It's unfortunate, but I'm not apologizing

Where have I been? Well, it's been a draining semester of a myriad of events, many of them difficult. Because many of these events have been...well, difficult, I have hesitated to blog about them. Some have been too vulnerable while others have been about sensitive information that no online forum would be anonymous enough to divulge. But overall, I have been going from one emotionally draining event from another, and none of them are of my own making.

I do ask for prayers and thoughts and a $20 prayer gift, for which I will send you a prayer rug that I have blessed. (Just kidding..seeing if you were awake). But, I was serious about the prayers and thoughts.

I am not trying to be secretive, neither am I wanting to seek out the pity of others. However, I do think if I list all of these events, I may just feel sorry for myself.

My mentor, friend, and professor who is in his mid 40's had a stroke on Sunday afternoon. A severe one. Then there was emergency brain surgery for the swelling. And all of the people coming to see him, and the him being asleep, and me finally finally getting to see him today (which was so hard but such a blessing). This man has been a dear friend, supervisor, and mentor, and I am heartbroken for him right now and how hard it is for him to be dependent and the unknown nature of his recovery for him, and for his wife and son whom I also know and love. For four years I have been his teaching assistant, his "right hand" (his description). He is my "second dad" and I feel so bad for leaving in a week to go to Europe, for leaving in 7 weeks to move hundreds of miles away at a time when he really does need an extra hand, because his left side is paralyzed (but improving).

He is still himself, joking, talking, although more slowly and interspersed with naps. My heart breaks. I make myself get up early so that I get some time alone with him before the crowds come to visit him, so he can tell me the things that he wants me to know. The Wednesday before his stroke, we had a "goodbye" lunch, where tears were shed and how much we have meant to each other was spoken, where we said out loud what we had seen and experienced over 4 years of working, laughing, doing therapy, and learning together. I am so thankful for those 2 hours now, and for the hours I know we're going to have in the future. But for now, my heart breaks.

And, our department chair is in the same hospital, with artery issues and likely facing surgery in the coming week, as well. He is intensely private, but kind and gentle. So, although I by no means am as close to him, the intense upset to our department and my community is overwhelming.

All of this follows on the heels of the internship process and saying goodbye to everything that has been our life these past 5 years. My grandmother being seriously ill and near death (but she's recovering very well now, praise God!). A closest friend having some hard stuff, and then being very hurtful to the point I had to step away in a time when I should be clinging to her. The departure of a professor under dubious circumstance of which I was informed and that put me in a weird between faculty and students and friends/colleagues/coworkers/supervisors situation. A close professor having breast cancer, and the increased load this placed on the aforementioned prof. Excruciatingly painful end of the year, saying goodbye issues compounded by the painful things I was dealing with regarding the friend I mentioned before. Difficult situations with my practicum site and with a clinical training personnel that have resulted in my having to use my voice to speak up and give hard feedback to superiors (but that has been received well and that I have been supported in). And finally, sending my husband off to Europe this morning for work, to see him again in 9 days when we will meet in Brussels.

Looking for Music Suggestions...

I volunteered to make the year-end slide show for my department's banquet. I actually enjoy this kind of thing, and it's an easy way for me to give something to the department and actually enjoy it. I especially enjoy the humor aspect of the job. One year I diagnosed all of the faculty with various inane but funny disorders. This year, I am mulling over the ideas of how to poke appropriate fun at our facult. But, I'm struggling with what songs to put with the pictures. The struggle is that the songs need to be publicly acceptable...probably meaning no cursing. An unusually high number of my songs that I feel fit all say some combination of "Fuck," "Fuck the president," or "Fuck the war." Um, that's probably not very nice to a group of diverse adults who may or may not agree with me.

Although we are a Christian school, I do think that my psychologist classmates could handle the rare damn, hell, or shit. Any ideas? The slide show is usually about 15-20 minutes, so I have some leeway with a broad range of songs. I typically go from a funny, upbeat feel to a more serious, saying goodbye tone. What suggestions do you have?

