How Far Should a Leap of Faith Take Us?

Posted January 11th, 2010 by kerri and filed in small house living
24 Comments

Sunset for blog

What is faith?

That’s a ques­tion my writ­ing col­league, Jennifer Haupt has been ask­ing on her blog.

Jennifer says faith is “dar­ing to do some­thing, dar­ing to believe, regard­less of the consequences.”

My def­i­n­i­tion comes pretty close. For at least the past three years, faith has been about watch­ing the signs and mak­ing moves I wouldn’t have ordi­nar­ily taken.

It was on faith that we made our move to The Little House.

Dale and I aren’t gam­blers, well, good ones any­way. A cou­ple of losses on bad invest­ments and a cou­ple more misses on what would have been home­runs in our younger years made us a lit­tle gun shy.

Even our one trip to Las Vegas remains the “trip from hell.” Nothing went right from the moment we stepped off the plane, least of all the gam­bling part.

So when Dale came home from work on Friday and told me that for the sec­ond time in as many years he had been pulled aside by his bosses and told he was being laid off due to the econ­omy, I began to do more think­ing on faith.

In the past two years we’ve weath­ered (pun intended) the chal­lenges such as the tor­nado that hit our area, the record flood­ing, and the dev­as­tat­ing ice storm that left us with­out power for 8 days.

We han­dled our grief and guilt over the fact our two elderly cats just couldn’t han­dle the move and we lost them soon after.

We’ve tried to move past the fact my aunt’s hus­band got angry and has refused to speak to us for the past two years, mak­ing our iso­la­tion from fam­ily here seem even more pro­nounced, espe­cially on the holidays.

We’ve even adapted to a life chang­ing med­ical diagnosis.

I’ve even come to embrace John Lennon’s words in the song “Beautiful Boy.” Life is indeed what hap­pens to you when you’re busy mak­ing other plans. Not every­thing has went accord­ing to plan (well, almost noth­ing) and most of it has also pre­sented new oppor­tu­nity that we couldn’t have imag­ined. That’s part of Living Large.

So why is this job thing test­ing my faith?

Besides not being huge gam­blers, we’re also not into drama. I enjoy things being on such an even keel that for the 17 years we lived in our house in the city, I only rearranged the fur­ni­ture once. Prior to our move to The Little House, my biggest leap of faith was leav­ing the secu­rity of a 9–5 job for the life of a free­lance writer.

So, leav­ing the com­mu­nity in which we grew up, a job that had pro­vided for us for 23 years, and our friends and fam­ily was def­i­nitely a leap of faith.

We waited to take the leap until our house in the city had dou­bled in value. Even with my hav­ing a list of solid clients, our house sold and sav­ings secure, Dale didn’t make his final move and resign from his job until he knew he had landed a posi­tion here (and his first job here did pay well above what he expected to make in this part of the country).

But then came 2008 and the eco­nomic meltdown.

There are the bumps in life and then there’s the great big craters that threat­ens your very existence.

For the past three years, we’ve toasted away the old year on New Year’s Eve, renew­ing my faith that we could have just one year to enjoy our new life here with­out the drama.

This year, I got to hold onto that hope for a mere 8 days.

Should faith be about “dar­ing to do some­thing, dar­ing to believe, regard­less of the con­se­quences,” or is there a time when you should start con­sid­er­ing the real con­se­quences, and con­tin­u­ing to have faith just becomes fool-hearty?

24 Responses to “How Far Should a Leap of Faith Take Us?”

  1. Sandra says:
    January 16, 2010 at 8:49 pm

    Will say a pray for Dale to find a job. I know what you are going thru. Been there. Say a pray for us to sell our house. Want to move to Bull Shoals soon!

  2. MarthaandMe says:
    January 13, 2010 at 9:14 am

    Oh no, I'm so sorry to read about Dale's job. I hope he finds some­thing else soon. It's scary, but you seem so resilient to me and you've already down­sized your life so much that I think you're going to find a way to make it. I'll cross my fin­gers for you and I look for­ward to the post when you announce he found another job!

  3. Polly says:
    January 12, 2010 at 11:41 am

    First of all, ugh, sorry you're deal­ing with this. But I so appre­ci­ate your thoughts about faith and the ques­tions you posed. Really enjoyed this post.

    I don't think faith is ever fool­ish. I don't think it's ever a waste of time. But I also don't think it means you sit around and wait for things to hap­pen. I think faith is the belief that we don't HAVE to have it all fig­ured out. That there is a higher energy guid­ing us, whether we see it or not, and with faith, we don't need as much courage because while the process is painful and hard, we trust that in the end we will end up where we are sup­posed to be. I think you can "dare to do believe" and still respond to the real con­se­quences. I think too, that this isn't always easy.

  4. theshebearofeleven says:
    January 11, 2010 at 11:19 pm

    Come on by my blog and grab your blog award. I've really enjoyed read­ing your blog and wanted to thank you for all your posts.

