Country Roads take me Home

My husband assures me that it's soley because I am a freak of nature, but looking at certain pictures makes my heart feel as if it's going to explode (in a good way). For my practicum site, an organization seeking to train clinicians for rural practice, we are supposed to rustle up some photos of our hometowns. I did that last night and this morning, and I just got all giddy inside. I glance at a million and one pictures like these (especially the mountain ones) and don't even notice the beauty because all of my life I have been immersed in these luscious mountains, streams, and forests.

I thought I'd share with ya'll. Click on the photo to see the entire Flickr group:

Falling down.

I had a clerkship interview today. Clerkship is that elusive (last!) year of clinical practice as a student where you don't pay tuition money to work for someone anymore. Well, and you're supposed to get paid. But, there are very few sites that do pay. So, today I was going to interview for a job where I don't actually have to pay to work there, but where I'm not quite getting paid.

The day was beautiful. All the snow was melting in the noontime sun. Rivulets of water ran across the sidewalks all over the campus. I was walking happily along, feeling a bit like an adult in my chocolate brown pencil skirt, black pumps, and black button down shirt. And a moment later, I was sprawled out on all fours in the middle of a sidewalk, having walked over what was ICE on this warm day. Falling down on your way to a job interview and scraping your knee is the perfect way to transport yourself back to kindergarten. Thankfully, I didn't tear my tights nor did I break anything. Oh, and the interview went well, I believe.

Keeping my fingers crossed...

The weekend that we were in Knoxville for the launch of Crossings, our church here in Chicagoland did this video. I miss the one Sunday where they take one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite artists on one of the most important topics. Geez, good thing I feel so great about having been at crossings. Check it out.

Vocare: To Call

Yesterday, I had the blessing of working together with one of my closest friends at Panera Bread. It is blessing enough in itself to have a friend with whom you can be fully yourself, and she can do the same. Everyone needs one or two of the type of friends who will sit with you in a coffee shop, lap top in tow, and work alongside you just because they like your company.

I felt especially blessed because we discussed our callings. I disclosed to my friend that in the past year, God has had several people whom I trust deeply each affirm a specific calling in my life, independently without knowledge of the others. It's one of those things as Christians you would think that we would shout from the rooftops. But I haven't, the number of people I've told include my husband, my mother, and one other friend.

"Why?" you may ask. Well, as my mom jokingly said, you can understand how it makes me feel a little like Pat Robertson claiming that the world is going to end on Wednesday. So, I whisper what I have been told only to those who I know will not doubt it. I hedge it with "Well, we'll see if that happens..." and "Oh, I don't know.." I worry that my whispering offends God. It's actually unusual for me to be secretive about anything. I've always marvelled at mysterious people who live their life internally, such as my brother or my husband. Those mysterious, internal people attract me like a bug to a light on a summer night.

And when I undertook this sort of confession, my friend confessed to me her own calling, its development, and the sources of her own doubt. To me, the calling she speaks of seems so clearly fitted to her. It's so much easier to see in others their gifts and God's work in their lives than it is to do so about ourselves, in our own foggy minds and sense of self.

I always have had difficulty hearing the small still voice of God. I most often learn about God through other people. That's why I so strongly believe in the value of the priesthood of believers as a community. Aside from the fact that it's scriptural and historical, I know it and I've experienced it.

It saddens me that my friend and I, two passionate, strong, loving women of faith, whisper our callings in small conversations with each other. While such interactions are important and powerful, why do we hesitate to announce this powerful work of God in our lives? In our cases, I think some of it has to do with gender. In our conservative evangelical tradition, we have each experienced the invalidation of our gifts and callings purely because of our gender at times, in ways that wound and hurt. But, I think we're struggling with more than that.

There come all the doubts, the fears, the Moses-like feelings of, "Who? me? God, I think I'm going to horribly disappoint you." There's also the sacrifices that I must make, having had parents who were involved prominently in our community, I know the struggles that come with parents that are watched. Some of my hesitation stems from the fact that it's hard to reclaim a dream that you have let go. When a dream is deferred, you mourn its loss, feel the grief, and have to let it go. Similar to how the followers of Jesus had to reconfigure and evaluate their entire existence when he rose from the dead, when a dream rises from the dead you have to tear down all the new ones that you've built in order to embrace the old one. The overwhelming joy is mixed with a sense confusion and disbelief. It's a gift for your birthday, 5 months and 14 days after the date...it makes no sense, but you're unbelievably grateful.


A Dream Deferred
~Langston Hughes~

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Just a Normal Person

Somedays, I am just a normal person. Not a graduate student, not a therapist, not a teaching assistant...just a human trying to get by. Today was one of those days, if we ignore the 7 hours that I spent at Panera Bread working on my theoretical orientation for my professional qualifying exams. But, it's not outside of normal that someone might work at Panera with a friend on a Saturday to get some things done. So we'll just pretend I was working on something a little more "normal." Like taxes, or the next chapter of my best selling novel. HA!