Oh Where Will We Be Living?

This message provides you with your Match result for the APPIC
Internship Matching Program for internship positions beginning
in 2008.

Congratulations! You have been matched to an internship position.

Information on the specific program to which you have been matched
will be available on the Matching Program web site beginning at
10:00 a.m. EST on Monday, February 25, 2008. This information will
also be sent to you by e-mail on Monday morning, February 25, 2008.

Come on, already!

So, tomorrow is big day #1. It's the day when I find out if I matched to an internship site for next year. It's odd, because there are good things to come, match or not. If I match, fantastic. If I don't, then we're going to travel for much of the next year. The biggest disadvantage would be having to do this process all over again.

After tomorrow, then we sit tight all weekend waiting to hear where I matched on Monday. Boy, do I need to stay busy this weekend. I'm dying already.

Glimmers of hope...

It has been a bleak and difficult time lately. I have more to do than humanly possible. There are classes that frustrate and leave me unfulfilled. Difficult and hurtful crappy situations permeate the lives of others whom I love. There are work relationships that make even simple tasks difficult. Clients have crises, push boundaries, or are doing good work that is still hard. My Granny is very very ill (she was in ICU on Monday until Tuesday morning) and in the hospital, while my parents, aunts, and uncles rally around her to combat her illness, unkind and neglectful hospital staff members, and their own struggles with the same brutal stomach flu. I am far away and feel helpless to support all of them.

My mother's church has the rumblings of discontent, some of it directed at her. In 10 days, my husband and I find out the fate of where we will be living next year, and then will have to face the losses associated with wherever we live. Marriage is rewarding but hard, and requires more work than not right now. I struggle with feelings of anxiety and depression amidst and seemingly endless winter that is more brutal and snow filled than I care to deal with.

But today, today was good. I am encouraged by how my family comes together during a time of crisis. How sacrificial and loving they all can be for the sake of a single member or the overall family. That my husband surprised me not only with a dozen roses, but with a card listing 100 reasons why he loves me, real reasons that one could only know after nearly 8 years together. Reasons that are idiosyncratic, intimate, and truthful. For friends who support and listen and laugh and love me, and let me do the same for them. Mentors and supervisors who invest in me and make time for supporting me amidst hard and difficult times. For making progress on dissertation and coming closer to closing a big chapter of my life in a way that feels rewarding and complete.

I am thankful for God, whose grace permeates even the darkest of places and the driest of deserts, and who knows of all types of suffering and sits well with me in it. A God who repeatedly welcomes me back, despite my continual betrayals and affairs. In this season of Lent, I am called to repentance and long long long for the joy of redemption and resurrection.

Interveiw Update

Since we last talked, I have had mucho more interviews. The process itself is quite overwhelming. There have been sites that I have fallen in love with, but that don't quite offer the training experieces/supervision/job opportunities/etc. that I want. There are others that seem a perfect fit but that are in a location that holds no appeal to me. Some offer training and supervision that almost feel too comfortable and too much exactly like what I have been doing in my traning thus far. Others pay only enough to not starve. And some are in really really really really cold locations. Others are in really really really hot locations. How do you put all of that into a matrix and make an informed ranking decision?

I don't want to go site by site through my interviews anymore, mainly because that's not what's going to be helpful to anyone who really wonders about this process, and it frankly exposes a bit too much of my hand to anyone who just stumbles upon my life as I report it here. So here are my tips...

*Spend about an hour before the interview the night or morning before rereading your essays and the program materials for that site. Ask yourself what questions do you have? What rotations do you see yourself in? Why do you want to be at this site?

*Do not memorize answers to those questions that are floating around that you might be asked. Do think about them, plan for them, and expect them to be asked. But, do not become a robot with memorized and recalled answers. You're a clinician, a therapist. Use your gut sense of who is interviewing you to respond with the best and most relevant things that you want to say.

