I haven’t posted anything vocational on here in a long while. Probably since I first started teaching last year. I am no longer a teacher. I have been trying to figure out where God is leading me into the future. After last school year. I began counseling, praying, and searching. I am really serious about serving others in the way that God is calling me. I have had extreme difficulty hearing where God is leading me next.
This summer I took a course in special education. I was enrolled in the Wilmington University special ed program and thought that this was where God was leading me. I always had a heart for these kids and worked in a class for students with severe mental and physical handicaps 3 summers ago. I really loved what I did. I took the course and something just didn’t seem right. I felt like I just jumped the gun and chose this because I needed to decide what to do with my life immediately. By the end of the course, I knew that this is not where I was geing called.
Last spring, I was accepted into Eastern University’s Urban Studies program. I was very interested in the community development program and thought that this was definitely interesting. I wasn’t sure if I was going to go through with the program, but decided to take a course in the fall to explore it and really feel it out. I am taking a course right now called: Urban Issues in a Global Context. I am learning a great deal about historical and sociological reasons for why we experience so many problems in the urban environment.
Guidance counseling was something else that was on my plate. I have always been somebody who people feel open to talk about anything with, even people who I first meet. I feel that I have some sort of gift that allows people to open themselves up to me. I can’t really explain it. When I was a teacher I wanted to get to know every single student I had. I couldn’t do this to the capacity that I wanted to when I saw 130 students everyday. There were a few students who would come to see me during their lunch periods, or even cut class to come and talk! They were students who were struggling with some pretty serious problems. I believe I was about to counsel some of them and think I had a serious positive impact in their lives. I would love to work with kids one on one. I think this is a specialty of mine. I don’t do well when I have a classroom of 35, or even 15.
At some point towards the end of the summer. God just started placing tangible ideas right in front of my face to make it easier to discern where to go with my life. I went to an Urban Farm Team meeting, which is a mission team connected to Circle of Hope, and was told that Circle of Hope is likely to acquire a huge chunk of land. There where many ideas on what to do with this land, but a few people were leaning toward starting a honey and fresh-cut flower orchard on the land. This is something I have been dreaming about doing for about a year. I can see myself as a gardener or a small urban farmer. Getting the community involved and creating jobs for people in the neighborhood. Or is this my dream?
A few weeks later in my blackboard (online education tool) courses list for Eastern, I found counseling psychology right at the top of the list. I clicked on it and there was a great deal of information on counseling psychology. There was a whole section on school counseling, which told you about internships, how to find a job, how to switch into the program, pretty much everything I needed to know about school counseling. I had previously met with a friend who is enrolled in Eastern’s school counseling program. I also asked Gwen White, who is the head of the Psychology department as well as the pastor of Circle of Hope’s wife if she could find somebody for me to shadow to figure out if school counseling is right for me.
Through a lot of thought prayer, tears and discernment, I came to the conclusion that counseling was where God is leading me. This was very difficult for me. It doesn’t seem as glamourous as a community developer and organizer. It doesn’t seem like something where I can change the world, or have a large impact on my neighborhood. Counseling just seems like a gift that I am blessed with. When I decided that this was the path that I was going to take. I felt extremely excited at first. I finally knew what I was going to do. I told a whole bunch of people, and they were happy for me. I then started to feel less excited as if I was now being placed in a mold. Usually when I make a large decision between two options, I always want to regret the decision that I make. I have a hard time really going with it. Did I do the right thing? What if I continued in Eastern’s Urban Studies program? It just seems so attractive! See for yourself!
To complicate matters even more. I began my residency last friday for my Urban Issues course. Our residency consists of 9 days of workshops, discussions, group outings in the city, lectures, shared meals and more. There are about 50 students in the program, and I am only 1 of 2 students who are not fully involved in the program. Over the last week, I have been meeting all kinds of wonderful people. They are really excited about the program, and I got to be honest, I’m pretty juiced about it myself. I am having difficulty really making strong connections, since I know that I am probably going to go through with school counseling.
Is this the right decision for me? How come I’ve been having trouble hearing God’s voice in the whole situation? Am I really listening?
I know that whatever path I take, He will be there beside me. I need to trust that as long as I follow Him, He will use me as a tool to help bring his kingdom here to earth. I need to trust in Him always, even when I can’t hear a clear answer.
I believe that I would make a great guidance counselor. I believe that I could bring in my faith in Jesus to teach young students about how to avoid violence, how to resolve conflicts peacefully. I can play an active role in fighting for student rights, making sure the school doesn’t waste resources and energy, I can set up field trips for students who don’t think they have a shot at college to visit university campuses, I can really have an impact on individuals, I can make many connections, I can fight the fight. God doesn’t call us to choose something for the rest of our lives, even though that is the plan for many of his people. He just calls us to do something in his name, and do it well.
I pray that He shows me the way.
