On the Eve of Something New

     The world of academia is all about graduations and accomplishments. It's about the rat race that sends many of us into a frenzy writing papers, preparing presentations, staying up way later than is healthy to finish those last few pages of a less than exciting book. Day in and day out, we study, we read, we write, and we down another cup of coffee to keep ourselves alive - really, it does keep us alive. But it would be wrong for me to color the last two years of my life in such a drab painting. No, these years of sweat, tears, exhaustion, and pain have also been some of the most valuable years of my life. On the eve of my graduation, I find myself both uncontrollably happy and terribly sad as if I am losing a dear friend.

     It's difficult to capture the emotions that now pulse through my heart. You see, I've spent the last two years learning a lot. I've studied the DSM and learned the diagnostic techniques related to my discipline. I've learned how to diagnose, treat, and comfort those who walk into my counseling office. But going to graduate school has been so much more to me than an academic experience.  I've learned how to try and facilitate healing and I've learned that much of that healing comes from the dedication of my clients. I've heard stories of real people that send shivers up and down my spine and I've sat in a sea of sadness with grieving and broken individuals. The years of truly walking beside broken people has softened my heart and has taught me deep truths. More than anything, graduate school has changed me tremendously.

     When I reflect on the last two years, I have changed incalculably. I've walked through pain of my own and wrestled with who God is in the midst of my own suffering. The very things that I have watched my clients wrestle with are some of the things I have needed to wrestle with on my own. As I have urged my clients to show grace and kindness to themselves where they fall short of their own expectations, I too, have had to show myself the same grace and kindness in areas I would rather be hard on myself. I have found strength in places I didn't know it existed.

     Most of all, I have met the most spectacular people. Becoming a counselor seems to be more about developing yourself than techniques and diagnostics. It's about becoming the healthiest you possible so you can come alongside others who are broken just like you and help them to the path of healing. It's been as much about the work as it has been really walking with fellow human beings in this journey called life. I'm sure most people who enter graduate school do not have this experience of deep friendship, but I have been lucky enough to know and care for some extraordinary souls. We've rejoiced together and cried together. We've walked in exhaustion together and anticipated the glorious end together. We've studied together and stressed out about school together, but most of all, we've carried each other and have loved each other. We've become like a family.

     It's hard to express how I feel tonight, on the eve of tomorrow's graduation because while I am ecstatic to be able to read books for fun again and have the honor of earning a Master's degree, I am incredibly sad to say goodbye to so many amazing people. I'm saddened to leave a place that has brought me so much growth, healing, and support of my own. The professors who have all been like mentors and the students who have all been dear friends will be what I miss most about graduate school and as I turn my face to the future, a part of me grieves leaving Biblical Seminary and another part of me cannot wait to be finished. The two emotions bifurcate my heart and I'm learning to be okay with that.

     So to my fellow Biblical Seminary, Graduate School of Counseling graduates, I say 'Thank you'. Thank you for walking this journey with me and holding me up in moments when I have felt most weak. Thank you for being amazing people who truly care for each other and most assuredly care for your clients. Thank you for being people of honor and pursuing excellence. Thank you for being people who truly grasp the love of Christ and show it to those all around you. Thank you. I am absolutely honored to have spent the last two years with each one of you and I am proud to call you fellow clinicians. I am truly humbled to call you each 'friend'.

     As I anticipate commencement tomorrow I feel a little nauseous along with excitement. Our futures are bright and I know that God will use us each to do amazing things, but I cannot help being a little nervous as well. I don't want to say goodbye, but I know this next phase of life will be more than we've ever imagined. So dream big, my friends, dream big. Never stop dreaming and asking God for the honor of living those dreams and at the end of the day, may you love all who you encounter with the purest love here on this earth. May you be agents of healing that change this world the way you've changed my life in our time together.

The Art of Healing

   

   
     When I was a little girl, I could never quite understand why doctors couldn't just repair broken bodies. I would hear stories of people whose bodies were injured in car accidents or by illness and I would wonder, 'Why can't they just sew up that heart or lung? Why can't they just put that broken piece back into place and things should work just fine?' I was always questioning in my immature mind and wondering things that most adult people understand fully. I had no medical training and no way of understanding things that were just too big for me to try to understand. I wanted things fixed and healed. I couldn't understand why doctors couldn't just return broken bodies to their original state with all the medical technology known to man. In some instances we were able to do miraculous things like put men on the moon or take photographs of things that were completely out of this world. We could clone animals and skydive and put planes in the air and submarines in the water...how complicated could it really be to sew up a body? I was so naive. The art of healing was something much bigger and complex than I could have imagined in the smallness of my frame and the childlike mindset I worked from. The art of healing would take time for me to understand and it would take growth, experience, and life to teach me of these complexities. And even now, as I type, there is a plethora of things I do not understand. Rest assured, though, I do understand a great deal more than I did as an eight year old. Perhaps life really has taught me a thing or two about the art of healing in more ways than one. It truly is an art, I think.

