Sojourner Truth — born Isabella Baumfree — escaped slavery in 1826 with her infant daughter. She walked away from the Dumont household in Ulster County, New York, with almost nothing. No plan, no destination, no money. Just a dirt road and a baby.
A Road to Nowhere
She later described the first hours of freedom as terrifying. She wasn't walking toward something — she was walking away from everything she knew. The road was ordinary. Upstate New York countryside. Autumn. The kind of landscape you'd drive through today without slowing down.
It was on this road — no church, no altar, no singing — that Isabella experienced what she called a direct encounter with God. She described it as an overwhelming presence that surrounded her, not from outside but from inside, filling her with a conviction that she was known and seen and valued. Not by any human, but by God himself.
She Didn't Have the Words Yet
Isabella had been denied education. She couldn't read the Bible. She didn't know theological language. But she described the encounter with a rawness that scholars still study: "God revealed himself to me with all the suddenness of a flash of lightning, showing me that he pervaded the universe — and that there was no place where God was not."
She wasn't meditating. She wasn't praying in any formal sense. She was walking down a road, exhausted and afraid. And God showed up.
From Isabella to Sojourner
That roadside encounter changed her name and her trajectory. Years later, she took the name Sojourner Truth because she felt called to travel and speak the truth. But the call didn't come in a grand moment. It came on a dirt road, between footsteps, while she was carrying a baby and carrying nothing else.
What This Means for You
Sojourner Truth had no Bible, no church, no community, and no safety when God met her. She had a road and her own two feet. If you feel like you're walking away from everything with nothing to show for it, pay attention. That road might be exactly where God plans to show up — not when you arrive somewhere, but while you're still walking.