Anyway, I had some observations today:

1.) If you chew with your mouth open and literally slurp your pizza-like dinner so loudly that it makes my (awesome cool girl) friend and I break out in giggles 15 feet away...you have a problem. Perhaps a serious one. Come on...really...surely you must be aware that you slurp solid foods so loudly that no one can enjoy eating, working, talking, or even being near you at Panera.

2.) Mother's have difficulty hiding what they are thinking. My mom, bless her heart, sounded suspicious on the phone tonight because while I went shopping (for clothes! that fit!), my husband wisely spared himself from such horrors. He, instead, went to a movie......gasp! Without me. Will someone please send my mom a post card that our marriage is better than ever...probably because I no longer feel the need to bring my husband clothes shopping.

3.) Forth and Towne is the best new shopping experience known to woman. They give you free bottled water. And bring you sizes! And have good lighting and mirrors! And they put things on sale! And Clinton and Stacy from What Not to Wear totally need to give me $5000 to spend on clothes. I dress like a sloppy overworked grad student because I have the budget of a sloppy overworked graduate student. And because I hate to iron.

4.) Of our two cats, Pippin is a jerk! At Ikea I bought a dining room rug ($40! A rug! It's new! And beautiful!) The moment I unwrapped it, he claimed it, rolling around on it, chasing Zuzu away from getting near the full 12 square feet of space available on the rug. As if his butt needs all that room! Then..then! I had bought this little kitty pop up tent ($5! Endless distraction while the cats act stupid!) for the cats to hang out in (hey, I shop like....never) and he won't let Zuzu in it either. I need to send my boy to therapy or something. Does the dog whisperer take on feline cases?

5.) Speaking of Forth and Towne, I finally found jeans that fit me great! (Tonight! is the night! of the exclamation point!) The curvy stretch jean in size INSERT LARGE NUMBER HERE A. See,cut R is for all you regular folks with legs like giraffes. And cut A is for those of us with midget legs on an otherwise normal body. Like me. It's not a petite, which is cut for true little people. Nope, I'm a normal 5'6" height person with shrunken legs. Think Bart Simpson, all body and stubby limbs. On sale, they were a price that will be worth it if I sleep in them, wear them to work, school, and all formal occasions.

6.)Tired of snow. Tired, tired, tired of this snow. Cold, wet, snow. Tired of the dirty shoes, the wet pants, and the snow.

Happy Birthday To Insanity!

I've had this blog for two years this month! It's so interesting that the things I talked about even on that first day are continuing themes in my life now. That's the main reason I keep up with this thing, as a type of journal for myself that others can bear witness to. Being an extratensive person, I make meaning in relationship with others and by talking things out. That's what I do hear because my life is so busy that I don't always have the luxury of having time to be with my dearest others, although that has been changing lately. So, there are some gems in there and some embarrassing rants, as well. Check them out.

Beloved

This weekend, my husband and I were back in Tennessee for the launch service of Crossings, a faith community. I have talked before about how we came to be involved in this church.

Worshipping was an amazing experience, mainly because I had a keen awareness of being a part of something God is doing. The absurdity that in the entire Chicagoland area we would find our current church, and then that that church would deviate from their typical church planting philosophy to entertain the idea of a church in Knoxville, and that we would be here during that time. Well, I said it, it's ABSURD! However, if I have learned anything, it's that God delights in the absurdly creative. His ways are not my own.

I have spent a fair amount of time these last 5 years feeling angry and disaffected from the Church, confused and disturbingly grieved about many failures of Christianity, Christians, the Church, and several local congregations. Not to mention the wrestling that I was doing with God. He and I had quite a few tussles. There is not enough space on the Internets or paper and ink in the world to record the lessons that God has taught me about God and about myself in the past few years. I have tried God in every way that I know how, and God has proven faithful and real. I have experienced God, tasted God, and known God through Jesus Christ...Just like Mark spoke about in his sermon on Sunday.

I make no apologies for the squall of grief, anger, and despair that I long denied, eventually experienced and finally embraced. In an equally confounding manner, I have watched the clouds of anger dissipate. Only by leading me through such a cloud of despair, allowing my wounds to occur and then binding and healing them, could I come to this moment where my story has become restored to one of wholeness and authenticity that seeks to know God and his creativity through my calling to the care of souls.

When I see the community of faith that is blossoming in Knoxville, I get all excited about the impact God is going to have on the lives of those who live there. I also get excited about the undeniably personal manner in which God is letting me be a part of it. Instead of feeling stuck, or torn between two places (Chicago and Knoxville), I experience the absurdity of God's perfect timing, His calculated writing of my story as a part of His story, and a true knowing that I belong to God, and all that I have belongs to God.

