Uprooted

This will likely be the longest Blog post I will write.

Florida has always been plan B. The thought of moving to Florida was so far away that I never envisioned myself living here. I wanted to raise my family in Kentucky. We had spent 10 years of our lives in Kentucky building our lives, our family, and our friends that the thought of leaving was truly terrifying. I don’t really like change. Change is uncomfortable and unknown.

My husband and I started tossing Florida into our conversations around 5 years ago. He grew up in Daytona and Ormond Beach and he wanted a shot at our children having a childhood like he did. He envisioned taking our kids to the beach every weekend. He wanted to take the kids to the Speedway on occasion, go see some games just like he did with his parents. At the time it was just casual conversations and not really any plans on the future horizon for us.

Our first trip to Florida as a family was when my daughter was three years old. We stayed in Dania Beach in Fort Lauderdale in January. I remember back then it was so much fun and I thought that I could get used to not freezing to death in the winter. We came back home with some fun filled memories and talked some more about living in Florida. Ultimately we put the idea on the shelf and never really mentioned it again.

We settled into our jobs, built our friendships, bought a house, had a baby and we were just living life. We were involved in church. Every time the doors were opened we were there. We were involved in different ministries and I was growing in my faith. I had been praying that God would use my life there. I was open and available to step into whatever God had for me. God began to show me dreams and visions and I would wake in the night with an intercessory call into prayer for different ones that God would show me. I had this call into ministry that I couldn’t run from.

Fast forward to my daughter’s 9th birthday June 2022. She chose a beach birthday vacation instead of a party. So that whole year prior we had saved up all of our money so we could take a family vacation to Ormond Beach. It was on this vacation that I knew in my heart that somehow we would end up in Florida. I could see myself living here and raising our family here. One of the first things that happened that was almost the deciding factor was my son after an hour of being in the sun shine and salty air was no longer sick. Before the trip even began, he got so sick we almost canceled but decided to go anyway. He had bad allergies, a blood disorder, breathing issues and just wasn’t healthy. But in that first hour as we were sitting outside, in the parking lot across from the beach, he had the worst bloody nose he has ever had. After I got him cleaned him up and his nose stopped bleeding, it was all of the sickness disappeared from his body. He was healthy the entire trip.

I left the sunshine state so angry because I knew then that this is where we were meant to be, but I didn’t want to go. I never wanted to speak of Florida again, but guess what, the conversation did not end. All we did for months was watch YouTube videos for months about moving to Florida. My husband threatened to move to Florida without me and my stubborn unwillingness started to drive a wedge into my marriage. I was being an anchor and that was causing a lot of trouble between us. My husband finally stopped talking about it, I just ignored it. I didn’t want to pray about it and I didn’t want to think about it. I had so many fears about leaving Kentucky. My job was there, my family, my friends, and my church. I didn’t want to leave any of it. My attitude was making everyone so miserable that I told my family one night that I would pray about it, and I did. A few nights after we came home from vacationing, I had a dream that I was sitting in a large church auditorium. There was scripture on the screen. The pastor had on a blue jacket, and he had a funny accent. There was a lady sitting in front of me with red hair.

Every one of my fears were met with a solution.

My job- I had worked for the same company for seven years. There had been words floating around about layoffs in my department so I began searching for another position within the company hoping to jump ship before they could hit our department with the layoffs. I had applied for positions inside the company, and I was prepared to leave the company if I had to. I had to have applied for over a hundred different positions, and I couldn’t get a single interview anywhere.

My Church- there is one thing that I will say is that I am extremely loyal. My pastor invested his time and mentored me and spoke life into me when I needed it the most. I was financially invested into the ministry. So to leave, I felt like I was letting him down not just as a member but as a friend. The door opened at my job for my pastor to get a temporary position there. Ironically, we shared the same schedule which allowed me the time to share my concerns about this possibility of moving. He gave me a blessing to go freely on good terms. I will forever be so grateful. If you are ever in the Northern Kentucky area, check out Impact Life Church. This church will forever be my home.

My Friends- After we bought our house, our parking lot group was slowly disbanded to other places to live. Because we were all further away from each other, we rarely saw each other except for on the holidays and sometimes not even then.

My family- I brought up the idea of moving to Jacksonville just causally to see how they would handle it and they surprised me by giving us the blessing to go. Jacksonville has always been plan B if the Florence Kentucky location for my job closed or whatever the case may be.

Things were really moving quickly. The day finally came in my department, and they fired my direct manager and all but two of us on the team were let go. That day I found an open position on the team that I am on now and I reached out to the hiring manager to see if this job was even worth it. By the end of the week, I had an interview and the following week I had the job. They gave me 30 days to get down here.

