Last week I kicked this series off with a preface of sorts to lay a foundation for the rest of the series. Today’s post is the first chapter of the series, Moving in Faith: Taking the Leap. As I discussed in my previous post of thee series last week, this is the first phase. It makes sense right? There has to be something that starts your movement in faith.
We often hear it referred to as a leap of faith, right. However, sometimes it’s more of a push, maybe a gentle nudge. So, I have some examples of what this looks like, since it isn’t always as obvious and the “call” can come in many forms. Sometimes it won’t even look like or feel like a leap of faith at first. Other times it is so obvious you can’t miss it.
One thing I have learned, looking back on many of my walks by faith and not sight is that all of these seasons serve many purposes: 1, is the growth and evolution of your soul, 2, to bring you closer to or in alignment with the life you are destined for, 3, refinement, and 4, to lead you back to the truth of who you are.
Last week I mentioned that I have just completed a 10-year cycle. Hindsight being 20/20 I can look back and see how the different leaps of faith that started each of my spiritual growth seasons during this window of time served the purposes I mentioned a moment ago.
Collectively, these different events in my life set me on a path that led to my building and sustaining a healthy lifestyle, shifting my mindset, learning to love and accept myself, and healing my past trauma. I believe all this had to happen in order for me to be able to enter this new chapter or cycle I recently started.
So, let’s look at the examples from this cycle. I am going to share a bit about each and, using these, help show some of the different ways a leap of faith begins, because again, we use this term leap of faith but in reality it isn’t always a leap and it isn’t always obvious that a certain triggering event is actually the start of a season in which you must walk by faith.
- My 10-year cycle started with the ending of my marriage. The timeframe of the triggering event was between April-August 2014, and it was the ending of my marriage. I won’t go into the whole story, but want to share enough to help show how this triggered the first leap of faith in this cycle.
I had been unhappy for about a year leading up to the split. Efforts to repair things were futile and so I turned to God for the first time in many, many years. I told God I won’t leave him if it is your will, God. I don’t want to go against your will, but I don’t know how to fix this. I am terrified of being this unhappy for the rest of my life. Please show me what to do, God.
The following day, I got my answer. It was a horrible day at work. I dreaded going home and I was wrapping up for the day at the office. That’s when the Holy Spirit spoke to me and told me to look into something that would have never even occurred to me or crossed my mind. It led me to the answer to my prayer, to proceed with ending my marriage.
Of course I didn’t realize it at the time, but God wasn’t just answering my prayer, He was leading me into a leap of faith and a season of spiritual growth. Where I was at this time in my life, I would never have seen this as a leap of faith. But, this kicked off everything for me in terms of my spiritual growth.
So, on the surface it just looks like an answered prayer, but it wasn’t, because all that was ahead of me would require a ton of faith and a close relationship with God. I believe the key to this, in this situation was that I was in complete surrender. This serves as an example of when you are faced with a difficult and scary situation and you can’t see a way through it.
- Getting my dream job (at that time; Esther).
This is an example of what seemed like an answer to a prayer on the surface, and it was, but actually accepting the job I’d prayed for was a leap of faith. I had started creating the job in my mind about a year and half before it became available in my reality. It was similar to the job I had just started, but it was on a much bigger scale. It was a promotion and it was the highest level I’d ever contemplated climbing in my career at the time. So, it was something I really wanted, but it also scared the crap out of me.
When I saw the job advertised I was shocked, because it was exactly what I had been imagining in my mind for like a year. It was like “oh my gosh, here it is.” Yet, I was like scared to apply, as if applying for a job and being offered a job are the same thing. Fast forward and I got the job. Almost as soon as I got it, I was almost wishing I hadn’t because it scared me so much.
Fast forward another two years, to when I had to leave the job because I was moving to another state. I receive numerous messages and have numerous conversations with different people on my team, expressing their gratitude, sharing how I helped them grow, how supported I made them feel, and how sorry they were to see me leaving, but happy for me at the same time.
I was floored, because not only did I have no idea the impact I was having, but I spent most of that two years crying from the stress and feelings of self-doubt about how I was doing. Yet, at the end, God helped me see through other people’s words as well as reflecting back on all the years prior, how He placed me there for a reason. - Moving from my lifelong home in California to Montana. This is probably the biggest one, just because of how massive and life-changing it has been. August 14 was two years being here in Montana and I am only very recently starting to feel like my kids and I can truly start settling. In most respects, this leap was more of a push. I did not feel like I had any choice but to leave California. When I made the decision to move, it was toward the end of 2021. I just wasn’t sure where to move to yet.
I started researching different states and came down to needing to decide between two. So, I prayed and I asked God to guide me to the right state for us to move to. About an hour later, I heard the anchor on the news on the TV my mom was watching behind my desk in the den say “Montana,” followed with confirming information about Montana I was unsure of before that.
From that point forward it became a process of me consulting with God on most aspects of moving and surrendering most things to Him. We moved here, sight unseen. I had to leave everything and everyone that was familiar, that I knew. There was no way I could have navigated the move, or the subsequent two years without God.
So, this “leap of faith” was more of a push, but God still caught me. Again, surrender and maintaining a close relationship with God have been critical for this time. - God calling me out of my last job in October 2023, despite not having a new job and not having income coming through my business. (Job, Exodus). This is the last one I’ll talk about today. It’s a great example of a leap of faith toward something you want. I’ve dreamt of having my own business for many years. I wasn’t quite sure what to do, so I started with my blog. Fast forward to 2022 when I formed my LLC, making it more official.
Not too long after we landed here in Montana I started my previous job. I figured, I would continue building my business on the side. Fast forward to seven months into my job and I am pretty unhappy. That coupled with the roughly 50% pay difference in the wrong direction had me wondering what the heck I was doing. By about July last year, I was beginning to manifest a way out of my job.
However, nothing seemed to be working in my business. This continued until August when I started to feel the nudge, or hunch, as Florence Scovel Shinn calls it, to leave my job. I couldn’t see how I could make it work leaving my job considering how my business was going. By September, I could no longer deny that I was in fact being nudged to leave my job.
I finally reached the point where I had to decide to leap and trust that I would be caught, with no evidence telling me it was a good idea. So, I decided I would take the leap, the only question left was “when.” Well, turned out the answer was immediately because the next day something happened to where I was no longer able to wait and I gave notice that day.
Just like the other examples, there was a lot of prayer and surrender leading up to this. In this particular instance, however, God was giving me lots of confirmations leading up to the day I gave notice and in the days and weeks following.
So, there are four examples from my past ten years of triggering events that sent me on a walk by faith instead of sight. You can see from these that it wasn’t always me consciously taking a leap of faith, but they are all situations where I was either faced with a problem or a desire that I had no idea how to resolve or achieve on my own. All of these required me to place my trust in God and move forward when I couldn’t see the path ahead of me.
I will leave it at that for this first chapter of the Moving in Faith Series. Today was all about recognizing when you are on the ledge and you’re being called to take a leap of faith. Join me back here next week, and we will continue the Moving in Faith series.
I would love to hear from you, so please share your thoughts in the comments. If you want to continue the pursuit of faith, fitness, and joy with me, please like and subscribe. You can also find Faith Fitness Joy on Facebook. Instagram, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. As always, thanks for stopping by!