One of Those Moments…
02 Mar 2011 4 Comments
So I am not going to lie, there are days where I question everything. I wonder what I am doing as a counselor, what am I doing in South Africa, and what am I doing for God. There are days when I wake up and want to go back to bed. I don’t want to counsel hurting kids because there are times when I feel too broken myself. I have to make myself get up and get moving. There are times when the emotions I have tried to bury deep down rise up too high, almost causing me to give way to the sadness, the helplessness that I feel being a human living in a broken world, thousands of miles from my home, where I feel safest-the place where I can curl up on a couch with my mom next to me and watch endless tv shows-shutting out the hurting world around me.
But then there are the days that I sit at the Bethany House surrounded by the most beautiful, wonderful, and loving children. There are the times when I can’t help but smile and thank God that I am able to be here and love these children, that I am able to see my relationships with them flourish. I love to see their smiles and see them from far away running to me for a big hug. I love when I get to just take life in, sitting next to the kids, usually with one or two fighting for my lap.
Today I had one of those moments as I counseled in one of my schools. I am usually completely worn down at the end of Tuesdays because I have a full day of counseling. But today was different, although I am super tired, I am also thankful. I was counseling one of my favorite kids (yeah I know I am not supposed to have favorites). We were working on an activity and I opened my notebook filled with my notes and the work of the kids I see. I opened to the page that I had written and decorated this scripture:
“The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him- the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of fear of the LORD- and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.” Isaiah 11:2-3
This is my counseling scripture, one that my mom gave me during one of my struggling and down days. I try to pray through it before I counsel. The “delight in the fear of the LORD” part of the scripture stuck out to me as I glanced at the page. I felt this delight come over me; this joy and peace I can’t really explain. All the sudden while I was sitting there counseling this child, I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be. I felt like God was using me at that very moment. That God had called me to South Africa for moments like this. I have been struggling with this lie that God can’t use me, and it was amazing to experience this truth. Now I know I want to live for more moments like that, for moments where I know I am exactly where God wants me to be and that he is using me!
