It always feels like an impossible task to come home from a conference and recount the things that happened in my heart. I think on many levels, I cannot and should not try to communicate ALL that actually transpired over our time away. It seems that in an attempt to try and transfer all my excitement and passion, I cheapen my experience and am often met with a less than enthusiastic response; to NO FAULT of my reader or listener, just a false expectation I unfairly lay at your feet. But since I process so much through my writing, I've learned to just give small sound bites of my take-aways, and store up the rest of my experiences in my own personal "holy of holies" and revisit it in the stillness of the night.
Mark and I have attended three CCEF (Christian Counseling Education Foundation) conferences. CCEF exists to support and supply resources to professional counselors, people in full time ministry, and lay counselors. Out of 1600 attendees, Mark and I make up a small minority of neither professional counselors nor people in full-time vocational ministry. So why the heck do we go?! Mark and I desire deeply to do relationships well. It's a non-negotiable for us. People, our time with people, our relationships with people, our encounters with people, rank very high in our personal life agenda. It became very apparent, very early on in our lives and in our marriage, that in order to do relationships well we needed to be well equipped. Being in relationships with people is EXTREMELY difficult, complicated, heavy, messy, and SO AMAZINGLY WORTH IT! When a friend's tears spill down her face and into her coffee mug because her marriage is falling into a million pieces and she has zero desire to remain in her marriage, Romans 8:28 just doesn't cut it. This dear woman comes asking for prayer, advise and support to go on. It is helpful to have an inkling of an idea on how to receive this news, process this news, and by the grace of God maybe say something. Although, as I am learning, speaking is RARELY the correct answer. If you do life with people AT ALL, you will be asked to enter into some situations you are unfamiliar with and have ZERO answers for. If you intend on loving anyone over the course of your life, if you intend on ever speaking into someone's pain, joy, or mundane, then you are acting as a lay counselor.
90% of counseling is done in lay terms.
A friend 911 calls you in the middle of the night, because the fear is paralyzing her and she is trapped within her thoughts. She calls begging for you to speak truth over her heart and her situation... LAY COUNSELING.
They were so excited when they found out a baby was on its way, and in a matter of weeks the dream comes to a screeching hault when the mom notices the flow of blood; a great sense of loss ensues. If you are in relationship with this person, and you rightfully choose to speak into this painful situation through actions or words; you are a lay counselor.
Life, death, joy, sorrow, happiness, sadness, peace, chaos, depression, ecstasy, captivity, freedom, boredom, security, insecurity, doubt, rage, guilt, shame, love, affirmation, numbness, indifference, ambivalence, and value are a small selection of the range of human emotions you will encounter over the span of a single lifetime.
We deem it "necessary" for children to receive at least 13 years of formal education about math, science, reading, and language arts, but somewhere we decided everyone should instinctively know how to decipher and navigate this small minefield of human experiences without anything more than a formal how-to book no one reads, and a 50 minute exegetical sermon no one listens to.
#fail
So that's why we go. Because we don't know it all. Because we routinely encounter life situations we don't have all the answers to nor ever will, but we know there is more to learn, more we can offer by simply being intentional, training our minds, ears, and hearts; and to not resign ourselves to be satisfied with the current way people do community, church, and relationships. There is so much more to be had!
Not only do we go to restock our arsenal of helpful skills, (you totally drown in counselor lingo for 3 days) but deep down WE GO FOR US. WE are ALWAYS changed individually and as a couple. We go because we come away renewed, refreshed, and inspired.
This past weekend was no different.
A conference on loss? Hey, there's an upper! Who needs Eeyore when you have CCEF :) Total. Joke.
Truth? ALL OF US have lost something, are currently losing something, or WILL lose something. So maybe in light of this guarantee, we should educate ourselves on how to walk through it and help other's walk through it.
Brilliant, eh?
