A Thompson Transition
After forty-one years with my feet planted in northern Illinois, last week I boarded a plane to meet a place I will soon call home. In all honestly, I am not nervous – yet. But it is most definitely bittersweet to anticipate not seeing the beautiful people that have filled my life and soul with love, inspiration, beauty, and kindness.
Let me take you back to the beginning of our new journey.
Now don’t worry, we are not going back to my labor and delivery in the blizzard of 1978. But to the beginning of when God whispered an idea in Dave and I’s hearts and minds that both excited us and scared us to death.
Have you had one of those moments?
A moment like when your little car is chugging up the incline of a rollercoaster and you’re holding your breath preparing for the free fall. Not sure if you will throw up or fly like a bird?
Yes - that’s the moment.
That’s the tension we have lived in for over a year. Last spring God began calling us to step out of a church and community we have called home for nearly two decades, so Dave could help out another church as its Lead Pastor.
Did we know where? No. Did we know when? No. Did we tell our kids? Heck, no.
And for the last year Dave has scoured the country, looking, leaning into any open door with diligence, faith, and persistence. Of course, meeting faith-filled and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ along the way.
Questions have filled our heads. Doubt has consumed our hearts. Tears have filled our eyes. Did we hear you right? Is this it? Where God? How God? COVID - like now God? Really???
And it has seemed like we have stared for months at a mountain we didn’t see moving until now.
If you find yourself in a moment like me, where your faith is being tried and tested. Where you are just hoping and praying to God that he will find your faith true…be encouraged.
He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Matthew 17:20
Because the mountain has moved for us and I know God can and will move it for you too.
So maybe you are wondering, well Erin what does your boarding pass say? Or well Erin, get to the point, where are you going?
I will get there.
But I want you to feel, even as I write, the uncertainty of sometimes following God without a known. The tension that comes when you are stepping out in faith.
Faith is believing without seeing. And I know each one of us will live in that tension some time or another. Umm – how about right now with the uncertainty of COVID-19? Living in uncertainty is not a new idea.
Remember how this feels and be encouraged that God’s got this and he’s got you. So you and he have got this.
He will move a mountain. Flood the dessert with streams of living water. He will take something unknown and make it known. He will provide and pull through for you.
Because you are seen. You are loved. Your faith will be found tried and true. Just keep trusting him.
So I hope you will join me on this journey of moving from the suburbs of Chicago to seventy-two hundred feet elevation in Evergreen, Colorado. I will be writing about lessons God is teaching me along the way in hopes it inspires and encourages your journey.
I hope that I can take you into the mountains of Colorado and Lord willing, up the mountain of God.
Invite someone along you think might need the encouragement by clicking the link below and subscribe. Let’s take the story of our lives, submit them to God, and let’s ascend together.
Trusting him,
Erin (and Dave, Cole, Micah, Camden, & Ella)
P.S. We covet your prayers for this transition for our family and for our new church family at Ascent Church in Evergreen, Colorado. Our moving truck pulls in on Wednesday, July 29th and by the weekend, we will call Colorado our new home. More pictures to come on social media so join me there too on Facebook and Instagram - @erinnicolethompson.