*When asked about what you're passionate about outside of psychology or the profession, be honest. Don't use this as an opportunity to promote yourself or the work you did in this or that campus organization, ministry, etc. That's arrogant. Genuinely say that you love to hike, or travel, or watch movies, or to shamelessly dote on your doberman. They want to know you're a person with a life that's not all about achievement or your work.

*Be able to talk about your mission and vision beyond what role this internship site might play in that process. You're not telling the truth and they're not believing that your whole life you've been waiting to work in that site doing exactly what they're doing there. It might be a great fit, but what bigger reasons make it a great fit?

*If a fellow applicant/current intern/interviewer acts unprofessionally, do no return it tit for tat. If they curse, you don't. If they talk about someone or some place negatively, do not sink to that level. Just give an "Oh really?" response and try to move on.

*Look around at the interns that are there currently. Do you fit well with them? Would these be people that you would enjoy working with? Look around at the applicants around you. These are the other people with whom you might work. Could you see yourself with them? If the answer is no to most of them, this might not be a good fit.

*Do not bash your training program. Think long and hard about what weaknesses you will discuss, because you will be asked that question.

*Do not talk about other interviews, other sites, or ask other applicants about other sites. Unless you're utterly alone without any professionals from that site around, it's going to put someone on the spot, and that person may not want to disclose that they got 1 interview, or 10, or that site in that state sucked or was fantastic.

*Wear a suit. Don't wear sequins. Be friendly to others, talk and have fun.

Stuck up, pretentious, and difficult.

On my round robin of interviews, I have been away from home since December 28th, with only a one day stopover. I finally returned home last night, and today it's back to the full semested grind. During my travels I have met some really wonderful professionals and fellow applicants who made my experiences enjoyable, informative, and energizing. On the other hand, I have had some bizarre and odd encounters that made me wonder if I am all the things that I titled this post. A sampling:

*An applicant who wore a sequined top to interviews. A handful of people who did not wear a suit to the interviews.
*An applicant in a gray skirt suit and knee boots at an interview at a psychodynamically oriented site.
*An applicant who fell asleep and snored on a drive out to a remote office at one site.
*The same applicant did not wear a suit, criticized the meal we were offered, and called vegetarians "weird" in casual conversation.
*Taken to lunch by a site with current interns and another applicant where separate checks were requested and we had to pay for our own meals.
*Been told many, many times "I haven't had time to read your (30+ page required) application, so tell me what's important from it."
*In one interview with a training director, "Wait, I want to grab my cigarettes, so I can grab a smoke break when I walk you back."
*Been asked, "So, how many interviews do you have?" by internship faculty in front of the people who will be ranking me.
*Been told by a chief psychologist that "I stop and ask about Lois the office worker's hip, not because I care, but because it makes her a better worker."

And that is a mere sampling of the unprofessional behavior that I have encountered. I'm beginning to think that I might just be too uptight. Are these behaviors not as inappropriate as I think they are?

Who, who are you?

Take one extended family, add a birthday surprise party for parents, throw in a healthy serving of interviews, and move repeatedly from one home to the other. While waiting to learn where you will spend the next year of your life, gently fold in time with the inlaws, multiple hour drives, and be away from home for two weeks. Let sit, and you get pure exhaustion.

It has been wonderful to be back in the area I consider “home.” Hubs and I were able to go to the church plant that we hope to one-day call a church home. I spent lazy moments with my brother and his wife, enjoyed early morning views of the mountains, and saw all my grandparents. I also had some great dinners with a good friend. I wish I could move all of the people I love into the same geographical place. But then again, that might undo some of the reasons I find them all so charming, enjoyable, and life giving.

So far, I’ve had two interviews. One was in a southern state in a rural town, a consortium of a residential children’s home, a state hospital, and a community mental health site. The facility was drab, and the people were kind. However, I found the professionalism of the candidates and the site staff to be lacking. I am all for warm, but I found them overly casual. I left the interview wondering if I had misjudged what I could expect from an internship site. I learned more from what questions they did not ask rather than from the questions that they did. The thought of training at that site, living in that town, and working with those people, well it was merely tolerable or doable. To be frank, I was feeling disappointed with the quality of the other applicants. Two of the five were from a distributed learning school.

