I've spent the last 5 hours here at The Vail Library writing my essay questions for Fuller. They are due in nine days. 99% of the rest of my application is done...so I basically just have these questions. They're not too bad, I could just write pages and pages on each question and they give pretty small word limits. But it's been kind of nice. I've been sort of drafting my own statement of faith, writing what I believe and why I do. It's asking me all about my future and what I plan to do with it.
So, if you want, you can read my responses. As much as I didn't like writing papers in high school and college, I do enjoy writing. I also recently admitted to myself that a life goal of mine is to write a book. I'm not sure exactly what it'll be about, but I know I want to write one. Maybe when I'm old and gray and have eaten too much gluten and can't move as much as I'd like to.
But until then, here is the product of my last five hours, and well, my life with Christ.
1. Reflect on your past Christian experience, including the most significant spiritual event/influence in your life, the role of Christ in your religious experience, the effect your faith has on your worldview, your involvement in Christian service, your perceived gifts/calling for ministry, and your reasons for attending your church.
The most significant spiritual events in my life were the times I spent in complete solitude with the Lord. I’ve attended three, 48 hour silent retreats and each one was the beginning of new growth in my relationship with God. Going into each time of solitude, my faith was at a place where I desperately needed the presence of the Lord, and each time God revealed himself in ways that healed my soul. Out of these three weekends, the most significant time in solitude was when I read Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son. After reading the book in its entirety, I felt as if I had been reacquainted with my God. Nouwen’s honest words deeply affected my soul and have made themselves at home within my heart, guiding my reading of scripture and my entire Christian experience.
I understand that Christ has chosen me. Though my sinful nature has made me undeserving of the love and grace that Jesus offers, he has brought me into communion with him. It is because of this that Christ is the focal point of my religious experience. He is the center and the reason for my life; all that I do is rooted in my understanding and appreciation of who He is and what he has done for me.
Because of my faith, I can see that this world is broken. Every area of our lives begs for redemption. Until humanity can recognize that Christ is the source of all redemption, our world will continue to be lost in the pursuit of self-gratification. I believe this self-gratification to be intuitive, and the teaching of Christ to be counterintuitive to us as humans. The world teaches us to live for ourselves. Christ teaches us that we must first die to ourselves, understanding that to die is gain, and to live is Christ. Our true life and purpose can thus only be attained when we give our lives back to our creator.
Christ calls us to love our neighbor. If we are to love as Christ did, we must serve those around us. By serving we are acting as the Lord’s arms, hands, and voice, blessing those around us by giving them a glimpse of the Lord’s abounding love. It is in servitude that we are able to further die to ourselves, allowing the Holy Spirit to work more completely within our lives.
I believe that the Lord has guided me towards working with adolescents. He has gifted me with patience, understanding, a thirst to analyze and above all, an absolute ache for the adolescent age group. I yearn to understand how this generation has arrived at this stage in life with such deep pain and I long to help these adolescents experience Jesus’ healing in their lives.
The reason I attend my church is because everything is rooted in scripture. My pastor understands that the Gospel is perfect and as close he can stay to preaching it in its purest form, the better. I believe that the unadulterated gospel is the best way to live our lives and a church that reflects that is the best fit for me.
2. Reflect on how attending Fuller would complement your present Christian experience and/or help you to achieve your future professional and vocational goals.
Following my four years of working with Young Life and majoring in Family, Youth and Community Sciences, I have felt a strong calling to work with adolescents. Since graduation I have been longing to go back to school. Although they were informative, I feel as though my courses at the University of Florida barely breached the study of adolescents in today’s world. I am extremely interested in learning more about the adolescents of present and future generations. I want to know how past generations, technology and media have affected our teenagers and what this means for their futures. I especially want to explore all this in the context of the gospel. I want to know understand how to more effectively minister to these adolescents who are hurting in ways that we are not familiar with. I soon found that Fuller stands apart as a school that shares my passion for our world’s hurting teenagers.
