Hello, Hello, hello!

Okay, I know it has been an eternity since I updated this little blog. I can admit I honestly wasn't sure I would reappear. I could have vanished into thin air but it just didn't seem right. So much has happened the last year....or almost year. I don't even know where to begin. I was so naive to believe that I would have time to update this blog with all the things I would be learning. HA! There has been no such thing as time.

I am 3 months from graduation. Nearly 400hours completed of the 500hours needed to graduate. Hallelujah!! I feel like I need to keep the angel on my page to honor the singing choir that rejoices in the near finish of my Masters degree!! This will be a day to celebrate.

I feel like I could tell a million stories about the things I have been learning this year. Most all about myself and my process in becoming the therapist that God has intended me to be. I am gaining such insight in my lack of faith and dependence on Him. I recognize more and more through this season that I like to "fix" people and try to make them feel better and that is NOT my job. The Lord has been teaching me to depend on him in all ways; to acknowledge that He is the ultimate Healer and that His ways are not my ways. I am learning to sit with my own anxiety about wanting to offer quick solutions and soothing words when realistically people just want to be heard. I cannot tell you the ways the Lord is combing my spirit and revealing the junk that might keep me trapped inside myself and unable to sit with people in pain. It has been a journey.

It's weird going through a refining process. It feels utterly helpless and exhausting and hopeless at times; yet something about knowing that your growing and changing offers some sort of solace and peace. It's weird. This is by far, the most stretching season I have walked through and still it has been the richest. I have gained so much perspective and insight about myself. It is so fun to see myself and my world through a different lens.

I have to say it has not been easy being refined. I have seen myself through other people's eyes and that has been hard. I recognize some people experience me as bossy, self-centered, controlling and more. It has pulled up a lot of the ways I cope with stress or hardship or fears in my life. I promise this could sound negative and yet in an eerie sort of way it is liberating. Recognizing and accepting myself offers new freedom and possibility for transparency and depth in relationships. It also creates an opportunity to identify with all sorts of clients who also feel bound by their stresses and pains and cannot break free of the distorted ways in which they relate to others.

I am thankful for this process; for this season. I feel like I have been a bush that had lots of overgrown brush and branches that needed to be pruned WAY back. I have not enjoyed the pruning process. It has been painful and uncomfortable and scary at times; yet soon I pray the new fruit will show itself. I hope to see a new bud soon!