Love Is In Bloom

 Hello Blog,  It has been a while since writing for the sake of musing on my blog. I have drafts I kept from showing the world thinking about how writing is many times just for me. Now, reflection-wise, these past years have felt like nothing, but continual reflection and growth, prompted by institutions and books I have found on amazon. Mentors both worthwhile and worth learning what not to do from have been on the road along the way. I remember someone saying to me: "Watch other people make the mistakes for you. Learn from that so that when it is your turn to lead you will know what not to do." I have also been blessed with many that show me the right way! I feel like I am in a season of being planted in the fertile soil with the sun shining, just enough rain, and the chance to grow under all the right conditions.  My job has been a Godsend landing where I feel safe and in a community that really has my back. My Masters felt like growing through concrete, but I had some...

After over a decade of marriage, and fourteen years of close friendship it came to my attention recently that Logan had not seen Anne of Green Gables. When telling people my middle name is "Blythe" I literally say you know like Gilbert Blythe! He said the first voicemail I sent him he saved and was so confused by my middle name, but did not want to offend me at the time. I, on the other hand, tended to say whatever I thought! And have not lost that quality...he has gained it more and more. :) I love to say my full name in a message, probably from my Anne with an "e" soul. Her name became Anne Blythe when she married the boy that she competed with most/offended her at first, but became her biggest fan and truest friend. Logan never said he did not know who Gilbert was and as time went by I was my own Blythe anyway. He got his own story!  When this truth outed we spent days using spare time to get through all the movies. By the last one I realized I had been ...

A few weeks ago, I pulled off the highway onto an exit that was several lanes wide. There was a car in the lane next to me that had their hazard lights on, and a woman was outside the car looking distressed. I was in the middle lane during a busy hour with seemingly no way to pull out of the way of other cars but turned on my hazards and stopped. I saw there was a child in the backseat looking at me with a scared expression and I asked the woman: “Are you ok?” She in a distressed tone said someone had hit the back of her car and driven off without stopping.  Here I was stopping, but the cars all around me were getting annoyed, honking and I felt the pressure to move. I said to her how awful that was and looked at the child with an expression of “I see you there.” And felt moved for them yet moved on with the honks behind me and green light. I had this knot in my stomach that I should not have driven off and turned around at the next light. I made my game plan to stop on the street ...

I sat down at my desk, overlooking the beautiful rose that I could reach out and touch if a window was not between us. Pages and pages of a paper with the focal point of suffering stood between me and success. A wall hit like this paper was my limit. I had done so much work and studied so hard the past couple years with just one class to go. How is it that the last five minutes on a treadmill seem the longest? I felt as though time was slowly passing in ironic fashion making the ending drawn out and tiring moreso than the other many semesters combined. I felt a bone deep tired feeling take over and the wind in my sails heavier than light. I breathed in deeply and noticed the Arkansas hills, sky, and treetops, along with rooftops that scattered the valley below my new house. There was no window big enough or beautiful enough to make this place Heaven. In a good way, my hope in that was lost. And then, like an unexpected surprise a spider as big as a quarter crawled onto my window. The w...

     Jesus is seen as the suffering servant who was crucified on the cross in a brutal death and betrayed by his closest friends in the later chapters of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Along with the most extreme suffering, there is a polar opposite side of popularity and glory. He was the favorite student at the temple and wise beyond his years. People listened to him and he confidently stayed steady in the praise. His character of being fully God and fully man did not waver in these times of being noticed for his incredible qualities that grew in their site. He also knew he was going to be rejected and suffer betrayal and death, but none of this changed the way he lived in the moment with these teachers, along with those who loved him. Even with the knowledge of the intensity of suffering to come, he was faithful to grow in favor and love authentically the very people that would turn their backs on him. There was a very distinct moment that his rejection ...

My kids went to bed late tonight. After I had a three hour live online class that is usually in person, I had to tell my kids the sad news: "School will not be able to happen in person for the rest of the school year." Tears followed as they lamented their precious teachers that were hand picked by God to be exactly what they needed this year. I feel robbed losing them in person for the final part of this year. This was a blog I started weeks ago and could not write past the grief and frustration in that moment. I know that there are losses much bigger than ours, but leaving for a pandemic takes a toll on everyone. Like a cat in a pillowcase, I spent the first part of being home fighting and squirming and just plain spastic. We get amazon points every few weeks and I had been using them to build up my work attire and I bought a Maxi dress with short sleeves that was going to be so fun to wear! My hair color popped when I tried it on, the fit was perfect, I had shoes with ...

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 conne...

 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, fe...

“Winds in the east, theres a mist comin' in Like somethin' is brewin' and 'bout to begin. Can't put me finger on what lies in store, But I feel what's to happen all happened before.” -MARY POPPINS        The winds of change are sweeping the Bloom house and there is only one way for us to go, forward. Samuel, Evelyn and I are spreading our wings a little bit more as our season changes from the babyhood years, to the school years. Samuel is going into First grade, Evelyn is starting Kindergarten and I am going to chase a new dream in Graduate Counseling school. I have always said I will do many things in my life, but one of my core dreams was to stay at home with my children until they reached Kindergarten. As I watch Evelyn walk into her classroom on Wednesday, I will  have officially fulfilled that sacred dream of mine.       These past seven years of being a stay at home mom have been my delight, even the ...

     Life as Mrs. Logan Bloom these past eight years has been nothing short of an adventure and delight. Even the hard times have grown us so much that I am thankful for all of it. We have seen God pave our path with miracles every step of the way and grow our relationship even deeper as the years have gone by. I have to attest that Logan's character is a big reason it has been so great. He is so loving, kind-hearted, humble and doesn’t get angry. I am not just saying that, It is like a super power he has to stay calm and kind! At the top of my future husband hopes growing up, I gave myself in all caps this advice: "run from an angry man, marry someone who isn't an angry person." Logan is the opposite of an angry man. I want to be more like Logan.:) Eight years ago we were two starry eyed college kids wanting to go into ministry together, with nothing but hope for the future. Our hope was in God, in his ability to lead us, in his goodness and belief that he would ta...