Airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars...

Everything comes together so quickly and so seemingly perfectly
Graduation, new apartment, great job
Then as the newness wears off
and you find your place
you start to ask
is this all of life?

I'm in that existential crisis place again
wondering if this is supposed to fulfill me
or what makes up a fulfilling life

I spend days trying to be present as people bind up their wounds
inflicted by this broken world
wondering how God stood by
and watched it get so broken in the first place
questioning if its really fulfilling trying to fix something
so senselessly damaged
or if the fixing is just as senseless

praying Lord have mercy
Lord have mercy on us
clinging to the faint hope that there is a better way
for the people I encounter
and for myself

Its one thing to believe it
another to figure out what it actually looks like
how am I to live my life?

I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other...

In her book Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert discusses the idea of place and people having a word that represents them, or the season that they are in. I think that my word for this season of my life is solitude. I crave time alone and honestly enjoy the time I have to myself, puttering around the house, renewing my heart. I've been learning more about introversion and nurturing and honouring that part of myself.

Paradoxically, I've also, by necessity, been more outgoing than usual. Making small talk at the coffee shop, entering into deep conversations in counselling, all with strangers. Likely, it is this need to be outgoing that has increased my need for solitude in the first the place.

I wonder how long this season of my life will last. Has my desire to be a homebody and hang out by myself come as a consequence of getting older? Or as I grow more comfortable with my role as a counsellor will my need for solitude decrease? Only time will tell, and until then I will be here, relishing my solitude.

(quote by Rainer Maria Rilke)

TRUST

"I hear everyone telling me that they are there for me,
but I can't make myself trust them"
says the seventeen year old sitting in my office

How do you teach someone to trust again?

I pondered this all the way home
My car holds all the secrets and unanswered questions I carry

What I came to realize is that TRUST
[defined as the firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability,
or strength of someone or something]
is really just a leap of faith

You will never be able to know without a doubt
That your loved ones will live up to their words
That they will never betray you
That they will protect you and always be there for you

If you believe them and trust their words
You are doing so by faith
You are choosing to believe
Deciding the risk that they might not follow through
Is worth it

So how do you learn to trust again?
Look back at the broken promises
Take lessons from your mistakes
Find the one worth the risk
Close your eyes
Be brave
AND JUMP

The things we carry...

Its been a number of years since I watched the news regularly. Since my brother graduated from RMC and any news of deaths in Afghanistan made me tear up. However, if something big was going on usually I’d tune in to make sure I was an up-to-date citizen of the world.
I’ve probably watched less than a minute of coverage of the earthquake in Haiti.
The thing is, every image, every story, that we bear witness to stays with us. It becomes a part of what we carry. We can manage the effect it has on us and how much we remember, but it adds to our load. Maybe a heavy weight, maybe only a little, but you carry it with you.
In my new role as a counsellor, I hear a lot of stories. Terrible, sad, what is wrong with the world stories. My load has gotten a lot heavier. Some days I can see clearly the light and the hope, some days I can’t stand under the weight. I trust that I will get better at bearing these burdens as I learn and grow.
What would be the point of making this weight any heavier than it needs to be? Could I still contribute to aid for Haiti without knowing the details? Yes. Would my knowing the details help them any? No.
My lack of knowledge about this disaster might lead some to believe that I am ignorant. But something in me tells me that I need to protect my heart. This is not my trauma to bear witness to right now. I have another role.

Have mercy on us...

My heart throws up a desperate prayer
even though it is roughed up
and losing hope and faith

It cannot praise
because it is uncertain of God's provision
wondering why there is no intervention
only humanity's inadequate attempts
holding a hand against the wound
not able to heal
only acting as a bandaid
for a trauma that should never have occurred
human intercession has no power over the darkness
that damages these poor souls
yet Your light does not pierce it
where is God?

And yet
my heart throws up a desperate prayer
in its distress
it knows not what else to do

While you’re in the midst of doing said scary thing...

... you will simply put one foot in front of the other and make it happen because you have no other choice.

My supervision summary for this week stated "Biggest Achievement: Surviving"

That's how my week is going... 

Please don't fight these hands that are holding you...