**Disclaimer- I work in the financial services industry, and I will not give the name of my employer because they don’t like to be talked about, and I’d rather not get in trouble. If you know, then you know.

When God orchestrates something and it’s in His plan and you are willing to go, HE will make it happen. He will put all of the resources in place, all of the people in place. There is nothing about this move that wasn’t a GOD THING. He did it all.

We had one problem left to deal with. We had a home that was very much an active construction zone that we had to finish fixing up and sell. My church family, friends, and my own family helped us and poured their own money and sweat into getting this house ready to sell. Even our realtor was a God send. She came in and told us exactly what we needed to do in the shortest amount of time. God had a buyer for us before we were even ready. My realtor called me while we had stuff everywhere. I mean I was painting in one of the bedrooms, Friends were painting the basement, another friend was laying baseboards, it was very much an active construction zone. My realtor called me and asked me how quickly I could get out of the house because she had someone that wanted to see the house as is. So in 30 minutes everyone was out, I gathered up my dog and we went for a walk. Low and behold this guy name Tim strolls up to me and said he wanted to buy my house. I told him that I didn’t think we were supposed to be talking to each other. You know, typically buyers and sellers don’t have any communication except through the realtor. He told me he knew that, but he wanted to make it a point to know who I was and wanted to make sure I knew who was going to be taking over my home if he was going to buy it. So, I went on my way and came back about an hour later and they were still there. By midnight that night he made us an offer that was above and beyond what we were asking for and we gladly accepted. Our home was sold and it never even hit the market.

Like I said, when God is in it. He makes it easy.

The last weekend before our move, I had another dream. I was in a large field. There was table with everyone who had ever been a part of my life. There was the biggest feast I had ever seen. At one end of the table there were empty seats and a voice from heaven said, “There was more coming” and I woke up. That Sunday, I shared the dream with my church family, and I spoke that not just over myself but over the whole congregation that there was more coming into their lives individually and more coming to the ministry and I left that Sunday with so much peace. The following weekend our movers arrived we packed up the house and packed up our cars and hit the road. We had no plan, no money yet because we hadn’t closed on the house, only the last paycheck and a Verbo vacation house we were headed to. On April 25th we landed in Jacksonville and this time we were not on vacation.

Our host helped us get established and allowed us to use the vacation house address to set up school, doctors, and daycare. On April 30th, we closed on our Kentucky home, received our money, and was accepted to our new rental house in Orange Park. We moved in on May 5th.

God wasn’t even close to being finished. Are you still with me?

A week or so after we moved into the rental house, I realized that we made a mistake and had our dogs medication sent to the old house. I called our realtor and asked if she could give my contact information to the new homeowners so that I could pay them to ship it to us. The next phone call that I received went like this.

Me: Hello,

T: Hi Courtney, are you sitting down? You might want to because you are not going to believe this.

Me: At this point, I will pretty much believe anything.

T: Your realtor gave me your address and you are renting my house that I just sold. I lived in that house while I was in the Navy.

Me: So, you are telling me that we just swapped houses?

T: We sure did! If you need anything just let me know and I will do what I can to help. And don’t worry about paying for shipping.

We hung up the phone and it took me a bit to pick my mouth up off the floor. You can’t make this stuff up. And God just continued to show off from there.

I had been praying about a church. I had reached out to a few places just to make a connection before attending and never heard back from anyone. I was looking at smaller churches in the area, but never did I expect a bigger church to be a part of our future. Pastor Lauren from The Springs Church reached out to me prior to attending and this was before I realized who she was. Mother’s Day was our first Sunday and we loved it. I decided to go back the following week and as I was sitting there in the service, I had the strangest de ja vu feeling. I kept thinking I had been in that moment before. There was a lady with red hair in front of me, I was distracted by the pastor’s accent. He had a blue suit jacket on and immediately I was reminded of the dream that I had long before this move. If that wasn’t confirmation that I was supposed to be here. I don’t know what is.

If that still wasn’t enough proof that I was supposed to be here, then listen to this. We had still been trying to get settled into the life of the church. In November 2023, the church decided to host a Build a Bigger Table event called the Feast of Plenty. It was at this event that we found our people.

If there is anything that I can say to you it’s this. Follow Jesus wherever He sends. It is worth it. He will provide. He will orchestrate it. If God is in it, then He will do it. Don’t be an anchor. Heed to His word and will for your life and just be willing to go.

Does anyone else have a GOD did it story? Share in the comments below. I look forward to hearing from you.