Distributed learning? While these applicants are likely intelligent and capable, I do not feel comfortable with APA’s recent accreditation of correspondence programs. I just do not see how the 3 to 5 years I spent with mentors, living and being with people who I both loved and didn’t love so much, and having a faculty of one mind evaluate my growth as a clinical professional could be paralleled by submitting my papers online and engaging in online discussion and critique. One applicant even said, “Well, the bad part is that other people can see your work and critique it, because we submit all of our assignments to the entire group.” To me, the ability to give and receive feedback is instrumental to being an empathic and effective person AND professional.

The second site is a community mental health site that does traditional therapy, primary care consulting (a new skill area for me), and some day treatment for the persistently and severely mentally ill. I really liked this site. First, the level of professionalism was evident, yet the people were warm. So often, professionals who work long term in such agencies or settings are unhappy, burnt out, cynical and jaded. But these were fresh faced people who genuinely enjoyed their work, who wanted to know me. They knew my application, remembering where I had worked, with whom I had worked, and where I was from. The other site’s professionals were glancing through it as I walked into the interview and knew very little about me.

It was so refreshing to hear from a site that turns no one away due to lack of payment, whose eyes shine bright at discussing their desire for all employees to have a calling beyond the agency where they work, and for high quality training as a way of giving back to the profession. This site will be high on my list. The other applicants were appropriately professional, and you could tell that this group of individuals were well informed about how to be genuine but respectful of the professional setting.

So, I’m tired, but I keep on trucking. I leave tomorrow evening for another interview in a rural area Monday morning, and yet another on Tuesday morning near Nashville. Then I get to fly back home for one day of rest. I can’t wait to see my husband, sleep in my own bed, and kiss my kitties.

It's Been Awhile...

Wow, I left my blog on a down note and went away for awhile. That's no good. So here's an update. I have 9 internship interviews in five different states and Canada. I have interviews at really awesome sites. However, I applied to 18 sites, so that means 9 sites weren't enticed by me. Predominantly college counseling centers and the uber competitive hospitals or community mental health sites in humongous cities. Oh, well, someone else will have to enjoy my awesomey goodness. All in all, 50% is a really high return rate for interviews, so I'm satisfied.

The next three weeks are jam packed, with a New Year's Eve 50th birthday party for my parents that I am hosting with my brother, an interview tour of the Southeast, an interview tour of the Midwest, a trip to Canada for another interview, and this semester I also have a full load of classes, a dissertation to finish, and a life to live. I try not to think about possibly having to leave my friends. I love them so.

The past two days have been spent organizing and cleaning. It makes me happy, and my husband cranky. He sees no point when there are Gameboy Advance games to be played, XFiles Season 7 to watch, and new sweat pants to wear.

I have packing and such to do, so I'm off. I don't know how much time I'll have to post, but I will do my best to keep you updated on what it's like to go through interviews. Let's see how well I manage the transition between very rural sites and major metropolitan ones. Should be interesting.

I'm done!

Right now, sitting next to me, are my two final completed internship applications.

I should be celebrating, and I am! But, in a really low-key non event way. Graduate school is a long pursuit in the same direction, so to speak. Except that much of the time, you're sprinting. It's like suicide sprints interspersed with grade card day at school.

It's interesting all the things that one must hold aloft during any graduate training. There's internship applications, the equivalent of writing a 10 page paper every day for a month after doing months of compiling and research mixed with the anxieties about where you want your career to head and where you want to live.

But, I still have clients, and classes, and oh, that dissertation thing all up in the air, too. I guess that explains why my closets are heaping messes and that my eyebrows are in severe need of a taming. Umm hmm.