     As I sit, soaking up the sun, I am reminded of so many ways that our bodies just cannot be healed. For me, it's Lyme disease, for others it's cancer or paralysis. Others experience blindness or developmental delays. These things cannot always be healed. Still, others, experience broken bones like arms or legs or ribs. They will heal, but it will take some time. Healing, if possible will take months of casts, medication, physical therapy, and sometimes even surgery, but in these instances where healing is possible, we hold onto the hope that a broken arm will function well again or a broken leg will be able to sustain the weight of walking once more and probably will function close to its optimal functioning before the injury occurred. Close enough, right? It's easy for me to ponder how resilient the human body is. We can fix things. Most physical issues will take time to heal, but they will heal. I wonder, though, can we learn something from this physical process of healing? Is there something more here that teaches us about life and healing?

     If I close my eyes and think about the last year, I am reminded that my last several years of life have consisted of many difficult circumstances. Things that have shaped me, molded me...changed me. I've been injured in more ways than one. My physical body has gone through hell and back again as it attempts to fight disease. I've had my fair share of doctor's visits and have understood that not all physical things can be healed and return back to normal functioning. My body has experienced new ways of needing to compensate each time I find myself dealing with the effects of Lyme, again, and each 'remission' looks totally different from the last. I have needed to understand that my body will never be the same, and that's okay. However, when I look back on even the last year, I recognize that I have gone through a lot of very difficult things. I don't need to spell it all out in a blog, but my bet is that some of you reading have experienced some pain as well. Many of us find ourselves in the midst of painful chaos, not knowing how to move on or how to find healing. I know I have and most days I find myself still crawling out of the rubble of the last year or even several years. It's as if we've been emotionally or spiritually crippled and it seems as though it takes as long as the physical trauma we've suffered, if not longer, to find 'normal' again.

     The art of healing, both physically and emotionally, is a long road sometimes. Things happen to us and in us that make our invisible suffering as painful or more painful than that of a broken limb and somehow, when people go through deep emotional suffering, those of us on the outside forget how difficult it can be to put one foot in front of the other. We see people all around us, hurting, suffering, limping along so to speak, and we give them a few weeks to snap back to normal functioning, forgetting that suffering takes time. Suffering, just like a broken limb or a diseased body, is an inconvenience but a broken limb is easy to see and understand. I don't think this is always so with internal suffering. As I ponder my suffering over the last year, I am reminded that just as my diseased body needs more rest than when I am in remission, so does my bruised heart. Just as I need to do physical therapy to rehabilitate after surgery, I may need to do some heart therapy to rehabilitate a broken or bruised heart. Just as I need to be patient with the healing process of my broken body, I also need to be patient with the healing process of my soul.

     I wonder, can a broken bone ever completely return to its original state? I'm not sure it can. It's those rainy days that cause a broken and now healed bone to ache or the overuse of a bone that has healed but is not quite as strong as it used to be. I wonder if this is true of a broken heart or a bruised soul. In times that I have walked through the darkest of valleys, it has taken time to heal, but it is a continuous process, I think. Even years later, when a once wounded part of my heart is pushed on too much or exposed to the things that have once wounded it deeply, my heart can easily begin to ache again. Things that I will carry with me for life...moments of pain, loss, loneliness...suffering; these things are always with me long after healing has happened. There are some things that linger on for a lifetime; things that cause us to make a daily decision to face and find more healing. Like a broken bone, a broken heart will heal, but the scar tissue is always present.

     As I reflect on this last year of life, I am continually changing and finding a new normal. Who I was yesterday is not who I am today. As I grow and heal, I am different. next month I will be different from last month because over and over again, I am being healed. The art of healing is recognizing that each day of healing looks different. The art of healing is understanding that as I heal I must find a new 'normal' and I can never return to the person I had been before the breaking of my heart or the bruising of this life. Suffering changes us, whether physical or internal. The process of healing will take place, but sometimes the art of healing is a lifetime of changing and a life time of discovering all over again who we are in the midst of trauma and pain.