I sat for the exam on October 12, and since then have been anxiously waiting on the results.  Last Friday I came home to a letter in the mail, and I passed!!  I passed at the clinical level, which means that I’ll never have to take it again!  :)  Thank God!!  I am so relieved to have that overwith.  I have finally been able to read books of my choice, which I’ve actually been doing.  It took me a while to get back into the reading, after the exam I didn’t even want to look at another book!! 

My latest interest has been reading about the benefits of using animals in therapy.  My husband and I are very interested in having one of our dogs trained as a therapy dog…so we’ve been doing some research on how to get her trained and all that fun stuff.  I’m so excited about it…what a great excuse for me to get to bring my dog to work everyday!!!!  :)  I love her so much so I would love to be able to spend the day with her.  She’s such a gentle dog and she just loves attention, so we think she would really thrive as a therapy dog.  She came to us as a stray and has fit in very well with our home.  It was trying at first getting to know her and allowing her and our first dog to get used to each other, but they’ve melded pretty well and things are going pretty well now. 

 Well, I don’t have much else to report.  No big issues to discuss.  Don’t get me wrong…there’s been some issues in the news lately that have gotten me pretty fired up…but I’m just too tired to blog about them!!!  Maybe another day when I have the energy for a possible debate.  :)  Right now I’m basking in the wonderful feeling of having passed my exam and finally becoming a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. 

Well, it’s already been 2 months since my last post.  Not sure what kind of an audience I still have out there, but I’m going to write anyway just b/c there is so much going on.  So this post is not about anything in particular, just about my life…lately.

 To start, I really should be studying right now.  I have finally gotten signed up to sit for the national marriage and family therapy exam, so that I can practice with a real license and not the temporary one I currently hold.  This exam is a huge deal, and it’s really making me nervous.  But it’s the kind that makes me avoid what I should be doing, instead of sinking my teeth into it!  I have been studying a lot lately, but I know I could be doing more.  Everyone keeps telling me “you’ll do fine”, but there are people out there at the doctorate level that fail this exam, and multiple times!!!  How do they know I’m going to be fine?!?

 I started a new job in July.  It’s my very first job out of grad school, and so far…so good.  My title is Clinical Specialist, and I do therapy for children, youth and family.  I really love what I’m doing.  It started off really slow, but things are picking up here lately.  Now that school has started, we’re getting lots of referrals.  Which means more clients for me, which means more time doing actual work.  Although I was getting a lot of time to study for the exam, and that time is decreasing fast!  I haven’t gotten any studying done all week at work darn it!! 

 This last weekend we went to our very first K-State University football game.  It was really fun!!  Now…I’m going to be honest…it was not as much fun as a Wisconsin Badger game…because you really can’t top those.  But it did feed our football withdrawal, and made us wish even more that we could go to a Badger game in the near future.  I miss the UW band soooooooooooo much it’s not even funny.  There is just so much history and tradition there!!  But back to K-State.  We were with some really great people, ppl that have become like second family to us, so it was really fun. 

My husband started flight lessons this summer, so he’s been busy doing that in addition to all of his other activities (school, work, softball, cycling…).  It’s pretty crazy around here at times!!

 Well, he just got home from softball, so I better go tend to his wounds.  :(  His softball team hasn’t been doing very well…so they’re more wounds of disappointment and frustration!!!!

 After hearing about this book for so long, I happened to come across it while I accompanied my husband to Barnes and Noble at 11 pm on Friday night so he could get his copy of the latest Harry Potter.  I picked it up and started reading it and decided it looked like a good read.  Turns out, it’s a GREAT read.  Here’s my thoughts.

Author:  Donald Miller

Genre:  Christian

Synopsis:  This book follow’s one man’s struggle to find and maintain a faith in Jesus Christ within today’s society.  It is a collection of accounts of the roads he has traveled and the people he has met that have had a profound influence on his walk with God.  He is uncensored about his inner thoughts and struggles, and it is refreshing to hear someone be “real� about the constant struggle to have faith.