Take Monday, for example. I was seeing clients by 8:30 AM. In between client hours, I was photocopying my surveys so that I could spend my lunch break collecting data from students in a class where the professor was out of town. After a non lunch, there were more clients and the requisite paperwork. Followed by an evening spent editing essays and cover letters for dear friends who have done the same for me. Somewhere in there I ate dinner and baked cookies (ate those, also). I am amazed and pleased at how much one can successfully handle concurrently. I'm also abhorred by such overfunctioning. I often wonder what would happen if I just said "NO." Would things still get done, eventually? Would I see any ill effects?

So, now I brace myself for the joys and the rejections that will start coming soon. The waiting part is hard for me. 18 applications in the mail. I wonder how many interviews I will get? I could have some interviews as soon as two weeks, and have some interviews as late as the first week of February.

I held a baby tonight..

And my ovaries exploded. I don't know which I wanted more, the small child that I was holding or the cute little schnauzer prancing around the house. Of course, I then realized that no babies and no dogs equal a lot less poop in my life than in some others' lives. For that I was thankful.

Anyone out there ever gone through this whole graduate school/internship thing and have children? When's a good time? There is no perfect time, I know! But, I wonder how having a baby fits into the life schedule. You'd think I might consult God on these things, but that guy has a habit of giving me answers that I don't like, and I"m feeling selfish today. I promise I'll talk to him about that after internship applications are done. Oh, and maybe to my husband. It's not like a can bare his child without at least a little bit of his involvement.

If you're reading this blog and I've sent you an application, don't worry. I'm not having a baby during internship. But you may have to make way for my bloated belly at some point during the process, and put my office near the bathroom.

Raise Your Hand If You're Sure...

In graduate school, there are many people, processes, and paperwork that are irritating and annoying. But few things raise my ire as much as the grad school hand raiser. The hand raiser is ALWAYS a woman. While everyone else seems to have learned that we're all adults, the hand raiser seems to need the validation of someone calling on her in order to deign to grace us with her thoughts. The hand raiser raises her hand as if she's holding her place in line to speak.

"What is so annoying?" you ask. "Is the hand raiser not simply being polite?"

No, the hand raiser is being a passive aggressive manipulator who wields power in the worst of ways. The hand raiser demands to be acknowledged by others, as if everyone else in the room isn't also holding in a thought that could be shared. The hand raiser is declaring to the whole class, "Instead of listening to whomever is speaking, I'm sitting here holding my thought and pondering it instead."

The hand raiser is waiting for everyone to pause and invite her to speak. Worse than the hand raiser, is the professor who calls on her. "Oh wait, Steve. Jenny has her hand raised." Nevermind that Steve is the introvert who speaks in class exactly twice a year, Jenny has her hand raised.

Being in psychology, I often wonder if the hand raiser raises her hand to speak at family functions. If in therapy sessions, she raises her hand while her clients pour out their pain, because she's waiting to be recognized. Hand raisers are at the same time arrogant and insecure. It's a passive power move hidden behind a demeanor of propriety that is actually an insidious form of obsequiousness. (Google it!)

I once was in an Advanced Psychodynamic Therapy class where we confronted the hand raiser. She didn't stop. When she raised her hand on the last day of class, during our termination session, I pointed it out. She didn't like that, and we all just talked over her until she gave in and said whatever the hell she had to say. I find that the greatest victory of my graduate career. Forget about the clients who have made great strides under my care, or my own personal journey of growth. An entire year later, I find so much more satisfaction in that moment where the hand raiser was conquered.

Well, except the hand raiser is in class with me once again, raising that damn hand. The hand raiser isn't so bad, but in class I just want to slowly break each of her fingers. But, if I did that people would probably feel more sorry for her deformed claw of a hand and professors would call on her more. Then it would be, "I'm sorry Steve, but Jenny has her misshapen handicapped claw raised." Grrr.

So, to the hand raisers of the world. Stop. It. We aren't five and neither are you. And if you start waving that thing in the air, I'm going to break it off.

Better late that never.

My today isn't over yet, so this still counts right?

Today was an interesting day, one where I took no prisoners and asserted myself in new and unique ways. I hope to write more about it tomorrow or later in the week. But, for now, I'll give you an internship application update.