Not too long ago, on his blog, Mark asked people to share their "reel to reel" moments of faith. And I think I just remembered my most important one. Reading the The Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen for a class, I recognized myself in both the prodigal and in the resentful older brother. I desperately needed to be keenly aware of God's grace, to know and to believe that I am God's beloved. I also recognized my own scowl, similar to the older brother's, as a sign of my resentment of those who experience God's grace, but who haven't been doing the "hard work" that I have for most of my life. My lack of acceptance of grace stunted my ability to extend grace to others.

For the first time, I sensed a growing awareness and acceptance of God's grace. God kept placing in my life people who reflected to me just how much I am God's beloved. Beloved. Beloved. Over time, I began to believe it. In pieces, in parts, not fully. And being assured of being God's beloved provided to me an expansive and expanding grace toward others. I felt a freedom to love, to shephard, to hold those who dish out daily doses of vitirol, disease, and toxicity. However, my assurance doubts, it wavers, I act as if I am not God's beloved. I forget the loving way in which He created me, the exorbiant price He paid for soul. As evidence of my lack of faith, and my need for continual remembrance, I had that very word..."beloved" tattooed on my body. Not as proof to anyone, not as art, not as anything but a constant reminder that God has declared me His. Even in my darkest moments of doubt, the reality of that ink on my lower back declares to me that in the face of my unbelief, I am God's beloved.

I'm beloved. You're beloved. He is here. He is real.

What a Mistake

For my upcoming clinical comps, we have to have transcribed an ENTIRE session word for word. Many of us, due to the time crunch, hired a transcription service to provide this service. The results are transcripts that have gross inaccuracies and that took ridiculous amounts of time. Supposedly, my 49 minute session took a profession 5 hours to transcribe..and let's just say the results were less than stellar and cost me $150. OUCH!

I wrote this email to the lady just now. I feel like a bully when I do such things, but I think I'm being fair. Healthy aggression, my supervisor calls it.

NAME,

As I have begun to review my transcript, I have to say that I am highly disappointed in the quality and accuracy. The blanks that you could not understand are less of a problem, as they are pretty easy to fill in myself, and some areas are justifiably difficult to understand for various reasons. However, there are large mistakes that alter the meaning of the of entire portions of the material. There are even phrases and entire sentences that are omitted, with no designation or line (_________) indicating that the transcriptionist could not understand the material. Most of these are extremely clear on the recording and are omitted for no apparent reason.

I have had other individuals, without viewing your transcription or my corrections to that transcription, who all were easily able to reproduce the first 2 pages of my session with much greater accuracy than the product that I received from COMPANY. It is my suspicion that you may have used a computer program (such as media player) to play the audio file. When hitting the pause/play button, these players often skip small sections of the file, and such a pattern of missed sentences seems to be apparent in my final transcription.

I by no means expected the transcription to be error free, and our contract reflected such. However, missing entire statements or sentences without designating that you couldn't understand those phrases (It seems to me that they were just missed completely) is not acceptable. Also, the apparent lack of professional transcription equipment seems to have made this process take longer than I would expect from someone who does this as a professional service.

I have spoken with at least four other students who experienced similar degrees of mistakes such as missing phrases, and even grammar, spelling, and clerical misakes. I would like to talk with you via phone or even in person to hear from you possibly compelling reasons why my transcription, (or the other students') was difficult and why the large number of inaccuracies are present. I am headed out of town and will not be available until next week, but I would like to discuss such matters on A CERTAIN DAY or later in the week.

I would like to be able to reccommend your services in the future, or even feel confident that I received my $150 worth of services from COMPANY. However, without some sort of discussion or understanding about this matter, I would have to inform my fellow students and my academic department, who may want to use your service in the future, that your services are not to the standard that I would recommend. From the combined fees of myself and my fellow students, this was likely a lucrative customer base for you. If I am mistaken, and COMPANY prefers not to do this kind of work, I wish that therapy students were informed of that before our business was accepted.

Overall, I am disappointed with the quality of the work, and would like to give you the opportunity to address that and provide me with some understanding from your point of view. I am open to however you would like to do this, via phone or in person. I truly don't prefer email for these matters and am only resorting to this due to my being out of town.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

Nicole

Who am I?

Today, I was talking with some Master's program students, and we were discussing what are good reasons and what are not good reasons to apply to a doctoral program, and specifically the doctoral program at our school. They were asking me about what I was juggling, my school and practicum responsiblities, mission work, TA hours, etc.

