The Story behind the "Why?"

Every leadership training will emphasize the need for your "Why?". When I launched Haven in September 2017, I was solid on my "why", but the next seven+ years would prove to be a sifting and a refining and a deeper push to my "why" than I had ever anticipated. As a visionary with a spiritual gift of faith, I knew what I was called to, but the years in between would prove to be a breaking open repeatedly and an almost daily surrender of my life that I didn't even know that I needed....

BEFORE I could step into all that God has for this vision....

This is the back story....

I grew up a middle child of four on a family farm coming down through the generations that dates back to the original Pennsylvania land grant. In the early years of my childhood, that farm had my Great Grandparents, Grandparents, Parents and my four siblings living in the space of a 160 acre farm. My Dad had grown up with five other siblings on that farm, and our childhood summers were filled with their children, twenty two first cousins, being on the farm to play on a regular basis. Running in and out of my Grandparents house and our house, and everywhere in between on that farm.

Mixed into that dynamic were friends from the neighboring family farm where we were frequently back and forth between farms. We had a lot of adventure in our growing up years from exploring woods and pasture fields, building forts, riding bikes and horses, long walks down country roads, sled riding down huge hills, and jumping out of the straw mow. All of those adventures were accompanied by doing our chores from putting up hay, milking cows, and washing the milkers, babysitting siblings and neighbor kids, helping with canning and freezing, learning how to cook and bake, and gardening. We had lots of deep conversations mixed in with side splitting laughter, a lot of teasing by my Dad, and heart wrenching, soul crushing hard and tragedy that has made us into who we are today.

During those years, I watched my parents work hard and lean in and rely on Jesus to provide for our every need: physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I watched them wrestle with hard things when life didn't make sense, and I saw them rely on God, who was the only One that could make sense of any of it. I watched as my Dad showed up for any one of the farmers in our community who needed help getting crops off while working to get his own crops off at the same time. I watched my Mom go back to work in Radiology when I was about nine years old and work full-time to provide for us. We didn't do a lot of extracurricular activities, just picked one thing, but our house frequently had friends present during our teenage years, open door, just hanging out or even doing chores together.

As a huge family, we all grew up in Christian and Missionary Alliance Churches together, where the emphasis is very much Gospel based and living on mission for the Kingdom, whether that was in your hometown or halfway around the world. I knew early in my teenage years that I was called to be on mission with kids. As I applied to college, I enrolled in Early Childhood and Elementary Education. I was the kid who was never leaving home, who didn't like being away from my parents, who came home almost every weekend that I could during my early years at Edinboro University. During those years of college, my faith deepened as I also walked out deep, hard, life changing loss in several areas of my life.

The college years and shortly after brought a community of friends that did bible study at my apartment with my friends and roomates and I. I landed a teaching job in the school district where I student taught, and stayed in the Edinboro area, continuing relationships with these friends and hosting a regular bible study and hang out time on a weekly basis. As everyone eventually began to move on and into their lives, one of those guys stayed and would eventually become my husband in the years that followed.

As we started our life together, I was teaching with an Early Childhood / Elementary education degree in a middle school eighth grade World History classroom. As student after student began sharing hard stories with me, God began transitioning my calling and breaking my heart for the things that I felt I couldn't do much to change as an educator. God made it clear to me that I was to get a Master's degree in counseling to come alongside kids and their families. At year 5 in my teaching career, I had my first baby, quit my teaching job, and enrolled in Geneva College's Master's in Counseling program. Meanwhile, we had relocated to Mercer County, PA where we bought 19 acres with the vision in mind of having a retreat farm for kids and families. God had given this vision to me while I was teaching middle school.

My two year gradute school program became five years, as I had three children in those 5 years, began working in the field of Early Intervention (birth - 3) and fell in love with working within those early development years again. I would later transition to a Christian Counseling position where I did a lot of marriage work. Those years were filled with raising our boys with an immense amount of help from my parents who gave them the "growing up on the farm experience" and a lot of love. As a Christian Counselor I did mostly marriage counseling during those years and my heart longed for working with kids which was my original assignment. I was working with youth and kids in ministry at our church during those years, but I was wanting and needing to get back to a space within my career path that was working directly with children and their families. In 2017, I stepped out and left Christian counseling, to start my own kids and family based practice, Haven Professional Counseling.

