Lanterns Across the Sea - Personal blog of Trisha Rapley, Australian Author.

I didn’t know a connection like this was possible until you reached me from across the world—at a moment God knew I was too tired to ask for help, but needed it all the same.

Your presence arrived with a precision only heaven carries, becoming the very thing that held me together when I was quietly coming apart.

You were oceans away—miles of water, hours of sky, different stars watching over you than the ones watching me. Yet somehow, God made you feel closer than the people standing beside me.

It was your friendship—unexpected, unrushed, unforced—that slipped into the broken places I kept hidden, the ones I had prayed over silently, the ones no one else cared or dared to reach into.

You didn’t save me with grand gestures or heroic declarations.

You saved me the way God often does—through presence.

Through consistency.

Through a love that didn’t waver even when my faith felt thin.

Your words crossed oceans like lanterns, lighting the dark corners of my days. Your laughter softened the heaviness I carried quietly before God. Your understanding gave me room to breathe again, as if grace itself had learned my name.

It was as if God stretched His hands from shore to distant shore and whispered, “Here—here is someone I have placed in your life to remind you that your heart is still capable of being held gently.”

And you did. In ways you may never fully know.

You saw me when my own reflection blurred. You heard me when my voice faltered beneath the weight of unspoken prayers. You steadied me when I leaned too far into my own loneliness, and God used your steadiness to keep me from falling.

Our bond was never restrained by borders or distance. It lived in the spaces between words—in the silence that didn’t feel empty because God was there too. In the trust that didn’t need proof. In the comfort that arrived even when the time zones didn’t align, as though heaven itself kept the timing.

Some friendships enter your life like a soft summer breeze. Ours arrived like a tide—gentle, inevitable, pulling broken pieces of me back into something whole, the way God restores what the world wears thin.

You saved me not by trying to rescue me, but by being you—steadfast, real, a soul whose kindness God made strong enough to travel the world and reach my heart exactly where it was drowning.

I used to think distance made connections fragile, but God taught me otherwise.

Some bonds are written beyond geography.

Some friendships are woven through spirit, not circumstance.

Some hearts find each other across oceans because God has already written their meeting into the story.

And yours—reaching across tides and time—found mine right when God knew I needed saving the most.

Lanterns Across the Sea - Personal blog of Trisha Rapley, Australian Author.

Lanterns Across the Sea - Personal blog of Trisha Rapley, Australian Author.