Love Is In Bloom

I have felt an intense calling to serve foster and adoptive children and families via Counseling. I’m at the bottom of my career, but feel the weight of being faithful in little, so that I’ll be faithful in much. We ALL have a circle of impact. These are some quotes that inspired me that I hope will inspire you about leadership I learned the past two days at a leadership training: 1. Eliminate the options to turn back when you have a conviction, a calling, vision or task. Put yourself in a position of no retreat, even if it is uncomfortable and costs something. 2. God guides by what he provides, but also by what he withholds. 3. If you commit to WHAT (for me that’s serving foster and adoptive children and families) and consumed by WHY (healing, redemption, hope, seeing families transform etc.) you will make a way. 4. Step into your call no matter how unworthy you feel and change how you see yourself. Step out of fear, step out of doubts and step into your calling! 5. People are af

This morning I woke up with a sense of heaviness, but I was not sure why. Something was stirring in my spirit in a way I felt like I was about to hear something that would take me back to the place of feeling my heart break inside my chest. Today was a happy day, these feelings felt unexplainable, even so they were going nowhere, so I decided to lean into them. I was able to spend alone time with God for about an hour just searching out my feelings and I just said in my raw state: "If there is a way I can give you my heart even more, I will. I trust you, I love you, I do not know why I am in so much need of your refuge this morning, but here I am hiding in your presence and that is all I know to do." I prayed through Psalm 91:" This I declare about the LORD: He alone is my refuge, my place of safety; he is my God, and I trust him." And leaned into that verse wholeheartedly, but I really did not know why I would need to in that moment. It would not be until hours lat

This morning I came across a Blog Post that started with: "Dear Church, we need to talk about Mental Health.. and the eye catching quote on the picture was: "It is ok to have Jesus and a therapist too." The words below were my ramblings that I thought no one would actually read, but amazingly it got a big response and I believe it is because people crave vulnerability, openness and authenticity. I get afraid to be vulnerable like the next person and wonder when and what is right to share, but I really felt prompted to say what I said below. Here is my story (in part, trust me this is just the tip of my iceberg!), coming from an aspiring Mental Health Therapist that is a Christian: My parents took me to a Counselor as a teenager for the first time when we couldn’t get along about my curfew, not a “huge” issue, but it was my world at the time and hard for my dad to let me out past ten when my friends were out much longer. They got Logan and I the present of

 Lately, the same things keep coming to my thoughts when I am not willing them to go a certain way. It all starts with Luke 8:26 and the story of the man who was living by himself naked in a cemetery, unable to be contained by shackles and living a life in isolated darkness. This man lived among caves beside the Sea of Galilee that I had the honor to be able to see with my own eyes last year on my trip there. That spot truck a deep chord in me as I saw it as the spot where a man that everyone feared, ran from, and were repulsed by was sought out, seen, freed, and connected with by Jesus. That man had not truly been seen by anyone in years and his own voice and self had been taken over by demons, enough to fill up an entire herd of pigs. Jesus went out of his way to go to the man that no one else wanted to be around, he truly saw this man that desired freedom and connection. He was healed, freed, and sent back to his family and friends to tell of the wonders Jesus had done. He connected

 I have met the end of myself lately and let me tell you it is NOT pretty. I feel like a little kid who was running and fell on their face mid skip. It is amazing how good I can believe I am in my own strength when my needs are being met. Sleep, food, self-care, friend time, family time etc. when it gets stripped from me in intense measures I become a shell of who I thought I was. Short- tempered, argumentative, angry, selfish, overly sensitive and more start to come out in every direction. It is times like these that I look to Jesus and say: "It is time for you to show off!" This morning, the kids were really hard to get off to school and we are so tired from our recent ordeal, so morning is not an optimistic thing for me right now. It is a heavy weight I try to open my eyes to and then think, naw, please go away sun! Night, I love you, I want you. I have to admit my soul is feeling a little bit of that as well. I feel like I am trying to come back to the land of the livin

It is just one of those nights... The kind of night that I need perspective. The kind of night I need my head to be lifted again. The kind of night I expect a miracle in my heart, because in these weak and broken moments I keep my eyes wide, wondering and waiting... how will you show up, God? I know you will. This year has been marked by so many miracles and the impossible becoming possible. I think about the many health struggles I have had the past eight years and that finally we have been able to put labels on systemic causes. I love that not only are my doctors getting some clues, but in Counseling classes I am learning about how the body responds to emotions and how every emotion has a physical manifestation. I don't like to feel negative feelings, so many times I have ignored casting my cares and instead stuffed them really, really deep down. I know how to be happy, I know how to get back to stable ground, but what I do not know how to do is to process the hard. Ironical

Tomorrow, I will have officially been Mrs. Logan Bloom for nine years, and I tell you what, we have come to a sweet season. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from Robert Lewis who said to think of your marriage as a mountain range, there will be many highs and many lows, but it is a long journey and you never stay in either. When in a low, remember another mountain top is coming. He was right! I  have a theory that newborn baby season of life is one of the hardest on a marriage, because of all the lack of sleep and needs a baby has. And we just kept doing that four times in a row like the crazy people we are, but we sure made a great team. I love that we aren't so much in survival right now, our kids are at a precious golden age and we get to have more opportunities to be around each other not completely tired.  Logan has been such a good partner and friend. I owe a lot of the quality of our marriage to him! I am a lot to handle, I am passionate, feisty