Theology and Psychology

A paper I wrote for my Theology class.  This is my goal in becoming a counselor.

My chosen vocation is Psychology/Counseling.  My goal, as a psychologist, is to help people realize their fullest potential as a human being.  Many people are wounded, broken and hurting.  My job, as a counselor, is to help people heal from mental illness and emotional injuries.  My hope is that people will realize their value in Christ.  The passage that has been most instrumental to my own healing, and one that I hold near and dear to my heart is Isaiah 61.  I plan to use this verse as a guideline for my business because I believe that in Christ he brings us hope and healing because that was his mission here on Earth.  I believe that it is the mission he has left us with as his disciples.

“…He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, [t]o proclaim liberty to captives [a]nd freedom to prisoners;” (Isaiah 61:1b).  This is my primary objective.  I see my job as a healer, helping people recover from spiritual, emotional, and mental wounds.  When I read this verse, it reminds me of how a doctor would wrap a broken arm, or stitch a deep cut closed.  The same applies for a broken heart or a spirit that has been cut.  I would love to be able to instill in people that Jesus came and died, not just for our sins, but to heal our wounds and make us whole.  The result of the Fall is that man is separated from one another as well as from God.  This divide creates abuse, neglect, abandonment, fear, hurt, and so many more negative impacts on a person.  When we accept Christ’s death and resurrection for the atonement of our sins, we restore our relationship with God.  This restored relationship will allow us to restore our relationships with one another.  We will learn to build one another up, instead of tear one another down.  Bring hope and life, rather than failure and death.  Words can curse or bless, my goal is to teach people how to bring life with their words instead of curses and death.

Another passage that I feel is important in helping people in their healing is Psalm 139.  This passage talks a lot about the individual’s value in God’s eyes.  Phrases like, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (139:14) and “You formed my inner parts; you wove me in my mother’s womb.” (139:13)  I want to impress upon people, more than anything else, that God loves them and that he created them, like an artist creates a masterpiece.  I think the most important thing we can do is learn to like ourselves for who we are.  People compare themselves to one another constantly.  We have competitions to determine the smartest, strongest, bravest, most beautiful, and the list goes on and on.  We want to be the best so everyone will love us.  My motto for life is that I may not be the best at anything, but I’m the best me I can be.  When we stop looking at other people and their skills and abilities, and look towards God, he will give us purpose and what we look like to everyone else won’t matter.  One of the blogs I follow recently talked about the way we talk about ourselves.  If we really sat and listened to ourselves it’s no wonder we don’t like ourselves.  If I spoke to my friends the way I talk to myself, I wouldn’t have any friends.  People overlook their friends’ faults and shortcomings and love them for who they are, why can’t we do the same thing for ourselves?

We often talk about how Jesus gave the two greatest commandments, “The foremost is, ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:28-31)  I believe that in the second commandment is hidden a third, we are to love ourselves.  We can’t love our neighbor as ourselves if we don’t love ourselves.  I feel that my job as a Psychologist is to help people restore their relationship with God so that they can begin the process of healing themselves and restoring and renewing their relationships with the people in their lives.

I’m back!

I know, I haven’t posted all summer.  It’s been a really rough summer for me, physically and emotionally.  We’ve had lots of fun and sun, friends, family, joy, sorrow, loss and pain, discouragement; but most of all, we’ve squeezed LIFE out of this summer.  It didn’t turn out the way I expected, but it turned out and here we are at the other end of it, alive and happy and fuller than we were before 🙂  I love my crazy, strange life.

I’m not going to write much, but leave you with another’s musings.  This sums up the feelings I have felt this summer, but also, I think, describes much of my life.  Enjoy!  I love this author’s ability to weave haunting, lonely feelings together with hope and beauty.  I find that these things so often go hand in hand.  Be blessed through the healing moments of this poem.

Gutter Flower By Eric Blauer

Come, all of you flowers in the gutter,
Wanderers, vagabonds, moral hitchhikers with no place to go, but forward.
You can throw away your broken rearview mirror now,
Toss it out the window, we’re never going back.

Liars, thieves, molested and molester, burned out, dropped out or kicked out…
you’re welcome here.

Gutter flower, your beauty is lily-like,
resurrections glistens on your face,
You are searched for, precious fragrance of earth,
Heaven’s worn a crown of bloodstained thorns,
to see your rising.

Bruised or broken,
Used or forgotten,
here you are gently found.

Drugged out, phased out, split up or chewed up,
Here you can stand up again.