I didn't update this last term nearly as much as I hoped to. I think that I only processed in bits and pieces, somehow knowing that if I opened my heart and mind to all that I heard and saw I would not be able to handle it. What I did feel was quite enough. Helplessness in the face of terrible parenting leading to broken young women. Watching a life spiral out of control. Breaking confidence to stay in line with the law and damaging relationships in the process.
I'm nearing the end of a two week vacation from my counselling/student role. I blocked out most of my experience and didn't give it a thought. When something did come to mind I pushed the thought away, giving my mind and heart a much needed break. But now as the new term draws very near I feel a lot of anxiety, not having processed what passed before. I could use another week, one spent in solitude without distractions, just to think about and process everything I've learned and experienced and discover what I need to do to be successful in the months to come.
I'm also anxious because the women I've come to rely on at my placement have moved on to other pursuits. Who will be there to coach me through the hard parts? When I'm unsure and overwhelmed? In some ways it feels like I'm starting from the beginning again. Being outside of the experience has lead to questioning again if I can do this, if I'm meant to do this... once again praying for strength and wisdom, whispering to myself to go forward with courage.

In the image of the cross, our own sense of tragedy is affirmed...

One of my classmates works with energy healing. She believes that if the energy line along our spine is clear of blockages we will be happier and healthier people. In order to help people achieve this she tunes her own body to their energy and clears any blockages in their energy line. She told me that during a particularly stressful day of our seminar last week she spent some time clearing everyone's energy and that after she was done she noticed the stress level go down in the room, everyone became more at ease. When she told me this I wondered to myself why I hadn't thought to pray for my classmates in that situation. She believes strongly in this use of energy, so she used it to help the people around her. If I believe strongly in God, why didn't I use my beliefs in that way?
There is some sort of disconnect between my work as a counsellor and my faith. Which is strange because when I face difficult and tragic circumstances in my own life or alongside my friends, I know that only God can provide the necessary peace and healing. But when I face these things alongside my clients, I'm left wondering which skill or intervention to use. Perhaps because prayer and turning to God isn't a sanctioned answer by the academic world or secular workplace, and it is definitely inappropriate to impose my beliefs onto my clients. But should God not still be involved in the process? If only by my own silent plea for His presence and help?
How do I bring myself back to the place where my first instinct is to turn to God... in EVERY area of my life?

Truth at all costs ... [Martin Luther King Jr.]

As counselling students we are trained to keep our own values and beliefs out of the counselling relationship... the session is about the client, not about us. This made sense to me, my White, Western, Christian, Upper-Middle Class point of view is by no means the only valid way of seeing the world. However, putting it into practice is a little more difficult. How do I decipher between what is my bias and what is a universal value? Sometimes the lines get a little blurry. After all, I believe what I believe because I think it is the truth.

For example, I have had a couple of client's indicate to me that they are being less than honest with their significant other. Nothing so big as an affair, smaller things like letting her boyfriend believe that she cares for him more than she actually does, or letting his girlfriend believe that he is ok with living together when actually he is not. Maybe you don't know this about me, but truth and honesty are very important to me. I think the lie hurts much more than any action, so you can imagine my negative internal reaction to these situations... but is my inclination towards truth my own bias?

A quote from one of my class readings says that "the therapist should make clear that the truth is a goal constantly to be striven for". Can we go so far as to say that honesty and integrity are moral absolutes? I want to say yes... but I'm not sure that everyone would agree. I'm left longing for the wisdom necessary to know what are absolutes and what are my own biases. 

Courage my love...

Oops! Somehow I let three weeks pass without another update... I guess there is a lot to catch up on!

I'm currently in the middle of the third week of my practicum. Week one was mostly characterized by anxiety. When I was handed my first client files the first thought to go through my head was "I can't do this, this was a mistake". Yup, I wasn't kidding, I was so anxious I was calling into question the last eight years of life decisions. Luckily my next thought was "What else are you going to do? This is the only job you've ever seen yourself in?" so I decided to gather some courage and press onwards.

As I posted in my last entry, I was concerned about my age, a concern that was amplified when the first session I sat in on focused heavily on problems the client was having with his step-daughter, who was about the same age as me.  By week two my anxiety had subsided. There were two reasons for this... one was that I realized that I would go crazy with anticipation if I stayed as anxious as I had been for another week, so I forced myself to stop thinking about it. The other was that Brandon's message on Monday night at the Embassy reminded me of 1 TImothy 4:12 - Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young - which made me realize that 'anyone' included me! The way I saw myself was the way others were going to see me. If I had confidence in myself, regardless of my age and experience, then others would be confident in me.

So I role-played intakes and needs assessments with the intake counsellor and a classmate and made appointments with clients for the next week... which is this week! I've seen three clients already and everything went fairly smoothly - with the exception of a few bumps and loops in the road - meaning that I didn't panic and all my clients seemed willing to come back.  However, now that introductions and needs assessments are complete, I'm awake at 4 am, anxious and wondering...

What do I do next session?