The years following would be filled with God unraveling me, stripping things down, and pushing me to a space of my TRUE Identity and who He has called me to be. There was a process of God calling me into deeper relationship with Him and a stripping away of all of the things that I had in the wrong place. As I've stepped into that space, it has required a pulling away and spending time in the secret place in deep communion with the only One who has the answers and can hold my heart. It has taken amazing people who have come alongside me in true and authentic community and spoken Truth and Life over me, walked beside me, and prayed fiercely for me in the heartbreak and brokenness of my life and my journey to finding the me I was always meant to be, again.

It has required me to set boundaries and say "no more" and "this ends here", to stand in the gap, and advocate for my children and others children, and many nights spent praying, warring, and wrestling instead of sleeping. It has taken me learning how to truly sit in and hold space and hear the hearts of the people that sit across the counseling room from me, leaning in hard and praying, knowing that there is only One who is the true Healer.

It has required me to use my voice, and say things that God called me to step out and say whether it was comfortable or not. The process of sifting has brought with it a long line of people that have walked away. It has required that I lay it all down repeatedly, and be able to sit in the "even if"...

God is still good, God still has a plan, God will provide, God will hold my heart and wrap His arms around me and He will be my only ONE, even if...

In that process, I have seen Him bring true, authentic friendships into my life and begin to bring things full circle that were the desires of my heart. He has brought people back into my life that I've known for more than twenty years and people that I've known for a lifetime. As He does that, He is dropping this dream into place with all of the pieces that could not have been, if there wasn't time and space and healing and knowing WHOSE I am. Living my life fully surrendered to Him, He is bringing back the spaces and margin for me to do exaclty what He has called me to.

Last week we launched a group for women at Haven with Lisa Shaw, while Becky Samsa and myself are simultaneously running a group for their children. We are pressing into healing in community, on the farm, working toward doing some of the things that I was able to do as a kid that brought LIFE and LOVE and HEALING. Full circle, kids full of joy and not wanting to leave at the end of the night.

Only the beginning of what's to come....

God has provided for every single part of this dream in greater detail than I ever could have dreamed up. He has provided the space. He has provided the working farm where He allowed us to land, the people to walk this out with me, and the clients who need what He has equipped us to facilitate. He has already provided for the future space and expansion into all that He has assigned to us through means that I could not have dreamed of. He has set up a network of amazing people, living on mission, and working together as the Church. He has us. That is the backstory,

and this is the future story....

In the near future, we will be hosting our first retreat and intensive where we plant a garden in community, begin equipping our people with the education and resources needed to find that simpler way of life, to know where our food comes from, and how to eat and live for our mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional health with our Haven team coming around our clients, each person working in their own niche' and calling.

Haven has partnered with my long time friends and an up and coming wellness company, SYONA, to bring you high quality supplements and newly launching a collaboration with the one and only Tony Horton, to bring you cutting edge workouts that sync with our rhythms and systems. Included in that line up from Tony, is a workout program called Power Sync 60 which syncs with our monthly cycles, and especially for women, coordinates with "Fast Like A Girl" by Dr. Mindy Pelz.

Our current team:

Not by coincidence, we have just partnered with Kristy Edgar who is "Fast Like A Girl" certified, has a love for all things gardening and nutrition and is available for classes and coaching.

Lisa Shaw, long time friend and colleague from graduate school, has joined our team and is specializing in trauma treatment for women, as well as those who have walked through narcissistic abuse, and the families of those who are struggling with addiction.

Kelli Redfoot continues to be a part of the Haven team as she works toward a specialization in maternal mental health and attachment, sharing her own expertise and experiences within the NICU and all that comes with that.

Deanna Wolfgong will be expanding her music therapy practice with us, as well as working toward her LPC as she works with children and teens.

Becky Samsa continues to be on the team for mental health coaching and has been a great asset to our new kid group, bringing her love of art and children to the game.

Brian Murray continues to be in the wings and jumps in wherever I ask him to, hopefully more and more as we expand into intensives and retreats.

In the days and years ahead, I will be shifting completely to working with children and their families. I will be returning to my Early Intervention roots in the near future in addition to Haven, and specializing in Infant Mental Health, animal-assisted therapies, and prayerfully diving into intensive and retreat work with children and their families.

Full circle, back to my roots, walking in my call....