could ever ask or imagine.

Sometimes it’s all we can do to keep breathing. But we do. And sometimes (I hope this is true for you too) I breathe gratitude.

What are the unexpected moments that changed the trajectory of your life?