Vital Teaching

August 23, 2012

I’m teaching three classes this Fall at DBU: two Counseling Theories and Techniques classes and one Psychology of Adolescence class.  It’s been a tiring first week of getting back in the swing of working two jobs, preparing for classes, and getting up early in the mornings.  In fact, yesterday I took a four hour nap.  Wow, did I need it! (I wasn’t feeling the best but I think mostly I was just over-tired). But I LOVE teaching as much as I do counseling.  I love the interaction with the students and teaching helps keep my counseling skills honed.

In my Counseling Theories class this afternoon, we were discussing issues that beginning counselors face.  One of those issues was “staying vital as a person and as a professional.”  Professional burnout is a real concern especially for counselors because of the nature of the business.  All day long we hear people’s problems and the awful ways that we humans hurt ourselves and others.  So, “staying vital as a person and as a professional” is incredibly important in preventing burnout.  There during class, I thought to myself, “What do I do to fulfill this?”  I didn’t have an answer.  Certainly, my friends and family keep me boosted up but is that the answer?

As I was driving home, I felt so jazzed about teaching again.  I felt energetic!  I haven’t taught since last Fall and I’ve really missed it.  I called Lettia and said, “Have I told you lately how much I LOVE teaching?”  It’s not the first time I’ve asked that of her.  J

As I reflect on all this tonight, and as I wonder just what it is I am going to write about this week, I get the “Aha!” moment.  For most of 2008, my last year of graduate school, every time I walked on campus I had the thought, “I need to teach here.”  It was a bizarre thought.  What did I know about teaching college?  But, more and more I liked the idea and shortly after I graduated I started teaching at DBU.  God opened that door for me because it was far too easy for me.  Getting a teaching job at DBU is not easy.  I taught an adult education class for a couple of semesters and then I was approached (after I expressed interest) to teach a general psychology class.  Teaching my first psych class was nerve wracking.  I was so nervous I was sweaty from head to toe.  I am convinced my students went away that first day to tell their friends of Prof. Sweaty-pits.  But I got through it…and I got better.  Now, I am no longer nervous.  I am incredibly energized.

So, tonight, I see that God once again put all the pieces together with a foresight that is mind-boggling.  He prompted me to teach, opened the right doors of opportunity for me, gave me the fortitude to continue past my nervousness, and ultimately provided me with an outlet that helps me “stay vital as a person and as a professional.”

My God is so big,
So strong and so mighty,
There’s nothing my God cannot do.  (clap, clap)

Into His Hands – The Progression Continues

Aug. 15, 2012

My post two weeks ago was about a progression of four steps that led me to a deeper understanding of seeking God first and of simply seeking God.  My point being that when my prayers are centered primarily around what I want God to do for me and what can God relieve me of, then I am not seeking God for a relationship with Him, I am seeking Him for selfish purposes.  Additionally, from a counseling perspective, when my prayers are centered on relieving my pain or anxiety, then I am still focusing on that pain and anxiety.

I have always visually pictured “letting go” of something or “giving it to God” as me laying “it” down at the foot of the cross and saying, “OK God, it’s yours.  I can’t handle it.”  And then, ten minutes later, I would pick “it” back up again and worry or try to control "it" or whatever.  Then, in recognizing that I am carrying the burden again, I lay it again at the foot of the cross.  Back and forth this process goes with hopefully “it” laying at the cross longer and longer each time before I retrieve it.  The problem in this process is that I feel both the success and the failure and I usually end up feeling like the failure longer.

As I said in the prior post in part three of the progression, I’ve truly learned recently that my holding onto “it” or the mire, then I am holding it between me and God.  It is a barrier between us.  I can’t grab hold of God with both hands if I am holding onto something else.  So, simply seeking God in order to know Him better, in order to know His character more fully, in order to truly understand that He loves me unconditionally and why, means that I have to lay down whatever barrier is between us.  If I lay that down, then I have to believe that God will pick it up.  I have to believe that because I know He loves me.

Psalm 22 is a chapter that I use quite often in my counseling.  (I won’t quote it here because it is too lengthy to include here but take a moment to read it now.)  I love it because it is even titled “A cry of anguish and a song of praise.”  It is written during the time that David was running from Saul.  David expresses a lot of emotion in this psalm including anger, indignation, desperation, frustration, feelings of abandonment and rejection, as well as praise, love, and trust.  I use this psalm because it is a great example that proves it is OK to yell and be angry with God.  However, it is vitally important to continue to praise God through it all.  When you study the psalm, you will see that David opens by telling God he feels abandoned.  Then he talks about how the fathers trusted God and that God is holy.  Next, he reverts to indignation and worthlessness.  He basically says, “Hey, I’m worthless, people are mocking me, they are mocking my faith, and they are even mocking you, God!”  But, once again, he turns back and praises God for creating him and for making him trust God.  Then, David cries out about his poor physical condition and how he is surrounded by the bad guys.  In the next breath, David praises God again and ends the chapter with praise.