7 are completed, mailed, and received by the sites.

3 are ready go waiting to be compiled and mailed.

3 are in progress of being written and will be completed this weekend b/c they are due on the 16th.

5 more are due after the 16th and aren't being worked on right now, but a couple of sites are really present in my mind and I think might be a really awesome match for me.


That's how it is, yo. Check it.

Why The Internet is Communal, but Rarely a Community.

I am currently in the process of helping the professor with whom I work with his book that will be published in October of 2008. This quote on community really struck me...

Years ago, I read Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book, “Life Together.” It influenced me deeply in my thoughts about what the Church can, and can’t, be.[i] Bonhoeffer points out that true Christian community is nothing like the fantasies and illusions we have of a wonderful, welcoming family. It is like that, sometimes, of course. But community is really more like a crucible. We have to live in close proximity with people that we really don’t like. Or, if we did like them in the beginning, we will discover many annoying qualities as well. The crucible of a community heats us up and holds us in so that we can’t get away. In the process, it refines us, bringing the impurities to the surface where they can be skimmed away.

Communities are necessary for spiritual purification. Even the desert fathers and mothers, many of whom lived as hermits in caves, settled in proximity to each other and created the first model for the communal life of monasteries. On our own we too easily avoid noticing where our sharp edges are. When we live in close proximity to others we are constantly bumping up against each other with those unfinished edges. It is much more difficult to hide. As the Proverbs remind us, “as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”[ii] (Proverbs 27:17, TNIV ). Any who are serious about confronting their own signature sins, then, should seek to be part of a community where this kind of sharpening can take place.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[i] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (New York: Harper, 1954).
[ii] Proverbs 27:17, TNIV

Sunshine, rainbows, and ponies.

While you were all handing out or collecting candy, I was busy writing discussion questions for a book on signature sins. It's a really well written book that looks at our temperament, our struggles with sin that are unique to who we are, our past experiences, and how contemplative spirituality can help us to address the sins that cling so closely. I'll let you know when it comes out. (Oh...wait...let me clear something up. It's NOT my book, but the book of the professor for whom I've worked for the past four years.) But, doing so does not make me a cheerful gal. Everyone else eats candy, I contemplate sin. I guess that fits more with Reformation Day than with it being Halloween. Calvin was a sucker for gluttony, and so am I, so skipping the candy might be a good thing.

In the therapy office today, it seemed to go exceptionally well. Clients that never talk, talked. Clients that are never quiet, were quiet. And clients that considered leaving therapycame in and told me about their misgivings. That's all any therapist can ask for in a given day. It felt like sunshine, rainbows, and ponies. I never would have thought that a profession that leads me to sit with people in their various pains, false selves, and suffering could be so life giving. The honor of sitting with another in love and truth can be as uplifting as it can be full of despair. I wouldn't call the struggles of my clients uplifting, but to see that an hour a week gives some of them hope to keep fighting, changing, and growing, is a relief. It emboldens me to the goodness that we can taste in this life.

It's a busy day, and I am still working on things. I must go. Just know that there is hope, even for those of us who think we are lost causes.

Serendipity

Today, I decided that I needed some time to sit and just be. I've been working hard on practicum and internship applications and some writing projects, and I felt overloaded. Well, class seemed to be the easiest thing to let go, so I decided not to go today. But, then I got an email, and class was cancelled because the prof is sick.

I think there have been 3 cancelled classes in the past 5 years of my graduate life. :) And now I can still skip another day.

On the downhill stretch...

I had a doctor's appointment today. It wasn't that kind of appointment. So you won't have to read any stories like this. They wanted to scan my license, but I didn't have it on me (oops), so I offered my student ID instead. The requisite questions followed. "What are you in school for?" "How much longer?"

"Two years. Well, one year of classes. Then internship. I'm almost done."

*Raised eyebrows.* "Two years, that's awhile, but I miss school."

"But I'm almost done. Almost."

