Karen Baldwin

My life has been full of colorful experiences, including college academic and public relations, housemom, teacher, counselor, mentor, program director and hospitality coordinator…a fancy way of saying in charge of toilet cleaning duty…though it was much more than toilets, I found out.  In other words, I’m still trying to figure out God’s bigger plan…only to realize I live it in the very moments in front of me.

Through my own personal grief journey, I became a facilitator of GriefShare, and eventually created and led Good Grief, a program for children who experience loss.  I’ve coordinated and facilitated several grief and healing seminars, as well as remembrance services.  This was, by far, a true pivot in my faith journey.

My free time is spent in the car, moving my people around town, baking and decorating cupcakes, knitting hats, blasting my spotify and pandora worship lists, thinking about how to decorate my home, taking thousands of photographs, going through thousands of photographs, thinking about the books on my nightstand, watching the news and Hallmark movies more than I ever should, dreaming about far away places and hiking in God’s mountains, cleaning and organizing closets and drawers, rooms and garages, walking the dog, talking to the dog, taking joy rides with the dog…and giving of myself in order to bless others.

There’s been a constant desire for something more.  The journey has been just that…a journey of seeking beyond the moment instead of being present and seeing God’s hand in the smallest of things.  Sometimes I get it.  More than not, I realize it after the moment has played out.  These days, I’m just fighting to find God’s purposes and gifts in the daily, the mundane….because it’s in the mundane that God gives me moments to find his greatest desires within my own heart.  So I’m here to journey on…and keep myself in the present.  I can’t change my past, I can’t determine the future…but I can breathe deep into the daily.

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