Calling all gutters to give up the flowers,
Angels are gathering eternal bouquets,
Littering the place of His dwelling,
With hidden beauty.

You are wanted,
Gutter flower,
You are,
His delight.

Cock-a-doodle-doo

So, we became the proud parents of a lovely boy last Friday.  My neighbor had called me earlier in the week and said that her friend had three roosters and would I like one.  Now, my well-meaning neighbor has been after me to get a roo since we moved in, lol.  We happily resisted until our (failed) batch of eggs that we tried to hatch.  We have now all (including my hubby, who was the most resistant to the idea) come on board, full steam in the urban chicken farmer train.  This is going to be fun!

Also, we went to Big R (the local farm store) and actually looked around with more purpose than “wouldn’t it be nice to someday have….”  Yes, we made an official trip to a farm store to purchase (in the very near future) actual equipment for our little urban homestead.  Isn’t it exciting?!

So, without further ado, meet our little boy (hatched on March 15th, so he’s a young’un).  There is some debate on whether he should be called Raven (his given name) or Blue Feather (his potential adopted name).  I will keep you all updated on the details as I know them.

And, here he is:

Here are our lovely girls (our boy likes older women ;))

From back to front:  Snowy, Shadow and Sunshine

We had a bit of a tussle when Raven (I’ll just call him that for now) first moved in.  It was fascinating to see him dominate so quickly.  Each of the girls took turns performing their best kung fu moves on him.  Seriously, it was like some kids action movie where the bad guys all stand around in a circle and attack the good guy one by one.  After a bit of wing flapping and flying chicken feet, he grabbed them each by their combs in turn and laid them on the ground.  The ladies didn’t come anywhere near him for awhile.  All he had to do was strut and crow and they couldn’t get out of his way fast enough.  They got over it pretty quickly, it seems cause we heard some interesting noises coming from the chicken coop later.  Bowchickawowow.  I think we might have some babies before too long.

Fog and Rain

So, Freecycle is a place where you can post your unwanted items and have someone else pick it up.  For free.  You know the old adage “one man’s junk is another man’s treasure”?  This is definitely the case here.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve gotten some really cool stuff off of Freecycle.

Just today we drove up to the Mt. Spokane area just to pick up an antique wood incubator.  It was about a 45 minute drive.   But I loved every second of it.  Joe and I have always loved to get in the car and just drive.  So to drive 45 minutes just to pick up an incubator that doesn’t even work, for some might be ridiculous, but for us….pure enjoyment.

After we picked up the incubator and a few other items that we thought would be useful/fun for the kids, we headed up the mountain.  The rain and fog added a mysterious element to it.  Once you got up the mountain, you could only see a few feet out and then it was all fog.  What was out there?  Did some wizard cast a mysterious spell on the land?  Did the dragon come out to play that day?  Fog is wonderful.  I remember riding the bus to school on foggy days in Maine, you literally drive in and out of the fog.  It is so thick, like the fog you see in the movies.  I would pretend, each time we entered the thicker portions of the fog, that it was a portal to a new world and when the fog broke apart again we had entered an enchanted land.

Last night, a thunderstorm blew in suddenly.  I opened the kids’ windows and sat with each of them for a few minutes and listened to the pounding of the rain on the roof and the ground, smelling that smell that only comes with a thunderstorm.  When we lived in the Seattle area, I missed the ability to love the rain and I missed thunderstorms.  I have always loved the rain, but hated it over there.  And I hated it because it rained all the time and I hated it because it made me hate it.  It was always cold and damp and seeped into everything.  Moving to Spokane has given me my love for the rain back again.  Because it’s not all the same dreary, dark, dank, seeping, cold rain.  Sometimes it is light, like a whisper.  Sometimes it is loud and booming.  Sometimes it is quiet and soft.  Sometimes it rains for days on end.  Sometimes it rains for a few minutes and the sun comes out and the birds sing again.

Rain and fog.  Fantasy and reality mixing and mingling, dancing on the imagination, bringing together two worlds.

Being a girl isn’t so pretty

I opened my hair color package last night to color my hair, and this is what I was greeted with.  It seemed like the tubes and bottles just kept coming and coming.  What happened to the cream and the colorant?  Really?  Do I have to do this to my hair.  Well…yeah, cause I really, Really, REALLY like red hair.  I didn’t get done last night because I ended up cleaning the bathroom, but I WILL have my red hair back.  I’ve been planning on doing this for months.  I bought the dye about six months ago and just opened the package last night.  I’m hoping that it won’t be another six months before I actually get to it, LOL.