  5. Heather says:
    January 11, 2010 at 10:08 pm

    I am very sorry to hear this Kerri. My hus­band and I have been through this many times (3–4 times for him, once for me). I have heard it said that often these things present many new oppor­tu­ni­ties, such as start­ing your own busi­ness, etc. However, it is still very hard to go through. My hus­band ended up doing a com­plete career change and will be a jour­ney­man car­pen­ter (from doing chem­i­cal analy­sis) at the age of 47. He is the old­est in his class but he enjoys being around the younger fel­lows and does some mentoring.

    I am a plan­ner by nature and would hit the finan­cial books every time to see what we could cut out, once again. I always found some­thing and it always worked out and God always pro­vided for us. Try not to worry and enjoy the extra time you have together and take each day on its own for what it is.

    "… Now faith is the sub­stance of things hoped for, the evi­dence of things not seen."
    Hebrews 11:1

    Take care of your­selves. Heather

  6. Rae says:
    January 11, 2010 at 9:01 pm

    My mother-in-law used to tell us in times of immense stress that "every­thing hap­pens for the best" (she and Voltaire). Oddly enough, look­ing back, because you don't see it at the time, it turned out to be true. New oppor­tu­ni­ties almost always came out of disaster.

  7. S.A.B.L.E. says:
    January 11, 2010 at 4:04 pm

    Sorry to hear about Dale's job loss. Hang in there. All the best.

  8. Susan says:
    January 11, 2010 at 2:30 pm

    Really sorry to hear about Dale's job loss…but keep the faith. I pray some­thing comes along soon for him. Our one son was out of work for almost a year with just odd jobs here and there. He is finally work­ing fulltime.…he made with the help of fam­ily but only because we offered help, he did not ask for it. Pride thing. He would just say "It is what it is" Fortunately he is not mar­ried or has any kids.
    Like the old say­ing "when life hands you lemons, make lemon­ade" some­times there is just not enough sugar. ;)
    Anyway my thoughts and prayers are with you and Dale

    Worry looks around
    Sorry looks back
    Faith looks up

  9. olivia says:
    January 11, 2010 at 2:20 pm

    Just won­der­ing what your options are? That is: what are you considering …?

  10. Kathleen Winn says:
    January 11, 2010 at 10:27 am

    Kerri– I am so sorry to hear about Dale's job– that must be so dis­heart­en­ing. I will be keep­ing the two of you in my thoughts and hope that he finds some­thing else soon.

    As for faith– even though I know that you gave up just about every­thing to make your move to the Little House– I think you did it on more than faith. You have never struck me as fool hardy, even when mak­ing a life– chang­ing move that most peo­ple wouldn't even consider.

    You and Dale spent many week­ends and vaca­tions at the Little House before mov­ing there, so you at least knew that you loved the area and that it pro­vided the peace and soli­tude nec­es­sary for feed­ing your writer's soul. You planned and pre­pared finan­cially by get­ting your house mar­ket– ready, then sell­ing it at a good price. I know there must have been a mil­lion dif­fer­ent deci­sions you made to get your­self and Dale in a good posi­tion before mov­ing. I think faith is an impor­tant com­po­nent– but only one of many nec­es­sary for leap­ing into the unknown.

    No mat­ter how well thought out though, life does have that way of throw­ing ringers into our care­fully con­structed plans. But– it seems to me that your resilience, intel­li­gence and deter­mi­na­tion have kept the two of you afloat for quite awhile now, and I have com­plete con­fi­dence that you will weather this lat­est storm with your usual style and grace. This ter­ri­ble econ­omy is hurt­ing even peo­ple who have lived lives of cau­tion and extremely con­ser­v­a­tive finan­cial choices.

    Hang in there Kerri– your strength and faith have inspired me so much, but I know that your suc­cess as a writer has come from a much less abstract place– a place of hard work, deter­mi­na­tion and a strong spirit. You are your mother's daughter.

    Love,
    Kathy

    • kerri says:
      January 11, 2010 at 10:52 am

      Thank you, Kathy. Your words are inspir­ing and you're right, I am my mother's daugh­ter. However, there comes a time, a cross­roads of the faith you've had in your dream when you have to take seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion of your future. That in addi­tion to wrestling with your cred­i­tors on the basis of that faith. :)

  11. Alexandra says:
    January 11, 2010 at 10:27 am

    Sorry to hear about Dale's being laid off! This econ­omy is so much worse than the press lets on. I like to think the tri­als and tribu­la­tions lead to some­thing bet­ter, so I do not think you should look back with regret and need to keep the faith, although some­times the by-ways are a lot longer than one could ever imagine.

  12. kerri says:
    January 11, 2010 at 9:00 am

    Life does indeed take many turns. I've been reach­ing for so long, though, my arm is get­ting tired! :)

  13. Mary Nida Smith says:
    January 11, 2010 at 8:24 am

    Life takes many turns. When we are handed U-turns, we always hope to get passed by hang­ing on to faith that things will get bet­ter. Yes, we'll always doubt. If we want to con­tinue going upward, we reach for faith.