What A Year

I have really been dreading today, my 35th birthday. The dread has been about a lot of things, including my gray hairs, me memory loss, my stage in life and other things, too.

I looked in the rear view mirror this week for a quick make-up check and saw four renegade white hairs growing in. They were sticking straight up. I fought the urge to pluck them and instead tried my best to make them lay flat.

My memory is slipping. I know my brain is on overload, but I am being uncharacteristically absent minded. I locked my keys in the car this week. Twice. I have locked my keys in my car maybe 5 times in my entire life, twice of which were this week.

I am in that awkward life stage of kids being little but being in school. And since I am finishing my degree I don't have a full-time job (although it feels like I do most days). So I feel sort of in between.

But the real reason I have been dreading this day is because it is the first anniversary of the beginning of a chain of events that has changed many, many parts of my life. As I was praying about it this morning, God reminded me that even though much of this last year has been painful, it is exactly where He wants me to be.

There is nothing coincidental about how different my life is today than it was a year ago. A year ago today, I served my church in a major leadership role, was active in Bible study, led a small group and had no intention of changing my path. I was comfortable. And as I know all too well, comfortable is not a place to be to grow closer to God.

So as a result, God shook up my world. A few months before my birthday last year, I felt like God was slowly pulling my out of things and asking me to unbusy myself. And to trust Him. I started slowing down, but still was very involved in my church. Through an unforeseeable circumstance, God pulled me away from that, too. I never would have walked away from that on my own, so He had to pull. And it really, really, really hurt.

I spent about the next four months in a crisis. Everything I knew about my life changed. My identity that I had affiliated myself with for long was gone. Bible study was over. School was out, and I didn't have a church home anymore. I felt lost and empty and far from God. I couldn't understand why God would allow all of my ground to fall away from underneath me.

One afternoon in July, as I was sitting right here at my computer, I had my head in my hands. I felt so confused and alone and even a little angry. That's when God let me in on something. He reminded me that if there was anyone to be angry at, it was Him. He had allowed the chain of events to unfold the way they did. I couldn't argue and I knew I needed to forgive.

He also reminded me of the call He had given me years before, that I had ignored for a long time. The call was to be a counselor. I had started a Master's degree program in 2002 to be a counselor, but life got in the way. I only took one class before a quit the program. The next 8 years have been filled with kids and jobs and church. Although God had been quietly been reminding me of His call on my life all along, I always had an excuse. I was too busy. My kids were too small. My church needed me somewhere else. It cost too much money.

Suddenly, all my excuses were gone. My kids were both going to be in school. I was no longer super busy. I had no full-time job. And not only did my church not need me (and I know the church never really needed me), I didn't even have a church.

I immediately got online and looked up the program I had started in 2002. I made some phone calls and realized that even though it was late July, it was possible for me to start the program in August.

From there, one door after another flew open. The same day I applied to graduate school, I got admitted. The same day I applied to the program, I was accepted. And my parents offered to pay for my schooling, something I could not have afforded to do on my own. On top of that, there were openings in two classes. I started class at the end of August. I was going to be a counselor.

God knew He would have to clear my plate entirely for me to follow the call He had on my life. Although I would never have chosen this year to go the way it did, I can clearly see the purpose behind why it happened. It is so clear to me now that this was the plan all along.

This year has been a blur. Every single door has opened for me in major ways. I got the internship of my dreams, when I was told that someone in my program could never get this internship. My internship has confirmed that school counseling is my calling and where I should be.

When I realized two weeks ago that I needed to graduate this July instead of December, every door has opened. Deadlines I missed were waved. My class from 2002 was revalidated. I got in to classes I had to have. And my family has been nothing but supportive. I am going to graduate with a Master's Degree in Human Relations in one year, and hopefully I will pass my alternate certification test in April and get hired somewhere as a school counselor next year.

A year ago, graduate school was not even on my radar. Today, I have four months until I graduate.

I have decided to choose to see today as a reminder of the way God can move in my life and open doors for me, even when I am reluctant to walk through. I know he will nudge me along when I need the help.

I can say with confidence now, that I wouldn't change the last year. Although we are still looking for a church and are still recovering from the hurt, God has shown me this year who my true friends are, who He is, and who He wants me to be. You can't really ask for more than that.

A Matter of Perspective

I am traveling up and down a steep learning curve right now. I am learning how to be a school counselor. I am currently serving an internship three days a week at a Norman middle school and an elementary school by splitting my time between the two. I have some of the best counselors in Norman mentoring me and guiding me.

I have learned all sorts of interesting things during my internship, including: how to perform a successful lunch duty, the importance of updating bulletin boards, how to handle a lockdown when you are in the middle of teaching a lesson to kindergartners, that unattended food in the break room is fair game, that kids mostly don't care if your door is shut - they try to come in anyway, that while some things have changed since I was a kid the general feeling of angst you get in middle school is still the same, that test monitoring is a pretty basic job, that kids in every grade, in every school and in every classroom need a counselor once in a while, and that counseling students takes a lot of reading between the lines.

My biggest lessons that I have learned so far, however are really not so much about counseling as much as they are about myself. First, my suspicion that I would really love school counseling has been confirmed. I do love it. I love the kids, I love the things the counselors get to do and I love helping people. This has come as no surprise to me.

I have also learned that I really love and look forward to my internship. It feels like a gift that I get to open when I go to my internship each time. I really love it.

I have learned that even the really, really hard days - the ones where students reveal painful things and are learning painful lessons - even those days are rewarding.

I have learned that even the kids who pretend like they are too cool to have you hug them sometimes love it when you put your arm around their shoulder. Most times, they even lean in their head for a real hug.

And most importantly, what I have learned is some perspective on my own life. As crazy as my life feels right now while I am trying to squeeze in 15 hours of graduate hours and comps into the next four months while teaching two classes at OU, doing my internship three full days a week and being a wife and a mother, is that my life is really pretty easy.

Some of the kids I have come into contact with are facing challenges that have never even come across my radar. I talked to my 8-year-old son about this last night. I wanted him to realize that not everyone has a life like his. I wanted him to know while there are real frustrations about being 8 and being a student and playing sports, that these frustrations are so different than some kids' frustrations.

My boys have a house that is warm when it's cold and cool when it's hot. They always have food to eat and a bed to sleep in. When they think of drugs, they think about Tylenol and antibiotics, not weed and crack. Their weekends are filled with sports and friends and resting and games and birthday parties; Their weekends thankfully do not include violence, loneliness and hunger. Their clothes may not be the fanciest and trendiest, but they are clean and neat and they fit.

Our family has been so blessed with so many gifts, I feel overwhelmed and humbled. Our house is not huge or in the nicest neighborhood, but it is all that we could ever need. Our cars are not the newest or nicest, but they get us where we need to go. We are careful budgeters with little wiggle room, but there is always just enough to pay our bills.

It is clear to me now why God has called me to be a school counselor. First, He wants me to see my many blessings and be thankful. But most importantly, He wants me to shine a light for other kids who do not have as many advantages as I have been given. He wants me to love them and help them and learn from them.

I am thanking God this morning for the lessons He is teaching me as I am in school this semester, and look forward to all that I will learn when I hopefully get a job as a school counselor some day.