New Beginnings

So, my best friend/housemate is moving on to bigger and better things.  She has a fabulous opportunity in the DC area and I’m so proud of her and excited for her.

But I’m sad too.

See, she’s lived with us for two years now and I’m going to have to adjust to her not living here anymore.  She has been a wonderful asset: faithful friend at my lowest point, confidant, surrogate auntie for my kiddos, cook, Japanese linguistics corrector (read, Japanese grammar and pronunciation Nazi :P), self-esteem picker-upper and so much more.  I tell her almost everything.

It has been fun having her live with us.  She’s fun to tease, but she can dish it out as well as she can take it.  She loves Asian food, especially Japanese.  We have been known to break out in song for just about any reason at all.  If you say something that is even the slightest hint of song lyrics, we’re apt to sing it.  If I had to choose a song that was “our song” it would have to be Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen.  That song fits just about every life circumstance you can think of.

We’ve had our moments.  She’s like my sister and as much fun as we have together, we fight sometimes too.  The best thing about her is that she loves me even when I’m being a pain in the booty as she so appropriately puts it.

I’ll miss her cackle as she’s partaking in a hearty laugh, one of her favorite things to do, I think.  I’ll miss our forays to Fred Meyer where we say and do silly things, garnering strange looks from the local shoppers.  I’ll miss teasing her about hot guys and the way she blushes when she actually sees one.

As sad as I am, I know that this is for the best, for everyone involved.  Our little family will go back to being just us.  I gain an extra bedroom and the kids are ready to sleep upstairs next to Mom and Dad again.  I feel inspired to create a schedule for the kids’ schooling.  I am back to writing again, and I am going crazy making lists and creating a budget.  I’ve been inspired to start remodeling.

So, good, bad, or indifferent, change is coming and while I may be sad about it, I’m also excited about it and looking forward to it.  As with any grieving process, some days are better than others.  Some days I feel lonely and I miss her already, others I am anxious to move on and get going with the changes.  The day will come when she is really and truly gone, but until then, I will enjoy whatever time I have left with her as I can.  And I hope that this post doesn’t embarrass her too much 😉

A Happy Disaster

So, this past Saturday we finally got around to having a birthday party for our youngest.  In our defense, we did have a family party for her on her actual birthday and we had just come back from vacation at the time of her birthday, so there 😛 for all you naysayers who might say we’re bad parents (well, we are sometimes, lol, but that’s beside the point).

I was so proud of myself.  Usually the way our parties go, we’re still decorating the house and the cake by the time the first guests arrive.  I planned the party at a park (mainly so I didn’t have to clean the house), we bought the decorations ahead of time, and I actually managed to make the cake the night before.  All we had to do was get up in the morning, decorate the cake, throw the decorations in the car (which I also managed to pack ahead of time),  and arrive at the park an hour early so we could snag the gazebo.

I had to make two batches of frosting, I’m so proud, I actually got them to match colors without even trying!!!  Booyah!!!

As we got ready to go, we realized we were short some balloon weights, and since we had gotten a helium tank to fill the balloons, that was kinda necessary.  So, I left my hubby to finish the cake and little miss and I ran to the dollar store and got some cute little island palm tree decorations to tie the balloons to.  Since she wanted tiger/jungle theme, these were perfect!

This is what I came back to:

My hubby is a master cake decorator.  Soooo cute!!!!

She loves it, mission accomplished!

Had to take a picture of the cute happy face.  I love making my kids happy.

We carefully packed up the cake and the kid, she was thrilled to carry her cake from the house to the car and did a superb job.  After a close call with the dog, she knew we were going to the park and wanted to jump into the car (fortunately the kid and cake weren’t in there yet), we got them both packed snugly into the car and I went off to find the rest of the kids so we could take off.

Just as I was making it back to the house, the dog took off for the neighbor’s house (phew! close call again!), I grabbed her and the neighbor wanted to give her a treat, so I waited patiently for her to come back, treats in tow.  I got Maia back to the gate and was directing her into the house, when she suddenly changed direction and made a beeline for the car PARK! PLAY! and off she went.

A blood-curdling screech arose from the car and I realized a split second too late that I had left the car door open!  Disaster!  Dog 1, Cake 0.  The poor girl didn’t stop crying until we got to the park.  This mother’s heart was broken for her and I yelled at the two boys whom I had been after in the first place to get into the car (who, by the way, knew perfectly well that we were leaving when they saw me arrive home from the dollar store) for about twenty minutes about personal responsibility and using common sense and being where you are supposed to be when you are supposed to be there so I don’t have to come looking for you.