Although I felt a strong calling towards furthering my degree almost immediately after graduation, I have forced myself into taking a year and a half off from school. During this time the Lord has not only solidified my decision to return to school, but has grown me more than I thought possible. I grew up and attended college in the same town. Starting with my family, I have always had an incredibly Christian community. This continued in college where I was surrounded by fellow Young Life leaders and roommates who served as a constant encouragement to live for the Lord. College was a fruitful time and I was definitely sheltered from a typical college lifestyle. After graduation I was immediately surrounded by this lifestyle. I moved to the beach for a summer and have been working in a resort town in Colorado for the winter. This year of moving to different places has been the loneliest year of my life. I have never experienced such a severe lack of community as I have over the past nine months. I’ve been depressed, confused, hurt and let down more during this winter season than I thought possible, but the Lord has grown me in more ways than I can count. In just a little under a year the Lord has given me more wisdom, understanding and knowledge of people and relationships that exist outside of Christian community. I have been immersed within groups of people who don’t know the Lord and who express a blatant disinterest in wanting to do so. Through my discomfort I have searched desperately for the Lord’s working in my life and others. I feel that He has put me in these situations to grow me, making me more effective for future ministering and counseling.
By the time I enroll in Fuller, it will have been a year and a half that I will have had a solid Christian community around me. I almost feel as if I am in an experiment. When this experiment is over I want to share with others what the Lord has shown me. I want so badly to be an active member in the next Christian community that I am surrounded with, embracing the blessings that come from being with people who are working to serve the Lord with their lives, while also simultaneously blessing others in my servitude. As a school that shares in my passions, Fuller would provide the teaching I need to more adequately serve the Lord. I believe that it would also provide the community that would support me in my endeavor to help future generations of adolescents. And finally, I will do my best to serve to the community of Fuller, striving to contribute academically and spiritually to the already flourishing community.
3. How is a degree in Marital and Family Therapy the next step in your personal and vocational development? How is it an outgrowth of your present or previous career? What factors are related to your current desire for a career in this field?
My desire to go into the counseling field has grown out of my work with Young Life. After six years of being in the Young Life community, I began to recognize the similarities of the sources of pain in my Young Life kids’ lives. More often than not, their pain could be traced back to their parents’ marriage and/or other family problems. I believe that in order to fix something, you must understand and start at the root of the problem. If adolescents are hurting from marital and family problems, than this is a root cause of their pain.
In addition, I am both fascinated and deeply saddened by the divorce rate in the United States. I wonder about the future of our society and the implications it will face. I wonder if we are at the point where the pendulum has swung so far to one side that it will begin to change directions, or if it will continue in its path. The relationships we form with people are one of the most important things we will do in our lives. If God can use me in any way to help mend these struggling relationships, I would consider it an honor. If being a Young Life leader was my first step; showing Christ’s love to kids, than the next step is to help guide couples and families into showing Christ’s love towards each other. I can see that God started working in my life through being a leader to adolescents and I believe that a degree in counseling would be the next step towards developing and using the gifts he has given me.
4. Describe the most important personal experiences that have shaped your interest in seeking training as a marital and family therapist.
The first time I realized how valuable a degree in Marital and Family Therapy would be was when I was talking to a crying sixth grade girl at a Young Life camp. She pulled me aside to let me know that this was the first time in her life that she felt like she had a family. She wept over her nonexistent relationship with her parents, explaining that she felt invisible at home. She said that she never wanted to leave the Young Life camp because it was the first time in a long time that she felt loved. The pain was so fresh and so real and so unlike anything I had experienced in my own life that I was at a complete loss for words. I knew that there were things I could say that would help her. I knew there was wisdom and guidance to be passed along. But all I could manage to do was hold her and pray for her. This moment stands out in my mind because I know there are kids and families who are experiencing this same thing all around me. It made me realize the potential of how far and how deep I could send the words of our Father. But at the time I just felt inadequate. I wanted to know how I could better serve the Lord by providing more comfort and peace.
