Since that day in 2012, what has unfolded in my faith walk is so personal and nuanced, it brings me to my knees. I was like anyone else, and I didn’t deserve His grace, and yet He brought me out of Egypt anyway. It’s been 14 years since that first experience, and to this day, God is refining and recalibrating me, so that I can be in absolutely zero doubt of what I am called to do.
I was aware of the connection with God before I ever had a Bible in my hand. He made Himself that clear to me.
On the 15th of April 2016, one of Egypt’s largest sandstorms stopped us in our tracks on the Nile. Nothing on that trip had gone to plan. I knew God was in our midst, and making Himself known to me, but I was not prepared for what came next.
What happened next changed everything. After four long years being nagged by my Muslim business partner and Egyptian tour guide, I reluctantly agreed to take a tour group through the Christian district, in Coptic Cairo. It is one of the most charming, and beautifully ambient areas of Egypt, and it captivated me. There, I encountered the presence of Jesus. I knew without a doubt that He was no myth, or legend — He was a real human being who had walked amongst us. And in one day I had gone from new age agnostic to believer.
I always hated my name. As a child I experienced a lot of mocking, and exclusion. People complained having to write it out, children teased me for being named after a boy. It truly was the burden I never asked for.
It wasn’t until 2020, during one of the hardest seasons of my life, that I came to see it and understand it very differently. Unlike the common interpretation — Peta, from Peter, meaning “rock” — I discovered the Hebrew meaning behind it, which my Mother didn’t know when she decided to add an H to my name.
The realisation was truly humbling. No wonder I felt so burdened. No wonder I was in deep rebellion for most of my life. And no wonder I had a fascination for doors… but in all honesty, God used a tree to call to my soul.
The Sycamore Tree was a tree I was obsessed with as a little girl. In one of her last conversations with me, my Mum shared that I drove her crazy with my love of trees. I would draw them endlessly — on scraps of paper, on the edges of books, in notebooks all over the house. The word itself was everything for me.
It wasn’t until my mid-forties when I travelled to Egypt that I encountered my first Sycamore Tree. It turned out to be one of the most significant trees in the Holy Lands — it was the tree Zacchaeus climbed to get a better view of Jesus. It became the name of everything I do: Sycamore Wellbeing. A tree I had been drawing my whole life, without ever knowing why.
In 2015, we established Sycamore Wellbeing — and we found out much later that the tree that enchanted me as a child became central to everything I do. Ten years later, we found out that the Sycamore was even noted in the Bible — it was a tree of wellness, and in the story of Zacchaeus it was the botanical name of the tree that he used to rise and see Jesus more clearly.
Put simply, how we steward our bodies impacts our ability to get on with what we are called to do. The day will come when we will look back, and not wonder how much more toned our bodies could be, but how we used time as the tool to know ourselves, and work in alignment with what we were created for.
I have found my purpose: to share, to teach, to write, and mentor people at the intersection of faith, identity, and purpose. At the behest of the Holy Spirit, I have developed a Spiritual Gifts discovery tool that helps believers with that endless question: who did God make me to be? This has grown into a comprehensive work of what I have called biblical wellness — removing the idolatry the industry is renowned for, and reconnecting us to the grace of God’s healing through His word and His plants of Eden.
I now lead pilgrimage tours to Egypt with my Egyptian guide Abdou Ashour — the man who, for four years before my conversion, kept guiding and shepherding me to know the God of the Bible. Why? Because that’s the perfect example of how God uses people for His glory. He is not limited by human perspective. He brought me out of Egypt, to bring others through a similar process. It’s not about tourism — the lands I travel are not shallow tourist destinations. This is formation ground, for all believers.
We removed idolatry from our lives to the best of our ability and transformed wellness to worship. Our business has become our ministry. And my voice has returned with purpose. Coming to know who I am in Christ changed everything for me, and that continues to build to this day. The Spiritual Gifts tool I built came out of that — discovering what God had already put in me, and learning to walk in it. That’s what I help other people do now.
If you’ve ever felt stuck between who you were and who you’re becoming — I see you.
If you’ve felt the pull to return to simplicity, rebuild your health, and still walk in obedience to the Lord, then consider this your invitation.