Read:  July 20-July 22, 2007

Thoughts:  I really liked this book.  It is one I will recommend and probably refer to for years.  I will probably read it again someday.  It is thought-provoking and challenging.   Although I’ve finished the book, the thoughts it has provoked continue.  Don has forced me to take a look at my long-held beliefs about myself, people and the way things work.  He has challenged those beliefs and I like the paradigm-shift that is occurring within me.  Especially the chapter on Love, where he talked about the economic-metaphor.  That is so true, and I have even used that in therapy with couples [i.e. the Love Bank, making deposits and withdrawals in the relationship].  I am going to have to reflect on this further to see if there is a different way to present this idea to couples.  I think that I could be a healthier, happier person if I subscribed to a lot of the ideas presented in that chapter, about truly loving others and “making both the surface and heart conversations be true.�  I also liked the theme throughout the whole book of being self-addicted.  I think that is definitely the problem of our sinful nature, that we become self-addicted.  Often times we go into a relationship thinking “How will this benefit me?�, “What can I get out of this�, and it has become a ‘trend’ lately to only surround ourselves with people who “build us up�.  But if we are concentrating so much on what other people can do for us and how they are benefitting us, how are we internalizing and displaying Jesus’  heart for others?  How are we really loving others if we are being so judgmental as to say, “Nope, you don’t make the cut.  You’re too negative and I don’t like what I’ve heard/seen so far so I’m not going to spend my time with you.�  That is not a loving attitude.  This is a different way of thinking for me even as I write this.  In the last few years I’ve been the one subscribing to the “surrounding myself with people who build me up� idea.  I’ve been so hurt in the past and rejected, that I became jaded and decided that I would cut people out before they had the chance to really hurt me.  To think now of how many people I passed judgment on and probably hurt in that process, thinking I was better than them somehow.   And to think of how many potential friendships I have lost in the process.  This is something that I know will not come easy, but I will have to pray about it and pray that Jesus really gives me His heart for people.  Another theme I liked in the book was the Belief chapter and how it talked about “what I believe is what I do, not what I say.�  And that how often times we are scared to really believe in something because with that comes responsibility.  We want to believe as long as it “fits nicely� with our life as it is, and doesn’t inconvenience us any.  I am so guilty of this.  I believe in the Green effort being made around the world, but I’m not doing anything myself to better it.  I recycled for a while, but then it got “hard� b/c the recycling center was “all the way across town� and I didn’t want to drive that far.  So the recyclables would sit there for months until we finally got rid of them.  Those containers have since been cleaned out and my husband is using them to store things.  We don’t recycle anymore.  This is just one example but I’m sure there are many more.   To truly believe in something does come responsibility, and this is again something that I will be praying about.

I liked Chapter 18, Love.  I liked his reflection that he felt more comfortable among the hippies than he has among his Christian friends.  I do believe that we as Christians get a bad rap for being judgmental, and I know this is something I have definitely struggled with.  I’m glad that he found a crew of people that he felt free with, free to be himself.  But I would’ve liked more clarification as to what that really meant for him.  What did it mean to really be himself?  Why wasn’t he able to be himself around his Christian friends?  As Christians I think it is important that we find good Christian people that we can “be ourselves” with.  I think this book is a good example.  I would take a guess that this book shows who Donald Miller truly is, inside and out.  We need to find people that we can be around that could read our own internal and external stories, and still love us and encourage us.  But we also need to be held accountable, and that’s where the term “judgmental” comes in.  I have learned that when we first become Christians we are like babies, and so we are to be spoon fed the basics about Christian spirituality and what it means to be a Christian.  However, as our faith develops and grows, we learn more and become more educated about the faith and about God’s desires for our lives, and we are to be held accountable according to what we have acheived in our walk thus far. God wants us to feel free among each other, free to confess and reveal ourselves and ask for forgiveness.  That to me is true Christiandom.  Not the gossip sessions that occur after prayer request time in Bible study.  But that’s a whole other topic.

To see some of my favorite passages from the book, feel free to click on the Blue Like Jazz link under the Books I’ve Enjoyed section.

I just wanted to take a moment to comment on how good the Spirit is.  This last weekend, John and I went to church with a friend of mine from school.  I’ve known that she’s a Christian probably since the beginning of the program, and in the last few months we’ve gotten kind of close.  She’s a wonderful person, and I feel so great when I’m with her.  She has such a heart for Jesus, and I love being able to share that with her.  So, I thought, why not go to church with her sometime?  I knew she was a different denomination than I (right now John and I attend an Evangelical Free Church), but I didn’t know what it was.  I just knew I wanted to experience something different.  So we went out to breakfast with her and her husband, then on to church.  We learned that they attend and are quite involved with a Pentacostal (sp?) church.  I have to be honest, I’ve never been to a Pentacostal church before, only heard about them.  So I was a little nervous.  I’ve heard about the speaking in tongues, and the altar call, and what-not.  So I was a little apprehensive about the experience we were about to have.  But that’s not the focus of this blog.  We actually loved the praise and worship time, as well as the pastor’s message.  This church had such an enthusiasm for the Lord it almost made me feel cheated about my experience in church thus far.  I didn’t know she was doing this beforehand, but my friend actually led the praise and worship time, and it was amazing.  She just seemed so filled with Love for God, like the spirit was actually leading her.  She has always struck me as a quieter person, shy in front of a group of people when giving presentations in class and such.  But not on this day.   I felt so honored to be her guest in church on Sunday, and I really admired how open she was to the Spirit of Christ leading her through the worship time.  It was like a different person was before me.  It really makes me think:  how often am I that open to receiving the Spirit of Christ in me?  I mean, I know I’ve accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior, but how often do I really allow myself to be filled with the Spirit such that I feel one with Him?  I’ve been so busy in recent months that I almost broke down at church this last Sunday, realizing that it’s been so long since I’ve really felt connected with Christ.  I realized how much I’ve missed praise and worship time (even if it is on a different level than what I saw this past weekend!), and how that makes me feel so connected to Christ.  But, it shouldn’t be just on Sunday’s that I’m filled with the Spirit, it should be everyday.   I’m so glad I went to church with her this last Sunday…it was a nice reminder of what I’ve been missing out on.

