By Staci Thompson
Special to The Alabama Baptist
My name is Staci Thompson. I’m 28 years old. We recently moved from Gardendale to Morris. I’ve been married for seven years; I’ve known my husband since I was 17. We have four kiddos: Braden, 6; Kinsleigh, 5; Bradley, 3; and Kendall, 2. We have a dog, Sam, who just turned 7.
We’re a busy family. We attend Gardendale First Baptist Church, and we’re really involved there. My kids love it so much. Anytime they’re doing something, we’re there. And we play ball also. Both of my boys play baseball, so we’re on the go a lot. We just enjoy being on the go.
When I heard, “All this is cancelled; you’re going to stay home all the time,” I thought, “How in the world are we going to be at home all the time? We are never at home.”
At first, I was a little nervous about that. Obviously, more important things were going on to be worried about, but for us and our family, I didn’t have a good attitude about it.
Time together
Then, as time went on, it really turned out to be the best time we have ever had as a family. Being at home — we’ve had the most time together that we’ve ever had before. Playing baseball in the yard, riding bikes, taking walks and eating all three meals around the table together every day turned out to be the sweetest memories.
I know I’m going to look back and say, “That was the best time we had as a family because we were together all the time, making sweet memories together, cooking together.” It really ended up being such a blessing.
But buying groceries was a challenge. We are a family of six — a little bit bigger than your normal family size. A grocery trip for me looks like what a stockpile would be for others, which I’m sure everybody faced — going to the grocery store and not being able to get the amount of food you would normally get. That was a little bit stressful, just wondering, “Am I going to be able to have enough food? Am I going to have enough toilet paper? Diapers? Wipes?” Those are things I’ve never had to worry about before.
Also, we decided to put our house on the market in the middle of a pandemic. We decided to sell our house and move. It was something we had talked about, but we weren’t really planning to do it right now. But we figured, “Why not? In the middle of a pandemic, let’s sell our house.”
For 15 days we were on the market. We had 21 showings in that time frame. We sold it after 15 days and found another house not too far away in that time.
Schooling at home
We were already home-schooling before the pandemic. My oldest just completed kindergarten, so he will be a first grader. We are going to continue home-schooling for now.
I think my faith has definitely grown during this time with everything being so uncertain and things just being new. This is obviously something we’ve never dealt with before; we’ve never walked through anything like this. It can be scary; it can be really uncertain.
But God is sovereign; He is faithful, and He has proved that to us over and over. As I look back on my life — in my short 28 years — I can always see the theme of my life as God’s faithfulness. Once again He has proved Himself through that; He has taken care of us. We’ve learned that we might not know what is going to happen tomorrow, what we’re going to wake up to and see happening on the news, but God is still in control. We’re really just relying on that.
A verse I’ve held on to is 2 Corinthians 4:16 when we are told: “Do not lose heart. Outwardly we’re wasting away, but inwardly we’re being renewed day by day.” Every morning I get up before my kiddos. They are not allowed to leave their rooms until 7:00 a.m. That way, I can have my quiet time with Jesus … taking that time to sit down with Him to be refreshed and be renewed. Then, we don’t have anywhere to go; everything was canceled, so we don’t have to get up and be anywhere during the mornings. But still taking that time to get up early and spend time alone with Him is really a sweet time, even more so when there is no schedule, no agenda to keep.
God is faithful
Another verse is Galatians 6:9, which has always been a verse I love: “Do not grow weary in doing good.” It’s easy to be weary when you look around, when you watch the news or hear something on the radio or social media. It’s so easy to become weary. I really just rely on the fact that God is faithful, and He has proved that over and over. That’s who He is. He’s going to continue to be faithful.
I don’t know how much my children will remember of this time, but in 10 years, I would like to be able to say, “When you were younger, there was a time we couldn’t leave the house because of a scary virus, but look how God brought us through it!”
I hope they see His faithfulness!
EDITOR’S NOTE — As told to Margaret Colson. In Their Own Words is an oral history of Alabama Baptists during COVID-19. The interview has been edited for clarity and space.
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