What's your toughest spiritual season so far?

This might be the easiest of the four topics this week for me to cover, unfortunately. That's because I'm definitely in the middle of it right now. I'd appreciate any words of advice!

Twelve months ago (holy smokes, it's been a year already!) my wife and I moved from Kodiak, Alaska, to East Tennessee. We quit our jobs, sold our house and vehicles, and put only 30 boxes on a moving plane. We took 30 days to make and enjoy the drive down.

Two years ago, my wife and I started planning for this transition. We started looking for places to live and jobs to work. I took a sales position that allowed me to work from anywhere, with plans to adjust based on where we landed. We knew it was going to be East Tennessee, but we didn't know what town yet. Before we knew it, we'd dropped everything in Alaska, bought a sketchy van and put 10k miles on it, and ended the trip at an Airbnb in the middle of nowhere, Tennessee.

We planned for a long time leading up to this move. One can't easily do it without massive scheduling! Closing on the house, transferring titles, packing boxes and taking them to the airline, buying a vehicle and getting it ready, checking our passports, planning a route... It felt overwhelming despite the amount of time we gave ourselves. Did I mention we had 3 groups of visitors in the last 8 weeks we lived there?

Despite the organized chaos of moving, it seemed well orchestrated looking back. We didn't have to lower the price on our house or really anything we sold. All of our tickets off the island went smoothly. We had to put our van on the ferry from Kodiak to Homer as the first leg of the journey! We only broke down once on the trip, and considering the shape of the van, that was saying something!

We found a lovely little town that we enjoyed everything about, and we quickly got plugged into a church family. We even found a piece of land in East Tennessee to call our own, despite our high ask of property bordering the national forest and near the Appalachian Trail.

This all sounds great, right? I agree wholeheartedly. This does leave me in a tough spot today though. Everything is taking longer than I expected. It took us 8 months to find land, which means we're still about 12 months from building a house. We have a baby on the way, due mid-November! Super exciting, but also a bit nerve-wracking since I'm still starting my business and living in a camper...

I realize that's all a bit scattered, but so is my mentality right now. I feel so strongly that God led us with purpose to where we are now, but I feel as though He's waiting (or rather, having us wait) for the next phase to take shape. This has been so very difficult for me when I had different plans, and these new plans haven't fully evolved yet.

I did make all of these decisions myself, of course, so I can't blame anyone or anything but me. I have done my best to pray and ask God where we should go in this move (financially, geographically, business-wise, etc) and it can be excruciating when playing the waiting game. I know it will be a great second half of the story, but until then, I'm continuing to edify my spiritual resilience!

What would you do in my shoes? Have you had a similar experience?

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