After reading Chap Clark’s “When Kids Hurt” I felt a new urgency to complete my application to Fuller. This book revealed so much about this generation of kids and parents. This book put words to what I had noticed with my Young Life kids. It is apparent that many of the problems that this generation faces are unlike anything our society has faced before and that we don’t know how far and how deep the ramifications may go. Though the problems are new and different and complex, the answers and solutions all have a common theme: listen to adolescents. Be that adult in their life who will listen and care for them and tell them that they matter. If these are the needs of adolescents, much of this must stand true for adults. If people devote their lives to the healing of the relationships that matter most, future generations will benefit substantially.
5. Describe your work or volunteer experience in the counseling field, particularly in marriage and family.
Fuller would be my first step in formal training as a counselor. But since realizing the gifts that God has given me are suited for counseling I have taken my role as a professional listener very seriously. With my Young Life kids, my friends, family and especially my coworkers, I understand that listening can go a long way. Because I am not yet versed in best way to ask or not ask questions, I have spent the last few years trying to really practice my listening skills. I first recognized the importance of this a few years ago when reading Donald Miller’s Blue like Jazz. He talked about roommates talking to him when he was trying to work on something. He writes that he finally recognized that his time is not necessarily his time. When I took this idea to heart, I soon realized that if a person is comfortable enough to share meaningful stories and experiences with me, they are recognizing the work of the Holy Spirit in my life and are in fact drawn to him.
And it is by the power of the Holy Spirit that we are able to listen, care and heal. A coworker at a restaurant this summer was struggling with some horrific family issues. She was dismissed by several other coworkers as thin-skinned and a complainer. I could see that the pain was deeper and more real than the others recognized and I asked this woman to pray with me. She told me later that as I prayed for her she felt more peace than she had in a long time. She said she felt as if a weight had been lifted off of her. It was encouraging to see the Holy Spirit draw her in with my attentiveness and then continue to heal her through prayer.
6. Briefly describe your goals for emotional and interpersonal growth during the next few years
I tend to be deeply sensitive and easily hurt by people around me. It is a goal of mine to more fully understand what my Father says about me; that I am his beloved child. The more I am able to absorb these words, the less I will be shaken by the words and actions that I hear from the world. It is because I have felt so susceptible to these words for so long that I have a hard time not believing some lies that the enemy engrained in me long ago. It is a prayer and a goal that I am set free from these lies; knowing and accepting that I am given grace and mercy along with all of Christ’s children.
Optional: In applying to Fuller’s Marriage and Family program, do you have a vision (tentative or otherwise) for how your training might serve the needs of a local congregation? In what ways, apart from your previous psychotherapeutic services, do you anticipate using your skills in some form of marriage and family-oriented ministry? How important is this to you?
Originally, I planned on being a Young Life area director. Over the past couple of years God has revealed to me that while I may still work within Young Life, it may be different route. My desire to help adolescents has been fueled by my time working with middle school and high school students in Young Life. Though my experiences and those of my fellow leaders, we have met kids who need a more tangible help. It is with these kids that I have often felt inadequate in helping them, knowing that their pain goes deeper than I know how to handle. And it is these kids who often don’t receive any extra help. Either they don’t know who to seek counseling from or they cannot afford it. Ultimately I would love to work within a Young Life area with their adolescents being my main client base. If not through a Young Life area, I also like the idea of working through a church or even a school.
I also have a growing desire to work with families. I have over ten years of experience of working with young children and I understand how the early stages of their life determine much of their adult life. I would like to work with young families and parents and guide them towards raising a healthy, Christ-centered, family. These two prospective careers are very important to me. The Lord gives us gifts and skills that are to be used for him. If I have been gifted with skills that are well suited for counseling marriages, families and adolescents, it is very important to me that I use these gifts to the best of my ability and always for his glorification.
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