When your heart says yes, but it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t mean your heart was wrong. The right path is not always the right destination.

Our sweet car, Aimee, finally gave up. We knew it was coming, so we weren’t shocked – and the timing actually works out to be just about perfect. So we found ourselves out to buy a new car – a process that fills me with trepidation. I’ve been through it a few times, and rarely has it been anything but stressful and terrible.

But I wanted the joining of a car to our family to be a fun, enriching experience.

We invited Spirit into the process. Before Pace and I went to the first dealership, we held hands and asked Spirit to guide us to the right car. And then we started the hunt – at Carmax, where they had a few cars on our yes-list.

My job in this process was to fall in love with a car. Pace’s job was to make sure we could get it without tanking our financial security. And Dru’s job was to pretend to be mute. (This is because car salespeople will use a child against parents to make a sale, and I won’t be having with that. He did a good job of pretending to be mute, I must say.)

We met up with Jose, who took us out to see a little grey Toyota Yaris we’d seen online.

I did my job – I totally fell in love with the Yaris.

Pace did her job – she figured up the finances and decided that this car wouldn’t upset our financial situation.

Together, Pace and I checked in with Spirit. Is this the right car?

We both got a clear yes. We got another clear yes from our hearts, for good measure.

All that remained was to get approval for a loan. Jose took us to his “office” and we got the process started. It was 8:45pm, and they closed at 9pm, but I figured that any car salesperson worth his salt would stay late to seal a deal.

We worked things out with me on the loan, but we couldn’t get an easy yes because I’m self-employed. There are a kajillion hoops for me to jump through, many of which I can’t even fit through, so we were feeling stuck. Jose left us sitting in his office-cube for ten minutes while he wandered off to do gods-know-what, and while we waited and waited we got more and more frustrated.

When Jose returned, Pace asked him to run the loan application under her instead – her credit is very good, so she can get a loan with few-to-no hoops.

Jose refused.

He said they were closed (true, but only because he left us sitting for so long), and that we needed to come back the next day to finish the process. We sat in silence for a moment. I was stunned, Pace was fuming, Dru was still pretending to be mute.

We left.

We talked about the process, how Jose had seemed so nice until the end, when he suddenly got all jerky. We talked about how weird it was for Jose refuse to continue the selling process because his workday ended – especially since he gets paid on commission and is allowed to work late if he is with clients. We talked about how stressful and unpleasant the process had become for us, and how we were no longer feeling good about this car.

But our hearts said this was the right car!

Yes.

And our hearts were not wrong. We were on the right path, but this was not the right destination.

We elected to look into a few more cars before making a final decision. We found that Carmax’s prices were actually quite high. We found comparable cars for lower prices with less mileage.

We checked in again, and our hearts said to keep looking. To let the Yaris go.

So we decided to walk away from the right car.

Our hearts had said yes. Spirit had said yes. We were 100% sure, until the moment when we changed our minds, that the Yaris was the car for us.

And you know what?

We found an even better car, at an even better price, that we love even more. Our salesman, Tomas, was incredibly sweet. He talked constantly, lovingly, proudly about his children and his wife. The lender, Mike, was incredibly sweet. He cut jokes with us and showed off his super-fancy watch and talked about his teenagers. The dealership was even delighted to have Dru climbing in and around their super-fancy brand-new show models.

The entire process was pleasant and fun and good.

Our hearts said yes here, too.

Spirit said yes here, too.

And we came away with a car that we all love, that will last a ridiculously long time (knock wood!), and that doesn’t rip holes in our financial security.

Sometimes you don’t get the whole story from your heart. Sometimes Spirit gives signposts without giving the whole journey. A yes can mean “yes! right track! keep going!” It can mean you’ve got the right idea, that you’re heading in the right direction.

The trick is to keep asking: “how about now?”

When we got home that night and asked again, “Is the Yaris the right car?” we got a clear no. Both of us. Clear as day.

It doesn’t mean we were led astray the first time. It doesn’t mean Spirit hates us or wants us to fail. It doesn’t mean our hearts are untrustworthy.

It means we were on the right track, and we needed to keep going.

This is what happened to me.

I got a clear yes from my heart and from Spirit to be a surrogate. And then I lost my uterus and my ability to bear children at all.

And for a long time, I felt exactly like Spirit hated me and wanted me to fail – like Spirit set me up to fail, in fact. I felt like my heart, my intuition, was completely untrustworthy.

But what I lacked then was the clarity to ask “how about now?” along the way.

My path veered, while I continued walking in a single direction. I didn’t check back in until I was in Brigid’s Well, wherein I had a ping that I might possibly be heading in the wrong direction. A ping, I might add, that I ignored so hard and buried so deeply I didn’t even remember it until much later.

But I know now, if I had asked “how about now?” I would’ve gotten a different answer. I would’ve gotten a nudge in a direction I wasn’t ready to veer. So I didn’t ask. It was easier to resolutely walk in the original direction.

Easier until I ran face-first into a wall.

My desire to be a surrogate supplanted all connection to myself or to the Divine. I might have had an inkling that I wasn’t going the right way anymore, but I didn’t want to hear it, so I didn’t double-check.

And then when I hit the wall, when my uterus collapsed, I blamed Spirit and my intuition and fell into a deep sinking depression that I’m still recovering from.

Oh, the fragility of humans. The beauty of us. The silly, sweet, stubbornness of our will.

It is only when we accept that we are not in control that we can lean into our intuition. When we come to realize that steering ourselves means constantly checking in with something much greater than ourselves – that is when we get the clearest guidance.

Ask every day. “How about now?” Be open. Be willing to be surprised. Be curious.

Because the journey will surprise you.

The journey will lead you to places you never expected.

You will see and do things you never thought you would see or do.

What is right today might be not-quite-right tomorrow and totally utterly wrong in a week.

And even so, if you are in constant contact with your heart and with Spirit, you are on the right path.