Our marriage was founded and tried early on with great, great, loss. The dance floor of our "I do's" blended inexplicable joy and impossible pain. I remember clearly sitting outside on my parent's deck, just a week before our wedding, carrying the weight of Mark losing his only brother, our nation seemingly losing its innocence on 9/11, and now the news of Mark being laid off. "This is NOT how I intended on feeling the week before I am to wed my best friend!" I told God. "Where is my happily ever after?" Wasn't I suppose to be flying high on cloud 9 with only visions of sugar plums and fairy tales dancing through my head?! Wasn't I suppose to be playing the part of the blushing bride, not the bawling bride? My mom very gently told me at one point during this process, "Honey, your wedding day is not all about you! It's so much bigger than that!" At first, I was mad at her for saying it. Thirteen years later, I now know I needed that kick in butt, I needed that reminder. I needed to start the journey of my marriage in a posture of humility and servitude NOT selfishness.
We are pretty intimate with the ways of loss in the LJ double-wide.
Here are some sound bites that are taking up residence in my thoughts right now. I don't have the time or energy to explain each one in depth. Feel free to follow up with me if you'd like further explanations and context.
CCEF has been a HUGE blessing to us. If you are in full time counseling or full time ministry, these people should be on your speed dial. They are so solid in their understanding of brokenness and grace. They never distort the truth that sets people free, they NEVER confuse faith with behavior modification, and they never leave you with a twelve step program to "be good, do good!" They consistently offer you one thing, no matter the topic of the conference, they offer you a close up, zoomed in, clear vision of Jesus Christ; His promises, His comfort, His incomparable ways, His goodness, His faithfulness, and His scandalous pursuit of being in CONSTANT relationship with His adored creation.
Quotes by David Powlison:
Current, American Christian culture, has made loss an isolated, private, solo journey. There is so much danger in this kind of thinking.
The Bible consistently weds genuine faith with genuine experiences of ALL KINDS!
The poor in spirit are blessed because the kingdom is theirs. In their weakness, dependency, neediness, and vulnerability they have found the key to the kingdom of heaven; poverty of spirit.
Grief always goes somewhere. It is either transformed or transferred. Grief never ends with acceptance. It ends with a deepening and clarifying of one's faith.
"Faith doesn't mean we don't feel pain" Winston Smith
"The banner over your life will NEVER BE LOSS! The banner over your life will always be Jesus Christ!" Heath Lambert
Barbard Duguid: People are in bondage to this idea that God is constantly disappointed in them. They spend their lives in a cycle of depression and defeat. In addition, misleading and hurtful leaders often motivate people to holiness by insisting God is disappointed in our failures. In other words, "be good, do good!" I beg to differ. In order to be disappointed, one first must be naive and not well acquainted with another. GOD IS NOT NAIVE! He knows all things. He sees ours hearts, He sees our ways.... AND YET, He loves. (paraphrased)
"Trauma is terrible. What we need in the aftermath, is a friend who can swallow her own discomfort and fear, sit beside us. and just let it be terrible for a while" Catherine Woodiwiss
Matt Mason:
If our songs of worship are only one dimensional, we teach our congregations to only speak one language. Let people LAMENT! Are the songs you sing in worship resonating with the broken, hurting, dying people who are held in captivity and fill your pews?
In the same breath, faith and worship doesn't have to look like stoic emotional fortitude. This poorly describes the Jesus of Nazareth we see in the New Testament.
Said about Martin Luther, and the undeniable, irreplaceable, importance of worship through song, "We can burn his books, we can burn his sermons, but the people are still whistling, "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God!"
Again, this is like one millisecond of our time there.
Nonethemore, it left huge impressions on our hearts and minds.
We are so grateful for the ministry of CCEF, and we are so grateful that we are called to be in relationship with people, and we are amazed we get to do this all TOGETHER as husband and wife.
Counseling in ALL forms is what we were made to be apart of. In the hallways of counseling, impostors offering counterfeit forms of life are called out and transformed into life-giving, human experiences.
Find you a counselor, thus sayeth MOI!
~Sara
Awesome!!!!
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