Jackson and I are celebrating our one year anniversary of living in Tennessee! It’s so hard to believe we have already lived in the land of sweet tea and country music for a year, but I am so grateful and wanted to share a brief reflection.
When we left Colorado, we packed up with expectation and disappointment simultaneously. In a way, we felt like failures for leaving Colorado. It was difficult to explain to the people asking questions of us why we were leaving, as it is often difficult to explain the way God speaks to us because we can’t simply print the words from a small office printer and distribute them to everyone who asks.
We were confident we were following God’s will for our lives, but we weren’t certain.
We can never really be certain to understand the ways of God, and if we did, it wouldn't be a God I would want to believe in.
I want a God who is beyond comprehension and greater than what my mind can fathom. (More on trusting God in seasons of uncertainty here.)
The best way I can explain our move is imagining the Spirit pushing at our backs like a powerful wind. We kept our decision to leave Colorado and move to Tennessee to ourselves for a while, simply because people often misunderstand one another, and for us, I think too many voices speaking into the conversation left us feeling discouraged and misunderstood.
Instead, we clung to what God spoke to us within our marriage, and we were confident that even if we were “wrong” to move, we knew God is redemptive and gracious especially when His kids are seeking to eagerly follow His will.
A favorite quote of mine is, “great moves of God are usually preceded by simple acts of obedience.”
For me, most of my faith has been dependent on taking simple steps of obedience. I am eager to obey God even when I get an answer that isn’t what I thought it would be, or when I think another route seems simpler. I still want to obey and seek God’s will for my life every single time.
We felt a release from our time in Colorado, and similarly felt the pull to Tennessee. The logistics of how we actually went from Colorado to Tennessee were nothing short of miraculous. As we started to move into the calling we felt God had on our lives, He showed up continuously with affirmation after affirmation that we were moving in the right direction.
We left Colorado in a snowstorm in May, drove down the mountain, and kept driving until we made it to Tennessee. We didn’t know anyone in Tennessee. We had never seen the apartment we had signed a lease for. I didn’t have a job. But we went, knowing the character of God and holding onto His promises to us.
It wasn’t an easy transition. We went from a tiny church of ten people meeting in the local library to a mega church in downtown Nashville with Grammy awards. Our weekends in the national forest were traded for weekends at the local farmer’s market. We had to say goodbye to a lot of relationships and a place that we had invested a year of our lives into.
But we knew saying yes to God would be worth it.
A year after moving here, and even though it wasn’t easy, I can tell you again and again it was worth it. We are still waiting in hopeful anticipation for some of the things we started praying for when we moved here. We are still expectant of a great move of God in our lives. We still believe the best way to see God move, is through simple obedience.
I am certain I don’t see the full picture. But I know God is the artist. And honestly, that’s enough for me.
That gives me all of the confidence and faith I need because I know who is writing the story, even though I don’t know how it ends.
Maybe God has asked you to move across the country. More likely, He’s asking you to move in some way figuratively in your life. I think the great moves of God we are all hopeful to see in our lives start with the quiet, still moments. The moments where we wait eagerly, sit at His feet, seek His face and are prepared to move when He asks us to.