Immersed in the Journey by Kari Bulman
February 15, 2017
My name is Kari Bulman and I am a pastor at a small church in Gig Harbor, Washington. I am also the wife of a lead pastor, I am the mother of four amazing and crazy children, I am a friend and most importantly I am a daughter of the most high God. I grew up in a Christian home and accepted Jesus as a young child. However, I didn’t really own my relationship with Jesus until I was fifteen. By the age of sixteen, I loved serving and singing at church and I was drawn towards the ministry. Somewhere deep inside of me I knew that I would spend my life serving the Lord. When I went away to college, I went to a Christian school and my major was Youth Ministry. Everything was on the right track. I was going to go to school and meet my husband there, of course. I was certain that I would get married shortly after graduating and, after stepping into ministry for a season, my husband and I would begin a family…well, that was my plan. The next twelve years entailed the Lord totally redirecting me and me making a whole slew of mistakes. It was a mixed bag of me following the leading of the Lord and screwing it all up at the same time. Is it just me, or are the twenties just a rough time in life for everyone? When I look back at my twenties there is nothing that I would like to relive about that time period, except maybe my figure. I would like to combine the experience and understanding that I have right now and my twenty-year-old body…yes, that's a good plan! In a perfect world, right?
All joking aside, the road to the ministry for me has been an exciting and tumultuous journey. I started off with such an idealistic view of ministry life. Then, as we started walking the ministry road, I started seeing the toll that it took on families. I have seen far more infidelity in the ministry than I ever wanted to and I have seen kids grow up in the pressure cooker of ministry and grow up to want nothing to do with Jesus and His church. By the time we were in full-time ministry and had our little family growing, I was developing a rapidly growing fear of the side effects of ministry. Don’t get me wrong, I still loved the Lord and I still wanted to serve Him. However, I had a big fat line drawn in the sand. I wasn’t going to get sucked in. I wasn’t going to let my kids get hurt. I wasn’t going to get close enough to get burned. Mama bear had established her territory and she wasn’t budging. I felt completely justified in this thought process and this fear of ministry life began to grow. It grew and grew quietly under the surface until one day the Lord showed me that I was allowing this fear to direct my path and not Him. I had allowed fear to take root and as it took root it began to connect and intertwine itself with other broken places in my life and unbeknownst to me it was slowly drawing me to the place of being crippled by it. That’s how the enemy works, though, isn’t it? He takes something that seems good, something that seems justifiable, and before you know it, you are so completely tangled up in it that you can hardly move.
In came Jesus, because I was still His, even though I was a tangled up broken mess. He met me right where I was at. I was starting to feel stuck, but I was completely oblivious to how stuck I truly was. He began to show me this big messy pile of intertwined brokenness that was inside of me and that scared me even more. I went through an intense year of counseling and accountability with a trusted sister in the Lord who was also being set free from fear. Step by step, the Lord healed me. As I unclenched my fist from around my fears of what ministry was going to do to my marriage and to my family, the Lord began to show me that there was more that He had designed for me to do. My fear was preventing me from being who He had made me to be. If I was truly going to take hold of His calling on my life, I was going to have to let go of this fear and trust Him. Today I can say with certainty that He is who He says He is and He does what He says He will do…I have lived it. He is my beloved, my redeemer, my healer, my restorer and the list literally goes on and on! He is everything and He is sustaining me on this journey of giving my life to serve Him.
That process made a few things glaringly clear to me. The Lord began to show me the things that I need to walk out my calling with health. Here they are:
I need to know that I am not the only one who feels the pressures of ministry life. I am not alone and fellowship with those who understand the beauty and pressure of ministry life is a necessity.
I need wisdom from those who have been walking this road longer than I have. You can’t put a price on the value of wisdom that has been gained through struggles, triumphs, and life experience.
I need accountability. I need safe people in my life to grow with and be real with. I need safe spaces to worship and be ministered to.
This is what birthed the vision for Immersion. The realization that there are many women who are called and who are giving everything to follow the high calling of Christ. Over the last few years, the Lord has connected me with so many beautiful sisters who are serving the Lord diligently and many of them share the same hunger for connection and growth. Every woman has her own story and her own struggles. We are all carrying our own measure of brokenness, because that’s what being a human being entails. However, we can learn from each other, encourage each other, support each other and minister to each other. We are all in ministry, but that doesn’t negate us from needing to be ministered to ourselves! If you are a woman in ministry, I hope you will join us on this journey to find connection, to seek wisdom and to pursue growth!
Sincerely,
Kari Bulman