I just can't let it go. After two years completing a terminal master's, and two more years of courses. After passing two major exams in the last year (comps and qualifying exams), finishing my dissertation proposal (defense on September 7th), and being in the midst of applying for internship, I must say I am "ALMOST" done. I know that dissertation and internship are two long miles, and those last miles are the hardest you'll ever run. But at least I can see the finish line. I don't hardly count the internship year. Because, guess what, you get PAID! Not much, but you do get paid.

I am a person who needs endings. The regalia, banquets, and ceremonies were created for people like me. So, lady who works in the doctor's office, you let me have it. I'm almost done.

Update

Today, I received the results of my written comprehensive exam. I passed! Praise God, my closest friends and I all passed, despite many worries and concerns.

Unfortunately, I am sick, and any celebrating must wait until I feel better. But, I'm one step closer to being done. Now...I must move on to my dissertation proposal defense on September 7th. Oh, and that oral statistics exam. Sigh. No rest for the wicked, and the righteous don't need none.

Absentee Blogger

Hi, everyone. I've become the slum lord of the blogger world. I just slap up a blog and leave it to dilapidate. Shame on me. But, if it makes you feel better, since we last talked I have:

--Finished up Spring classes
--Completed my 11 required psych assessments
--Completed one Summer class, including 4 quizzes and a autobiography paper
--Visited my family back home, and come back not angry or frustrated (HUGE DEAL!)
--Two drafts of the lit review for my dissertation
--Done all the prep work for workshop I'm leading in Hungary on working with teens.
--Taken 2 bio bases exams
--Cleaned out 2 closets (I gave away enough for 2 other wardrobes...shameful)
--Selected the 18 sites where I will apply for internship and put all that info into an excel worksheet (it's bigger than it sounds)
--Requested permission to use various measures for my dissertation
--Done all my shopping for said trip to Hungary
--More I can't remember.

Now, none of you care about any of that, but it makes me feel less anxious to write all of that down. So deal with it.

Sarah tagged me forever ago to write 7 weird or odd habits or facts or what have you, that I do regularly. I'm weird, but my weirdness seems normal to me, so this is kinda hard.

1.) I sleep with a stuffed gorilla named Alice. I've had her since my 14th birthday, and I've always slept with her. She's my body pillow more than a transitional object.

2.) I am the internet guru among my friends. When I didn't email my friends with any interesting links or fun stuff on the internet for a few days one busy week, I got an inbox full of emails asking if I was okay. It's that bad.

3.) I always set clocks ahead. Usually by 7 minutes. For some reason it makes me feel like I have more time.

4.)When I was a kid, I always had a crush on Bob Barker. I think if we got married, I'd get all those prizes. And the plinko board. I'm actually a little sad he's retiring. I always thought I'd get to go on The Price is Right with Bob someday.

5.)I'd wear my Chaco's everyday if it weren't socially unacceptable in some settings.

6.)I have hair on the back of my hands. I don't like it, so I have this love hate relationship with loving myself and leaving it and sneakily shaving it off in the shower.

7.)Before I go overseas, there's always a little part of me that is utterly, 100% convinced that I'm going to die.


So there you go folks, I'm one weird lady.

It's busy up in here.

End of the semester means lots of things to do and little time for the Internets. ;) So, I thought you might enjoy some of my pastoral care paper on my vision of soul care.

The soul care giver is to enter into relationship with others in a deliberate way so as to nurture and love them while providing gentle correction for the broken ways of relating evident in their lives. The soul care giver, as explained by St. Gregory the Great (1978), engages in relationships where “discourse…should be adapted to the character of the hearers, so as to be suited to the individual in his respective needs, and yet never deviate from the art of general edification (p. 89).”