One of the ladies turned and looked at me, and she said, "But you seem so calm, and you're sitting here taking time to talk with us, when you have so much you could be doing." Wow! I almost had to stop and ask if she was talking to me, because based on the person I have been for the first 26 years of my life, those are not reflections that I would expect. But that is me now, and I am this recently calm, almost serene person. It's amazing the work that Christ has done in my life, making me this new person whom I have to get to know all over again.

Life is crazy insane, swirling all around me, but in most moments I have a peace that I have never had before. It's amazing the faithfulness of God. Look at me! Using God talk type of language that I usually avoid. I almost hesitate to talk of these feelings and this experience because religious language and concepts have been abused by many in my past to produce trite answers and fake joy. But, I don't want to deny that this change is not my own, that's for sure.

So, what the heck. Peace be with you.

A (not so) brief paragraph on the process of healing.

The Process of Healing

Healing, in its various forms, is a complicated process. While God sometimes chooses to intervene in miraculous and seemingly immediate ways, more often God leads the human to healing through a process. The reasons for this are many and often known only to God. However, through the wisdom of scripture, tradition, and personal experience, there are methods through which we find healing often happens.

One of these paths is having another bear witness to one’s pain and suffering. Witnesses hearing testimony and confession confirm the reality of one’s story. Any individual who has long held a secret to the point that he or she doubted its truth will attest to the incomplete but remarkable relief experienced by speaking such secrets aloud to another person. Healing also often occurs in the context of relationship. From relatively high functioning individuals to the severely character disordered, we all posses a level of inherited and acquired relationship patterns that are convoluted by sin. By entering into loving and caring relationships with others (and with God) that disrupt or frustrate these patterns and provide new ways of relating, we can experience a measure of healing. Such experiences compel us toward healthier and holier interactions with one another and with the Creator.

Finally, healing is reflected in the developmental process. God, being fully aware that we are never fully aware, orchestrates our individual experiences in such a manner that we learn in a cumulative but somewhat lock-step way. Each experience has the potential to yield new insight that we previously could not grasp because of the cumulative nature of each experience before that moment. Such a developmental path to healing accounts for the temporal nature of certain dis-eases.

I'm tired...

..of being low man on the totem pole. My site is amazing, but being a student means never being in the same office. That's hard for me, a person who is highly impacted by place. I just received an email that my client and I have been rescheduled for another room. This is pretty darn annoying because my client and I have met in that room for 2 years. Talk about disrupting the frame. *Sigh* Do I speak up or just put up with it for this one week? Or point out that there's an empty room that no one is scheduled for that the clinician who is changing her schedule could use?

I sent an email, and I hope it's not taken as whining. I'm willing to move all my clients but this one, because we're in the middle of terminating what has been a 2 year therapy relationship.

What do you think?

In the state of Illinois, the extent to which therapy sessions with adolescents are confidential is at the determination of the therapist when it comes to whether or not to disclose to parents. I highly value the confidentiality of the therapy context, and believe that it's my job to work to have an adolescent tell his or her own parents important information, so that I can eventually be out of the picture and they have new skills in regard to communication with one another. But there are limits to that, and I often tell the teen, you can tell your mom/dad at the end of the session, or I will. Which do you prefer? Or, you have until our next session to tell mom or dad this or we'll be doing it in that session.

Here's a list we're supposed to rank for my Advanced Ethics course. What do you think? Tell me your ratings and then I'll show you mine after some people have responded.

Would you require disclosure to parents (or anyone else) for any of the following behaviors on the part of your 16 year teen client even if the teen doesn’t want you to disclose? Give your rating on the following scale for each of the following:

Rank the 0-10 with 0 being Would Not Disclose, 5 Totally Depends, 10 Definitely disclose.

_____ Being sexually active?
_____ Being sexually active without the use of protection?
_____ Being sexually promiscuous?
_____ Doing marijuana once per week on the weekend?
_____ Smoking pot daily before school?
_____ Doing ecstasy once per month?
_____ Driving into a dangerous neighborhood to buy heroin for the teen’s personal use?
_____ Dealing / selling drugs?
_____ Vandalism (graffiti)
_____ Petty retail theft
_____ Buying a fake i.d. to use in bars
_____ Selling fake ids to others
_____ Your client tells you that she is having sex with an 18 year old girl
_____ Your client tells you that she is having sex with a 35 year old
_____ Stealing bikes from kids in the neighborhood and re-selling them elsewhere
_____ Your client was in a group fight with kids from a rival high school and thinks that he may have broken the nose and arm of another kid and possibly fractured the other kid’s skull as well
_____ Your client stole a car
_____ Your client plans to be involved in a large scale fight between rival groups this weekend
_____ Your client plans to have a party at her home this weekend when her parents are away
_____ Your client is pregnant and her parents don’t know
_____ And she is thinking about having an abortion