The pattern that David set is important because in it he lands on the positive, he ends with praise.  He ends feeling better.  And that is where I have always stopped with my thoughts on this psalm until this week.  More was revealed to me – part five of the progression.  I see now that through all of David’s praise, he was simply seeking God.  Only twice, and both times are short little phrases, did David directly ask God to relieve him in his present situation.  Everything else is about God: His character, His power, His creative ability, His holiness, and His trustworthiness.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that petition prayers are wrong.  They are incredibly biblical.  Phil. 4:6 says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”  My point is that we need to be sure that we are seeking God himself most importantly.  When I seek God in my prayers, I no longer visualize myself leaving “it” at the foot of the cross.  That process is unnecessary because I’ve already laid it down when I grab onto God himself.

There are those who are very near and dear to me.  Do I want to be spend time with them because of what they can do for me?  Or, do I want to be with them simply because I want to know them better and, through that, I feel better when I am in their presence?

Dog Pile Hug

Aug. 7, 2012

I have a thing where I love to kneel in front of Tim while he is sitting in the recliner and give him a long, long hug.  Or, to be more honest, to get a long, long hug.  Ever since Kelsey has been independently mobile (ie. She could crawl), she gets in the middle of our hugs.  I remember always feeling her squeezing in between our legs when we would be hugging standing up.  Now, since she is taller, she simply adds onto the hug and group hugs both of us.

Today was no different…at first.  The three of us were watching the Rangers win (Yay!), and on a commercial, I slipped out of my chair to give Tim a hug.  In actuality, it was more of a race to get to Tim because Kelsey has become quite adept at figuring out what I am doing so I have to hurry to get first position.  As I laid my head on Tim’s shoulder and felt Kelsey wrapped around both of us, I felt four feet land on my back.  Sophie, our adorable schnauzer, joined the group hug.

It would be easy to think that my point in writing about this is being thankful for family closeness.  However, it’s not that easy.  As I was second from the bottom of the dog pile hug, I felt claustrophobic.  I was reminded that I still have that struggle.  I have wondered in the time since I figured out my fear of heights (which is incredibly improved now – the glass elevators on the ship didn’t even phase me!) why it doesn’t also apply to my claustrophobia.  Both have the same root of loss of control of my body.  For one struggle that revelation was freeing, but for the other struggle, it is completely ineffectual.  What’s up with that?

It occurred to me tonight, as I was reflecting on it, that I coped with that moment with a short little prayer to not panic and to know I’m OK.  It was a step closer to God in a brief but anxious moment.  I don’t believe that God gives me this fear of being trapped to draw me closer to Him, but the result is certainly the same.  And, I’m glad I am at a point in my faith that a prayer is my first “go-to.”  I’m not bragging, just acknowledging.  I would surely rather be writing about overcoming this obstacle.  But, for now, I’m content with seeing how it was used for the good.

Into His Hands

July 28, 2012

I love it when a progression of things leads me to a new lesson learned.  It's when things line up in such a way that it can't be coincidence.  It has to be God teaching me. 

David said in the Psalms that he meditates on God’s precepts all day (“Oh, how I love your law!  I meditate on it all day long.”  Ps. 119:97).  He didn't have a copy of the scriptures to study, he had to have them in his mind.  Meditating on scriptures does a couple of things.  First, it keeps God as your focus throughout the day.  Second, it sometimes brings revelation - or a new Ah-ha!  For me, I will keep a verse or passage of scripture in mind and as I go through the day or week, I will find connections.  This week, I focused on simply knowing God and His character.

This past week I've continued in our Bible study on hearing the voice of God.  We were looking at how we should not only seek His voice but rather seek Him and then we are more aligned to hear His voice.  I’ve heard this before but, this week, I saw it in action.  I was talking to someone who struggles with anxiety and when our conversation turned toward learning something about God’s character and how He interacts with His people, she relaxed.  Her trembling from anxiety melted away.   Simply turning her focus to God himself was much more effective than praying for God to handle the situations or to relieve anxiety (that being said, I know fully well that God can do both of those things!).  Often, those prayers only keep your focus on the stressful situation or anxiety.

So that is parts one and two of the progression.  Part three is a new depth of understanding that says if I am to simply seek God, which means I will direct my attention away from the mire, then I am trusting God to handle that which I've just redirected from.  I have to let go of it.  These thoughts then reminded me of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane struggling with God’s plan for him.  The movie "The Passion" portrays this scene so well!  Jesus was physically wrestling with it all.  He didn't want what was to come. He knew the path laid before him led to the cross.  He came to the conclusion of "not as I will, but as you will" (Matt. 26:39).  It is interesting to note that Jesus prayed that prayer three times.  It wasn’t easy for him to come to that conclusion.  It’s one of the places that I see the humanity of Jesus.  In considering all this, I really understood, probably for the first time, that trusting God is bending my will to His.

Part four of the progression is understanding that I'm feeling like I'm in the garden, in the non-picturesque sense.  Of course, I can’t compare to the magnitude of the scale of what was ahead of Jesus, but I can relate.  I don't know what is ahead for Kelsey and her medical treatment, but I know I don't want to go through it.   I just want it all to miraculously go away.  But that's really not the point, is it?  God has laid out a path that is before us.  That is not to say I think that God designed this illness to happen.  Rather, I recognize that so far He has determined we need to walk through it.  The task, then, is to seek Him first, trusting that the rest of the crap will fall in place – in His hands.

Just now as I write this, I am reminded of what I have said so often to myself and to God during these last two years: “Into your hands, O Lord.”