Qualified by Fire...

I love the absolute joy that comes from talking one on one with a person who needs to be heard and understood. I love helping them to get to the root of their deepest pain and then together, we witness healing transformation. It’s amazing, it’s rewarding, it’s my not so new but revised life’s passion and it only took me my whole life to get here.

Years ago, a respected friend told me that she could see me becoming a Life Coach and helping people someday. I nodded and even tried to confirm what she saw but silently, I knew that I was too screwed up myself to help anyone at the time. I was in the middle of my own series of crisis that would last about 10 more years and I needed coaching badly.

Over time, I sought out counseling for my own issues, fears, un-forgiveness and failures. The process was grueling and visited time and again. I had a major collapse (doesn’t that sound much better than breakdown?) about eight years ago that stopped me in my tracks. I became an avid reader of books on wholeness and spiritual healing.  I went on depression medication. I took myself off of depression medication and by the grace of God have not used it sense. For the last three and a half years, I’ve been in solitude with God, wanting to get to the real purpose of my existence here on earth and to be free of the pain that seem to have been following me since childhood. You see, everything that I had been doing up until that point, church activities, putting a spiritual mask on, and trying to maintain a good image, could not stop the inevitable. I had to go to the backside of the desert to be healed.

I've cried alone, sang alone, read alone and walked alone…with God that is. I also went back to counseling, to hash out one of the deepest pains that seemed to surface whenever my resistance was low.  I treasure my counselor who walked me through this part of my journey and the time that she has spent with me over the years. Her work is priceless to me.

My first counseling session was around 1997 with one of my wisest friends to date. I found her knowledge of life, which came from her own pain and loss, to be comforting to say the least. Her relationship with God seemed more real than most human relationships and the fact that she was willing to listen to me about my wounds, was invaluable. We all want someone to hear and see us. We are still friends to this day and when the tide gets high and I need a hand to reach in and grab me onto dry land, she’s the one I call. I don’t think I’ll ever stop having a counselor in my life.

Knowing how much we need each other this way has propelled me into a new and exciting journey. Well, I guess the “new” part can be debated. I've always liked helping my friends out of dark places but inside I never really thought that it was life changing because of my own ills but now, I see how purposeful it is. Which is why, I answered a request a few weeks ago to meet a young lady, whom I think the world of, and listen to her heart. After spending a couple of hours at her dining room table, she looked at me and said “you should really do this for a living.”

 I asked her if she would like to continue the process and she said “yes”. I went home and began searching out Life Coaching information online, interestingly enough, I noticed that people tend to take it on in a wholly academic sense or a spiritual sense, I’m thinking…why not mix the two? My work begins to do just that.

In the last three weeks, after that initial visit with my friend, I have had multiple encounters with people that only confirm that I am in the right direction. My most surprising encounter so far was the one that started out as being a business meeting over lunch and two and a half hours later, we were discussing meeting on a regular basis to sort through the past, in order to get to the future for this individual.

I know that there are quite a few Gurus out there, who want to show you the path to enlightenment and well-being and perhaps sincerely so but my desire in this new endeavor is to simply say what I hear ‘the still small voice saying’ and walk with people through the process of transformation.

I know that God is the ultimate counselor, which makes it all the more humbling when He whispers in my ear…”Go forth and heal with me.”

This blog is dedicated to Marcella and Pam for showing me what ministry looks like. Thank you Ladies what a legacy.