Hello!!  Welcome to my new look!  I noticed that they created a new background that allows you to do a custom header, so I jumped at the chance.  This particular one is one of a trip my husband and I (in the middle) took to California last spring to watch some mutual friends of all of ours get married.  It was such a great trip!!!  I thought the background of the ocean fit in perfectly with this page.

The running is coming along.  My friend and I haven’t run together yet, we’re still trying to work out our schedules.  But I have gone ahead and started gettin back in shape on my own, and it’s going pretty well.  I ran on Sunday, and it was great.  I felt wonderful afterwards.  My friend suggested I print out a schedule on RunnersWorld.com, so that’s what I did.  I’m looking forward to it.  It’s going to be a great way to get back into shape and feel good about myself in that capacity.  I’m calling the contact about the half-marathan this week to find out about signing up for the race.  Once that’s done, we’ll be officially commited.  :)  This is going to be so much fun!

Around here, John and I have been painting….again.  Well, I should say I’VE been painting again.  John wants nothing to do with it, “he hates painting”.  I say “Whiner….” but whatever.  There are those things I don’t enjoy doing either.  Anyway, back to the painting.  This is the third time we’ve painted these areas, our living room, dining room (which are connected) and the entryway leading upstairs/downstairs.  It’s a split-level house.  Anyway, I got it painted one color two weekends ago, and HATED it.  I thought it was going to look so good, but they didn’t get it matched quite right to the swatch I had given them.  So…back to square one, picking out a color.  Got that done, got that color on the walls, looks pretty good.  Got the color on the hallway, which looked great…until it was dark and we had to turn the lights on.  Then we pretty much felt like we were being blinded by the sun it was so yellow!!!!  I’m always afraid to do the light colors though b/c I feel like they won’t show up enough, like you’ll just barely be able to tell that there’s a yellow tint to it.  I want it yellow.  Or green.  (Pastels of course).  Anyway, so that will be done next weekend probably.  There is some major remodeling that John and I would like to do (that involves taking down the wall that separates the kitchen from the living room/dining room…we want more space and continuity between the two rooms.  Anyway, it’s a high priority on the list of remodeling we’d like to do, but lower on the list of all the other things we’d like to take care of…i.e…college tuition, our mortgage.  Fun stuff. 

I just realized at the end of this week we will have lived here for officially two years.  I think we moved in Apr 1, 2005.  Wow.  Right after our wedding, honeymoon.  John got out of the military in August 2005.  God really blessed us that year.  He continues to bless us, don’t get me wrong, but there have been some real God-sightings in our relationship that can’t be explained by our human sense of how things should happen.

 For instance, I’ve recently re-connected with an old friend of mine from John’s military days.  Both her and her husband are military, and her husband was the one that showed John around Wichita when he first moved here (I moved down about a month or so later.)  Anyway, they kind of took him under their wing, showing him the base, squadron, the city, and we ended up getting an apartment in the same building that they lived in, so we all four of us became really good friends.  They ended up standing up for us as witnesses when we got married at the justice of the peace.  Then when we had a church ceremony a year and a half later, they came up for that too, and brought their daughter to be my flower girl.  They really felt like family with as much time as we spent together.  Without getting into the details of the situation, we ended up having a falling-out, and we hadn’t spoken to each other since the fall of 2005 I think.  It was a messy, hurtful, bitter-filled falling out that I wish was handled differently, but at the time didn’t have the coping skills to get over my hurt and bitterness over the whole thing.  Anyway, she and I re-connected last week, and we got together for lunch.  It was really good.  It was really nice to sit across from someone I used to refer to as one of my best friends; probably the best friend I had in Wichita.  We laughed and talked and got somewhat caught up on what’s been going on with each other the last 2 years or so.  So that was nice.  If you read my last couple of blogs on friendship… I wrote the first blog on friendship at a time where I was really missing this friend.  I haven’t had a friend since this one that matched the same level that this one was at, and I dearly missed it.  When we ‘went our separate ways’, I felt devastated.  I missed her a lot.  So lunch was good.  And then she called on Saturday right away to see what I was up to, and so I told her that I was free next weekend if she wanted to get together, so we are.  I’m really excited, but at the same time I’m cautious about things.  I don’t want to get hurt again.  I’m really nervous to see her girls, b/c I wonder if they ever wondered what happened to me, and how they explained that?  So I want to be excited about getting my friend back, but on the other hand I want to protect myself from getting hurt again, so I hold back on that emotion somewhat.  Anyway, I could use some prayer on this situation, that’s for sure.  But it’s definitely a blessing, this relationship meant a lot to me, so I’m thankful that we’re in touch again.

OK, well I was going to post some pictures from our trip to Cali last year to end the blog, but I’m not figuring out how to do that.  Strange b/c I’ve navigated both myspace and facebook to do it!!!    Maybe someone who knows how to do this could let me know!  Thanks!!  Thanks for the prayer also by the way!