Divine Detours

This is a continuation of the blog post titled, "Continuous Faith: April 2024 Update.” To read that first, click here.

Backtrack to about a month before we launched the online community in January so that I can give one of the reasons for why I was believing that God was telling me to push the pause button on it. One Sunday morning in December, Don Cousins, one of the lead pastors of our church was at our campus to share an announcement that I was asked to photograph.

I sensed the Lord prompting me to talk to Don after the service about what was going on. We have spoken with him a couples of times before. He remembered us when we approached him.

We briefly updated Don on our situation since we last spoke. He was encouraged by what we shared and with all that God had been doing. We told him that it seemed like we were at a crossroads again. Don looked right at me and said, “Write a book. Tell your story.”

Don was not the first person to tell me to write a book. In the last five years, I have had many people suggest this very thing. There has always been good reason for why I hadn’t written one yet and my current reason was that I was in the middle of launching a brand new business. However, I had been sensing from God lately that the time was nearing.

Don didn’t know this when he suggested to me that I write a book nor did I take the time to tell him. I also didn’t share with him a little secret that I was holding onto tightly. I had already started to write a book only a few weeks prior. I didn’t tell Don because I wasn’t confident that it was going anywhere.

I couldn’t shake what Don said to me. He had never read anything I had ever written! It seemed evident to me that God was using him to tell me to take this book writing more seriously. It stuck with Ralph, too because in the car after church, he snickered and repeated Don’s three simple words.

“Write a book. There’s another one telling you.”

Writing has been something I have done naturally my whole life, but I had never viewed it as a gift or a way to earn money. Neither did Ralph. As I’ve shared in the past, it’s just one of the big ways that I process. I didn’t even think I was good at it. It surprises me every time someone compliments me on my writing.

Other than Ralph, I had only told one of my closest friends, Melissa that I had started to write this book. I didn’t even believe that I would complete it. I have started things before and not finished them for various reasons. The only time that I was really taking to work on it was when we were driving for more than an hour, which was rare.

Though we were so close to launching the online business, I didn’t question God’s timing when He began prompting me to start it. I just obeyed. I wasn’t going to worry about how He planned to work this out or IF He was even going to work it out. 

A few weeks after we spoke with Don, the online community was launched and for a couple of months we worked on building it up. As I shared in "Continuous Faith ", it seemed like God was saying to push the pause button on it almost immediately, but we didn’t want to be too quick to stop something that we just started. Finances were tight and this could help.

Our campus pastor, Jeremy Schirle was also aware of what we had going on. We had spent time praying with him at church and regularly updating him. Having been in the corporate world prior and having some experience in marketing, Jeremy offered to meet with us and chat about it. In the meeting, he was insightful about how the two of us were wired. He complimented me on my ability to communicate well on camera and encouraged me to step into that more without feeling like Ralph needed to be in videos, if any. The funny thing to this was that our coach had told us the same thing.

(Our four year old, Connor snuck this photo during our meeting.)

Our meeting with Jeremy seemed to be confirming for us that something was still not quite right with how we were going about the business. A few tweaks and it could be successful. Yet, still, I couldn't put my finger on why it wasn't sitting right with me. We continued to pray.

One of our closest friends and mentors from Buffalo, Curtis and Theresa Hoffman came to visit us for a couple of days. As always, both of them were extremely encouraging, offering their wisdom, ideas and insights. Again, as we would talk about this online community, it wasn’t sitting right with me, but I didn't know why.

“What are we selling?” That’s the question we kept asking each other. We couldn’t seem to be able to fully answer that question for ourselves and others like the Hoffmans. 

After continued prayer and a couple of months of this feeling to not keep marketing for it, Ralph and I agreed to pull the online community ad off of our website. The additional website that the community was hosted on, where we had spent months designing, creating videos with slideshows, and PDF downloads was also paused.

Since this was not the first time God had put a stop sign in front of us, we didn’t question it. Our coach was encouraging through this saying that pivoting is normal. It’s especially common in the world of entrepreneurship.

This was a hard thing to do when we had just devoted so much time and energy into it. Plus, the savings account was continuing to dwindle faster than we could fill it. Ralph was basically breaking even in his stock trading. Though that is very impressive for only learning how to do it a year prior, we both expected him to be making more through it at that point.

Almost exactly a year after Ralph came home, he was approached again by Jeremy who tells him about a job opening at the church. Jeremy was simply being obedient to what God asked him to do, but like us, didn’t know what God was doing through it. Ralph and I prayed about it and decided to give it some time for the idea to settle. Something like that was not on our radar.

Meanwhile, our reserve money was dwindling. Ralph thought he had heard from the Lord for a couple of months to turn in all of our gold that we had purchased over the years, but he was very reluctant. I was a tad nervous about the idea, too.

As the the time went on, Ralph and I were seeing that we were headed for some very rainy financial days. We were realizing more and more that some of the investments we had made as well as the food that we had stored up over the years were to be used for this exact time.

The Lord was providing through the things we already had sitting in our home.

Ralph was obedient and sold all of our gold on January 30. We let the boys hold the coins and explained to them the importance of what we were doing before it was all turned in. God only knows the significance of that moment as our kids watched their father live out his faith and release more things that he held onto tightly.

Selling our gold would cover a handful more months of mortgage payments, which increased by $360/month during this time period. We had no idea how much more time we needed. We just knew we had to take this step of faith once again to find out.

Though the word, “liberty” has significant meaning on a national level, it also strikes me on a personal level as I read the coin sitting in the palm of my hand. Would we be able to have our freedom for much longer to continue to do what we believed God was calling us to do?

There was only one way to find out.

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