Hi, I'm Geri

I have spent most of my adult life in the middle of ordinary things, and I have found that ordinary is exactly where God tends to show up.

Years ago I started writing here under the name Life To Me, mostly because I was afraid to. I wrote about raising kids, hatching duck eggs one summer because my children were convinced we should, standing in the hot dog line at Costco and getting unexpectedly undone by the kindness of strangers. Somewhere in the writing I realized I was not really telling stories about my family. I was telling stories about a God who keeps meeting people in the middle of their week.

For a season our family opened our home through Safe Families, taking in children who needed somewhere safe to be while their people got back on their feet. At one point that meant one-year-old twins in a house of teenagers. That season taught me more about grace, limits, and asking for help than any book ever has.

Most people do not need more advice. They need someone to sit with them, tell them the truth kindly, and remind them who God says they are.

How I came to coaching

Over the years the same thing kept happening. A friend would call, or someone would pull me aside after a service, and we would end up in a long conversation about the thing they had not said out loud yet. Eventually I stopped treating that as an interruption and started treating it as the work.

Coaching, for me, is that conversation with a little more structure around it. We get honest about where you are. We hold it up against what God says is true. Then we pick a next step you can actually take this week, and I check in with you on it.

What I believe

• You are not a problem to be solved. You are a person to be known.
• Scripture is not a nice sentiment to sprinkle on top. It is the ground we stand on.
• Small faithful steps beat grand plans that never start.
• Honesty is kind. Pretending is exhausting, and you can stop doing it here.
• Laughter belongs in serious conversations more often than we let it.

Teaching and ministry

These days I teach Bible studies at Revere Church and lead with MomCo, our community for moms who are in the thick of raising little ones. It is the part of my week where I get to do all of this in a room instead of one chair at a time.

Before that I spoke regularly at The Well at Whittier Area Community Church from 2013 through 2017, at WACC's inaugural ARISE Conference, and at Influence Church's Women of Influence event in 2019. You can see where I am speaking next if you would like to come and listen.

Coach training and certification details to be added.

Away from work

You will usually find me with a cup of coffee that has gone cold, somewhere in the middle of a project I said would take an hour. I love my family fiercely, I laugh at my own stories, and I still think the messy bun was the greatest gift given to mothers everywhere.