We tried to fix it, but it just wasn’t the same 😦  RIP Tiger cake.

We didn’t make it to the park in time for the gazebo, which further infuriated me and incurred a fresh rain of lecturing upon the now-contrite boys (hey, like I said, sometimes I’m a bad mom).

BUT:

Almost all of her friends showed up…

Everyone ate cake and enjoyed it…

And she got lots of presents.

The kids all went off to the playground to play with one another (no, I didn’t play party games. hey! it was all I could do to get as much as I did done!).

There were some more birthday girl tears about her friends wanting to play with some boys who had brought water bottles and everyone was having a water war, but all-in-all I think she had a great time.

In the end she told me it was the Best. Party. Ever!  I guess it could have been worse, and if she’s happy, I should be too.  It just wasn’t perfect.  But I’ll have to be ok with that 🙂

God of Grace: Urban Liturgy, a response from the truth of Galatians.

Written by Eric Blauer

God of grace, save us

Save us from….ourselves.
Save us from…each other.
Save us from…yesterday, today and tomorrow.

God of grace, save us.

Save us from…the our wrong paths.
Save us from…being more good than we should.
Save us from…being less good than we can.

God of grace, save us.

Save us from…trying to earn Your love.
Save us from…the pressure to perform.
Save us from…trying to fit in.

God of grace, save us.

-Eric Blauer 5.20.12

I believe this sums up my struggle as a mother, wife and any other role I try to take on as a woman.  It is a beautiful portrayal of life and letting go.

Crazy

Wow!  So, it’s been a week and a half since my last blog.  I promised myself I was gonna write more!  Ah well, life gets in the way, and this week it certainly has!  I normally don’t get to blog on Wednesday and Thursday nights because DH is on his weekend, so I naturally try to spend time with him, instead of being glued to my computer 🙂  However, this weekend I received some news (that I won’t go into here, for various reasons) that put me out of sorts more or less.  Needless to say, it has been a very emotionally traumatizing week for me.  I’m actually still recovering, but I have come around well enough to come back to my dear blog 🙂

In spite of my emotional roller-coaster, I *did* manage to FINALLY squeeze some time in to go and visit a dear friend of mine, Wendy, at Casa la Crazy (a befitting name, if I do say so myself, lol, obviously we fit in quite nicely).  This is what happens when you are finally able to get together after a YEAR of trying!

You never can get all of the kids to look decent, so I figured they might as well just do what they naturally do anyway, lol!

It has been a crazy year for both of us.  I am so very glad that we were finally able to hang out.  There was a lot of laughter, an inordinate amount of crazy kid screaming and a few tears, but all in all, a great time was had.  I can now chalk Wendy up to being one of my best friends and can’t wait to go and visit her beautiful and peaceful home (what? you don’t think it can be insane and crawling with kids and peaceful?  well, you haven’t been looking in the right places!).

Tilling the Garden

Well, I promised myself that I wasn’t going to be in the sun today, after having been in the sun all day yesterday, and waking in the middle of the night feeling sick and dizzy.  Life had other plans for me, though.

I had called a friend who offered to rototill my garden a few weeks back.  I was unable to have him do so at the time, since the bed wasn’t ready.  Well, I managed to get some work done on it this weekend and so I called him today.  There was still a pole to be removed and a large wooden crate thing leftover from where the chickens used to be, but I figured it might be a day or two before he could come.  Oh no, he had time today and wanted to do it, which was totally awesome.  Little did I realize how much effort that the simple pole (or so I thought) would take to remove.  That thing was a beast!  It took me probably two or three hours and the assistance of my children and a couple of friends to get that fiendish pole out of the ground!  But, it is gone and my garden is tilled and my planties are waiting to find their way into their new home 🙂

This is Tom, from my church and from my neighborhood.  He graciously offered to come over today with his rototiller to plow up my dirt.  He thought it would take longer because it seemed hard and rocky, but he punched it right out and got it done in next to no time.  He even told Caleb that he might let him do the tilling next year.  Oh boy!

My little garden area, waiting to be planted.

Look at all of that lovely, luscious dirt!  I wasn’t sure what I would end up with, but this dirt looks very rich and smells fabulous!  I was afraid that it would be dry and rocky, but, as you can see, it is not.

This bench isn’t ours, it belongs to the family that lived with us over the winter, but the kids put it there this afternoon.  I think it looks quaint, so I’ll keep it there until the family comes and gets it 🙂