Zim Flores - Dare to Bloom: Trusting God Through Painful Endings and New Beginnings

GOD KNEW THE EXACT MOMENT your eyes would trace the lines of this page. He understood the depths of your circumstance before you ever picked up this book. He balanced His weighty promises over the scale of your life when you cried out for help. You are blooming, even now.

And if you're anything like me, you probably didnt get it right on the first try. Perhaps you thought that a life in full bloom would be one without pain. But growth demands it. Maybe you thought youd be a little further along. Or a lot richer. Or much more successful. But God has you right where He wants you.

If theres one thing Ive done a lot of in life, its starting over.

Over the course of our lives, well find ourselves in different seasons. Seasons of hardships, seasons of abundance, seasons of seeking, seasons of struggle. Each has an ordained purpose. As you read about my journey in the following pages, I encourage you to pay close attention to how God is calling you to grow and bloom in your own, distinct way.

In daring to bloom over and over throughout the years, Ive discovered dozens of new identities along the way. Ive called myself many things, pegging my worth to where I lived, whom I knew, and what job I had. And with every shifting season, I struggled to identify the new person I was becoming. At times, it felt like being caught in an undercurrent, not knowing which direction was up or down.

Its a tricky concept, identity. And its one thats made even more difficult when the things we hold as truth change right before our eyes. If theres one thing Ive done a lot of in life, its starting over.

Beginning again.

My story doesnt start with meno ones story does.

Embracing radical change.

Trusting God through painful endings and new beginnings.

My story doesnt start with meno ones story does. My story begins with my grandmother, who lost her husband during the Biafran War in Nigeria. She was left to raise five children on her own. It was a brand-new beginning for her. Overnight, she went from being a loving wife to a widow. And my mom and her siblings went from living in the security of a two-parent home to surviving on one income.

My mother grew up in a small, two-bedroom home in Nigeria with her four siblings. She graduated high school and enteredcollege.Eventually it was recommended for her to marry my fathera common practice in those days. And then eventually after that, she moved from sunny village life in Eastern Nigeria to the brute cold of Mankato, Minnesota, where she knew no other soul but her husbands.

A new beginning.

She would learn in that season how to be a young wife and how to fend for herself, far away from everything that she knew. She gave birth to me in a hospital in 1988, entangled within a web of her own thoughts, and completely alone.

When I was just a few years old, a tragedy happened in our little family that would forever shape the rest of our lives. One night, my mother stumbled upon my fathers hidden gun. Trapped in a marriage that was physically, emotionally, financially, and mentally abusive, she began to plan her escape, which would include my brother and me. By the time my father came back from his next business trip, we were gone.

Though my first cross-country road trip was laced with uncertainty, it was the beginning of my love for exploration. We were a young family trying to hold firm to the promise of reinvention. My father eventually left the country for a new life in Nigeria, and we found hope in the safety of a small womens shelter. We were starting over.

My early childhood was composed of a lot of dissonance, estranged chords, and sustained melodies, until we finally ended up where it all started: Rochester, Minnesota.

Another new beginning.

My childhood was full of adventure. Back in those days, roaming the streets freely was a common respite for my brother and me. As a nurse my mom worked twelve-hour shifts, getting us dressed before school and then preparing breakfast for us before she left for her shift at the hospital. Since we lived in an apartment complex only a block away from our school, we woke up, got dressed, grabbed our premade breakfast, and walked over to our elementary school.