Or, Who am I and who am I becoming?
I keep writing in here and then deleting it, because it’s not “just right.” This time, I will post what I type, even if I delete it later.
I’m a spiritual director, currently working out of the Center for Spiritual Renewal at Talbot School of Theology (links later). Talbot is the graduate school at Biola University. I’ve attended (and graduated from!) both schools.
As an undergrad, I studied Philosophy. Four years and one degree later, I decided, definitively, that I was not an analytic philosopher. I still agree with that decision. I am someone who puts pieces together to make a whole, not someone who takes things further and further apart until you can’t see the whole anymore. People who can do that are necessary and amazing, but I am not one of them. This realization dashed a dream and an identity–I am not the academic intellectual I had hoped to be during college.
After college, I spend a year working with autistic children. It was one of the most rewarding jobs I’ve had, and quite possibly that I will ever have, but I couldn’t keep doing it. Working with kids like that is work worthy of a lifetime, but not mine. I wasn’t called there. I could do the work, and do it well, but I realized that it wore on me instead of energizing me, and it would eventually burn me out.
After that, I taught full-time for a year and then part-time for three years in a classical-style great books program for homeschooled high schoolers. I liked it, but I wanted badly to interact with the kids about their lives, to know what was going on with them, not just to teach them the thinking and the books, important as those are. Looking back now, I think I discovered there that I’m a teacher (though I didn’t realize that until recently)–I can teach, I enjoy doing it, and I’m good at it. That is unexpected–I always saw myself as behind-the-scenes, writing maybe, or possibly working with small groups. To discover that I am gifted to speak to groups, to minister to groups and work with them was something of a shock to the system.
Eventually, I started taking classes at Talbot’s Institute of Spiritual Formation. Though there were some bumps on the way, I felt called to be a spiritual director, and later to work with groups (though I definitely continue working with individuals, as well). I love this program and I love how I was formed there. I’m not finished, by any means (and I hope I never think I am), but this program planted seeds that are now my passions. I love what I learned and I’d love to use it, though I’m not quite sure when or where or how that will happen.
Right now, I work in the computer department at the University so my husband can finish school. I don’t quite know what’s next. There are lots of “careers” I could learn. There are also lots of things I’d like to try to do on my own–small businesses, planning retreats, helping people tell their stories for growth and healing, etc. But time will tell.
Meanwhile, I blog here and over at Wisebread, as well as at my personal blog. Blogging helps me figure out what I’m about and where I want to go next.
