sifting

It has a been a loooooong time since I have posted anything too substantial. It's not because there isn't anything substantial going on with me; more like I'm being bombarded by new things, lessons about life, belief systems, ideas, work challenges, clients' issues, my issues, and on and on. The past several months have been actually pretty transformational for me, and it's sort of all still sifting and settling. Actually, it feels like I am being sifted - that God is challenging me to really look at myself and my life up to this point and is sifting out some of the crummy stuff that doesn't need to continue to drag me down. I'm taking a class this semester called group counseling, which is about how to learn to lead counseling groups. Since the seminary is committed to great pedagogy, they believe that experiential learning is one of the best methods to teach us students (note my slight ironic sarcasm here), so for this class it means that we have been divided into counseling groups which we have been meeting in weekly for the past 10 weeks or so. Talk about totally dreading something - you'd think a counselor in training would be so excited to get together with a bunch of classmates and talk about myself. Not the case - at first. This experience has been amazing for me. I've been challenged to take risks that I don't normally take with people, opening up more readily and more fully than I normally do. It has been so rewarding. In January, I also started my individual counseling that is required for me to graduate (I'm halfway through my 20 sessions), and have been getting so much out of this! It's hard. I have a renewed respect for every person who has ever been a client for any period of time. It is not easy to commit to making changes in your life. So this has been quite the intensive therapeutic semester for me. I'm comforted to know that during the sifting process, God still has me firmly in His grip. If you think about a sifter (or colander or whatever), that's the whole purpose of the device; to hold something securely while the unneeded stuff is sifted out from the good stuff. I can't imagine trying to get through life without knowing I'm held securely in God's hands.