By Kayla DeKraker
Carlos PenaVega wanted to try life on his own, but when God changed his and his family’s plans, he realized the importance of surrounding his family with a community of believers.
“During COVID, I watched a lot of sailing YouTube channels. I was obsessed,” PenaVega shared in an interview with Streams Studios. “I remember walking up to Lex and saying, ‘Babe, we got to buy a sailboat and sail the world.’ In my head, I thought it was like the perfect dream. She actually said yes. So we ended up buying this boat.”
As the family prepared themselves and the boat for a life at sea, their plans quickly began to unravel.
“We spent two years fixing this thing up, and I had this dream of just getting off the dock and going out and just being me and my family and sailing the world and making fun YouTube videos,” PenaVega explained.
Every time they were ready to go on their voyage, major parts of the boat would break, delaying their plans.
“I remember being so angry, because this meant this isn’t happening. I’m stuck on the dock,” he recalled.
However, God spoke to him, urging PenaVega to move his family to Tennessee.
“God came into my life and was like, ‘You got to move. You got to get off the boat, and you got to move to Tennessee,’” he recalled. “And I was so I was so sad, because my dream of sailing the world never happened. But I was confident that God was trying to show me something.”
Then tragedy struck, and PenaVega realized why they were supposed to move to Tennessee.
“We went through a really tough time…we lost our fourth kid at birth, little Indy. She was a stillbirth, and it was right when we had just gotten to Tennessee. But the craziest thing, we found a church the week before we lost the baby,” he shared.
Shortly after Indy’s stillbirth, the PenaVegas shared that “The prayers from the community around us have been so sustaining in this difficult season.”
The couple went to church after their daughter’s death, and a powerful and unexpected moment fully opened PenaVega’s eyes up to why God wanted them in a church.
“All of a sudden, I just felt this like bubble of warmth around me. And the whole church, everyone starts coming up. We don’t even know these people. They start laying hands on us. Everyone’s praying for us,” he said.
He admitted that he had “been running away from deep community, probably out of fear of making a deep connection with people and then getting hurt.”
Now, he realizes that having a community of other believers around you is vital: “I can honestly say that community, that that’s probably one of the best parts of life. That was also like a defining moment for me.”
Community is so important. We were not meant to do life alone.
Galatians 6:2 says, “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”
The PenaVega family reminds us that through the mountains and the valleys of life, we need our Christian brothers and sisters to walk alongside us.
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