Plant us in soil we can grow.

Two years ago, I took a step of faith that ended up causing a chain of events that I wasn't expecting. I shared in a previous post about how faith is an action. You have to wait for God to reveal how to act. It was called the Stepping Stones of Faith. I want to share with you some of those stones so you can see how vital the willingness to take the step is and how it can lead you somewhere you don’t expect and still be perfect.

When I started writing this, I went back to my childhood, and I might still share some of that with you, but I think going back to Hanukkah 2016 is a better place to start. At the time, I was married and pregnant with my fourth baby. I was seriously hurting and doing my best not to show it. To keep that brave face on. The truth is, I was scared about where we were in our marriage and where I was as a mother.

We were gifted the opportunity to attend a Hanukkah conference and hotel stay. I was excited to go for the sake of worship; I would get some face-to-face time with long-distance friends and for my kids to see what this walk was supposed to be like. To be in a community with like-minded people. So off to Nashville we went as a family. While there, the speakers delivered messages that spoke to my heart and reminded me to whom I belonged. It gave me space to work through my areas of hurt. I felt that gentle tug of the Spirit, shifting my mind and heart toward allowing God to move us to be part of the community. We were on an island where we lived, and we needed more. I prayed for this daily, for God to move my husband's heart the way he did mine. After we went home, I tucked the treasure of a potential future away in the crevices of my heart. I worked on having peace about where we were. Three years passed, our family grew, and my heart continued to be unsettled. That feeling that you weren't following God but didn't know how to, given the circumstances, was weighing me down. One of the challenges I lived with was being married to someone who wasn't getting the same messages from God as I was. So I stayed quiet. I was waiting on God to show him or to show me something different.

Then the unexpected happened, and I found myself in the divorce process. It was the first time I felt the hand of God in my life moving me in the direction He wanted me to go. The covering of man was removed to allow for the covering of God to lead. It had been so long since my kids and I had fellowship. My heart was tender and raw, and I wanted to experience God on a new level. I also knew my kids needed that as well.

It was almost Hanukkah season, and I remembered that conference in 2016. I knew there was another large gathering with many teachers, and there would be worship. I wanted to go, but the time off work and the cost made it seem unreachable. I kept praying, and I invited others to pray with me. Not only did I get the time off work, but the provision also came. So Hanukkah 2020, I went to East Tennessee with my kids to experience God. I wanted us to heal, and I asked Father to light my path. It was a step of faith.

While there, the message was about how God is gathering his people back together in the community from being scattered. I felt the burden of a life that wasn't supposed to be. Something was said that hit my heart so hard that I knew what God was telling me to do. I knew fighting for my marriage had ended, but fighting for my kids was beginning. The idea that they could be dying on the vine motivated me to let God know I was ready for whatever He had for me. I opened myself up to receive whatever He had for me. The message was clear. Move before the Feast of Sukkot the following year. That was less than a year later. At the time, my divorce was less than a month from being finished. This leading was exciting but also unbelievable.

Before I go on, let me explain the year that led up to this point. I would sit across from my therapist with many questions, fully aware that my childhood contained trauma at different ages. I wondered why my husband struggled so much as an adult. We both had very similar trauma at the same ages. It was like a mirror. The only difference was that he was raised in a two-parent household, as I was raised in a single-parent home, and most of my adolescence had an abusive stepfather. So why was I not struggling the same way?

My parents divorced when I was young, and both lived differently. I was raised in what I consider an amazing way, and to others, it might seem odd to hear someone say that. It gave me balance in my understanding of the world. Each parent with their own values, and through that, I developed my own authentically.

My mom was an unbeliever, and after the divorce, she did what most newly single women did and started reinventing herself. One way was to attend church because she felt her child needed to attend church as well. So from a very young age, all I knew was church, off-site Bible studies, testimonies, and the culture of serving. I was the only child of a single woman but was surrounded by families with fathers, stay home moms, and grandparents. It was a community of ice cream socials, potlucks, youth trips, and food drives. I had the best life. I didn’t know anything else. I also had no idea how this upbringing would end up being the driver to where I am now.

My therapist said the most significant difference between my childhood and my former husband's, was the communities we were raised in. I had the perfect environment to develop healthy attachments because those things weren't modeled for either of us in the home. However, they were modeled for me outside of the home. This is the main factor in many of my core values and principles. God had me right where He wanted me my whole life, even in the painful parts.

I am grateful for this and realize that my life has come full circle. I had an opportunity to do for my kids what my mom did for me. Except she had no idea why she was doing it or how it would change the trajectory of my life, my kid's, and even her life.

I was determined to find a community of like-minded believers for my family. I would try to visit churches on my kids' weekends at their father’s house. Unfortunately, our metro area was under a shutdown due to a virus they were trying to prevent the spread of. Churches either weren’t meeting in person, or they were limited contact to make connection impossible. God kept shutting the doors. Except for the one I had not tried yet.

After returning home from our trip to Tennessee, I returned to just doing life as I had been. The divorce was final, and I took the time to process that ending and mining my kids' hearts as they moved forward in a new reality. We were all grieving. I still hung on to the message God gave me but was unsure what would happen and even wondered if it was my desire and not God's to have me to move, I needed a way to earn income, as I had a perfect job in my city that I would have to leave. I looked at my options and did not find any.

A couple of months later, something significant happened. A door opened for me to continue in my role at my current job. This was when I knew God was getting serious with me. So each day, I paid close attention to the rest of the details. I had to work out the details of shared custody and my house. As time went on, these things worked out. We had agreed upon a long-distance parenting plan, and the house went on the market immediately. I finally told the kids. I knew they had enough heartbreak for one year, and I was giving them more. To leave their home, their normal, was heartbreaking to do to them. I had to trust God with this detail as well.

Then the house sold. The stress of finding a new place for us in East Tennessee was overshadowing everything else. I had a local realtor helping me with video walk-throughs and trusting her feedback. I made an offer (not my first one) on a house, sight unseen, during a time when people offered thousands of dollars over asking with no contingencies. My offer was for the asking price and with contingencies. Their realtor said they were expecting fifteen other offers. I prayed without ceasing. Surprisingly, my offer was the only one that came, and they accepted it with no counter. While I was willing to walk through this door, what was on the other side of the threshold was not visible. I knew God would not let me fail. I trusted that. Then came moving day, and there was no time to grieve the loss of a house we loved for an unknown future. But we were doing it together. We packed up the biggest moving truck I could find; we emptied our family home and pulled out of that drive one last time, unsure of what the future held.

I sit here in awe of what I did to get to this point. My tears of gratitude blur up the screen as I type this out for you. We moved into our Tennessee home three days before the Feast of Sukkot. We spent our first Sukkot with our new community, and what started as sadness and anger for my kids ended with a new beginning that I had been praying for many years. The joy that can come from the pain of discomfort while taking those steps of faith is worth it all in the end. We are back in the Hanukkah season, and we have what I had prayed for all those years. My kids are grateful that I was willing to follow God and show them what was possible when you trusted the One who knows things we do not. Someday they will come full circle, and I hope they remember this trial and use it as their plumb line to walking out their faith.

My life is a slow walk between two gardens. I pick the four only flowers to replant in new soil, and now I step into the garden of my future that is full of seeds ready to sprout and bloom into the blessings meant for my life all along. I have my children by my side, and my faith will carry me forward. The darkest moments revealed so much that is inside. It’s hard, but it’s worth it if you press in and let God take you through to plant you in the soil you can grow.