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The role of the soul care giver is also to be the voice within the Church that speaks for the spiritual disciplines, prayer, silence, and simplicity. In today’s raucous society of efficiency and production, the soul care giver works to make space within the institution of the Church for instruction on spiritual practices, and is the constant reminder of the true purpose of humanity in creation. Richard Foster (2005) uses the term “passion to possess (p.3)” to describe contemporary society’s need to own and produce and its inevitable outcome of producing a fractured and fragmented way of life. As Lisa McMinn states in her book, The Contented Soul,

To see our selves as a soul that belongs is to accept an invitation to hold life, relationships, and possessions loosely, hands open, recognizing that nothing is really ours but that we belong to God and to all that is around us—our family, neighborhood, communities of work and worship, our country, our neighbors in the world, and the earth that sustains us all. A soul that belongs is a contented soul living in a place of quiet joy, and it invites, welcomes, and calms those who draw near (p.22).

The soul care giver strives to be a person that lives a life of simplicity and authenticity that draws people to the calming contemplative way.

The soul care giver carefully holds all of these important goals, and is only able to do so with even tenuous success if she is a person who practices and strives for holiness through spiritual disciplines. The soul care giver ultimately is one who seeks out intimacy with God, and who conducts a ministry that supports, loves, and cares for others in ways that encourage them to engage more intimately with God. The soul care giver makes no promises that the spiritual way is easy, but only that she will walk with and care for parishioners no matter where their journey leads, even through such horrible afflictions as the Dark Night of the Soul. As Evelyn Underhill states in her book The Spiritual Life:

The spiritual life then is not a peculiar or extreme form of piety. It is, on the contrary, that full and real life for which man is made; a life that is organic and social, essentially free, yet with its own necessities and laws. Just as physical life means, and depends on, constant correspondence with our physical environment, the atmosphere that surrounds and penetrates us, the energies of heat and light, whether we happen to notice it or not; so does spiritual life mean constant correspondence with our spiritual environment, whether we notice it or not (p. 41-42).

The soul care giver practices the spiritual life and draws attention to and makes intentional for others the spiritual environment so that we might benefit more from it, and so that awareness of God and his whisperings will be more acute.


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Soul care ministry focuses on ways to deepen believers’ knowledge and openness to God and His work. Soul care is also the part of the Church that deepens an understanding of one’s self and others in order to grow toward conformity of character and inner life in the image of Christ. Doing so, besides being a command of Christ, ultimately benefits the global Church and the local congregation.

The benefit comes in that a body of believers who are listening to God and seeking God’s direction become less concerned with programs, logistics, and the “doing” of church. A congregation that has a pervasive and appropriately integrated soul care ministry supports and develops Christ followers who long after God and God’s work in their lives. They serve joyfully where God has instructed. They express love to the community around them. For it is only through soul care and its call to the contemplative traditions that can produce a faith community where God dispenses his grace through us, and changes the world through us. Soul care has to offer the church the dream of a body who loves so well, people are drawn closer to God through Jesus Christ.

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In his book, Letters to a Young Evangelical, Tony Campolo (2006) calls for a reclaiming of the contemplative (predominantly Catholic) traditions that were removed from Evangelicalism at the reformation.

After the Reformation, we Protestants left behind much that was troubling about the Roman Catholicism of the fifteenth century. I am convinced that we left too much behind. The methods of praying employed by the likes of Ignatius have become precious to me. With the help of some Catholic saints, my prayer life has deepened. Ignatius and other Catholic mystics such as Teresa of Avila have been of incredible help to me in developing a kind of praying in which God becomes a real and felt presence (p. 31).

Although I have now become a member of a very nontypical Christian church, it remains the same Evangelical tradition. Although there exists a growing appreciation for the spiritual and contemplative, there remains little structure, instruction, or support for pastoral care. The church incorporates more psychological ministries, including support and recovery. However, there remains a vast emptiness concerning pastoral care.
I hope to follow the example set by the atypical Evangelical leader Tony Campolo in his personal ministry and writings, for a pastoral care ministry that incorporates an acute sense of social justice and the Church Universal in addition to having an intimate relationship with Christ. Campolo (2006) suggests the practices of centering prayer, contemplative Bible study, and an accountability group that helps you maintain spiritual disciplines for consistent Christian living.