I think it all started in third grade. I would line up my stuffed animals on my bed. I would read to them and teach them numerous subjects. No surprise, I became a teacher! After 12 years of teaching, I found the most common element with each of my classes was relationship building. Teacher and student along side fostering a student family environment. I quickly took such an interest in how one’s day to day emotional happiness plays a significant role in their learning.
I set teaching aside to raise my two girls. Motherhood has been the greatest joy of my life. I have now been home with them for over 19 years. During that time, we have had the opportunity to be a part of so many different experiences. Countless friendships, play groups, bible studies, WOW, MOPS groups, mission trips, volunteering and always trying to make sure all the kids wanted to be at our house.
Again, as life does, a new phase or season is upon me. Some people call it Empty Nesting. I have loved, nurtured, raised, guided and launched two well-rounded, intelligent, independent women into the world. My take on Empty is Spacious. There is now new space in my life for something external.
I have always been curious about people as a whole. I welcome emotions. People share their life stories and more within minutes of us striking up a conversation. I have the mindset of being a safe confidential space for people to evolve and grow. I am an empathetic listening coach on a daily basis. I unpack actionable strategies and hope to empower people to realize their full potential.
“Think Ahead” Craig Groeschel pages 129-130
If you let your light shine, people will be attracted to the light. They will want what you have. You are an influencer and God wants to use you.
Who did God use to influence a whole city? Not and Instagram star, or a professional athlete, or a celebrity, or a pastor. God used an ordinary, broken, sinful Samartian woman who had been transformed by Jesus. He can use your prayers, your example and your words.
The world needs that special gift that only you have!
Let’s get started…….tell me more……….
Hi there. I’m Nicole, and if you know me, you know I don’t like the word ‘religious’. I just don’t. It seems so impersonal and rigid.
I am simply a Christ- follower.
I would have to say that my faith is the single most important part of my life. Actually, it IS my life. My mom would tell you that I could sing about Jesus before I could talk and maybe that is why music speaks to me in such a profound way, especially worship music. Although, I will say 80’s music is a close second.
I was born in New Mexico in a small town called Farmington, near the Navajo Indian Reservation. We moved back to Texas when I was less than a year old and I grew up in the DFW Metroplex and I definitely hold tight to my Texas roots (and my twangy southern accent!) I guess it will really always be home to me. I met my husband there. We had our daughter there and most of my extended family still live there.
My dream was always to be a wife and mother and to help people. To help them see that they were here for a purpose that was uniquely theirs. During my many years of property management, I was given multiple opportunities to mentor and train small to moderate teams by creating intimacy between myself and others. Through my studies of Business Communication and Christian Counselling, during my time at the University of Hawaii (GO Rainbows!), I realized my passion for people as individuals. My desire was to help empower them to make significant changes and to be able to approach new opportunities with confidence and a greater sense of self.
When I met and married the love of my life, he moved this city girl to a small town in Arkansas. Our population was less than a thousand, which I am sure included some cows. Now THAT was an adjustment; experiencing a much slower pace of life in a rural town where everybody knew everybody, and I mean everybody! I discovered the things I love about small-town life and I will treasure those memories always.
We have now been married over two decades and are raising a beautiful, charismatic and compassionate teenage daughter, (and our rescue dog, Bodhi, our rabbit, Cookie, and our hedgehog, Freckles) in Norman, Oklahoma, where the wind does come sweeping down the plains, in fact. I have been a stay-at-home mom for seventeen years and it has been the privilege of a lifetime! Talk about learning time-management, setting goals and prioritizing agendas. If you can tackle parenthood, you can do anything, by the grace of God!
My days and years have been filled with VBS memories, class parties, PTA meetings, bible studies, competitive sports and lots and lots of slumber parties at our house!! Church has always been a priority in our lives and our church ‘family’ has been our family when we lived states away from our own. I have had the amazing opportunity to lead several women’s bible studies and to work directly for our pastors, as well as part-time in our church office. I am a prayer warrior and I believe there is so much power in praying the Word of God out loud! Over time, I have learned that God answers our prayers in the most unexpected, but extraordinary ways. This gifting has led me to be apart of our prayer team at church and allowed me to walk alongside some of the most precious people in my life. I have been on mission trips and apart of service teams that have allowed me to carry God’s love to a hurting world, and I have clung desperately to that love during some of the darkest times of my life, and to quote one of my FAV movies, Soul Surfer, I have learned that ‘I don’t need easy, I just need possible!’ And really, don’t we all just need possible?!
So, this is me… I love to listen to people’s stories. To lend a ‘hearing’ ear and sweet smile and invite them into a safe place to share whatever is deepest in their hearts.
No matter your background or beliefs; no matter where you are in life or where you have been… right now, we can begin your new journey … together… to HEAL.
Did you ever meet someone and you knew instantly that they were brought into your life for a purpose bigger than yourself?
Well, that is us!
We met on a warm summer day in 2012 during a M.O.P.S. (mother of preschoolers) meeting at a quaint church in Norman, Oklahoma. We were seated at the same table and within minutes instantly connected and thus… our story began.
We would tell you that we always really believed we would be in business together one day. We are like-minded in so many ways. We love to find a good bargain, we have a compassion to help others and we don’t know a stranger! Honestly, we have talked for hours and hours about how we could help people; how we could let them know that they make a difference in this world God created.
Cindy is creative, warm and so very organized and Nicole is encouraging, authentic and quite animated.
Together we compliment one another in the most beautiful friendship.
Together… we are… HEARD
At Heard, we believe that genuine listening builds bridges of connection and strengthens the bonds within teams and communities. Being heard is a fundamental human need that holds tremendous power in fostering happiness, well-being and personal growth.
In the wild, when a mamma elephant is injured or giving birth, all of the other female elephants in the herd back around her in formation, making a circle so that she cannot even be seen. They surround the injured female or incoming baby in protection, sending a clear signal to predators that if they want to attack their friend while she is vulnerable, they will have to get through 40 tons of female aggression first!
When the baby is delivered or the injured mama is well, the sister elephants do two things; they kick dirt or sand over the newborn to protect it’s fragile skin from the sun and then, they all start trumpeting… a female celebration of new life, of sisterhood, of something beautiful being born. Isn’t that what we do for our sisters?
We stand in the gap for them when they desperately need us to. We listen to them during their darkest hour and we HEAR their hearts; and when delivery or healing comes, when new life makes its entrance and our sister is ready to rise back up… we sound our trumpets! We celebrate together and give thanks that our friend can join the circle. Their time in the middle is over.
Inspired by Nichole Nordeman, contemporary Christian singer/songwriter