One Month Mark

I am now one month into my internship at Christ's Church of the Valley. Week one was a HUGE high. Weeks two and three were pretty rough. Written below is why...

I used to find my self worth in what I was DOING for Christ. It was a good day to me if I knocked off a huge chunk of things on my "to do" list. When I started my internship, I was ready to roll. My sleeves were rolled up and I was ready to dive in and DO something for the Kingdom. (This is evident in my previous post! A list of things I had been DOING, instead of what I had been learning. Interesting... :)Well, God wanted to teach me something first. I was getting frustrated and down and beat myself up because I didn't feel worthwhile, or like I was doing anything important. I vented this frustration to one of our Pastors who in turn spoke truth into my life that honestly rocked me and forced me to evaluate where I was getting my self-worth from. He said, "Is it not enough just TO BE a child of God?? Be content in WHO you are in Christ and get your worth from that and not what you can do for him." WHOA. Now, I had several people tell me this in different forms before I heard it from my Pastor, but for whatever reason God didn't reveal how profound that was to me until then. I can't tell you how much of a weight was lifted off my shoulders in those moments, almost immediately. I was free to just be me and embrace that FIRST, and then go to work. This changed how I interacted with others almost immediately. Previously I didn't really want to sit around and chit chat, I wanted to know where there was something that needed to be done so I could go do it, and THEN I could sit down and chit chat. Well, when you have nothing in your plate of much significance to do, you learn pretty quickly to be content in just "being" FIRST. I felt like I had slapped God in the face and rejected Him by saying that simply BEING HIS CHILD was not good enough for me. Well, that has all changed and my eyes now see how important it is to place my worth in HIM and not what I DO for Him. I don't know if I conveyed that to you well enough, but that was profound for me.

I've had the opportunity to move around to several different areas of ministry this past month. Including: first impressions, pastoral care, neighborhood groups, and high school. I've discovered that I still LOVE counseling, but my idea of what that meant I needed to do with my life wasnt quite right. I thought that meant I needed to go back to Grad school and become a Therapist. Well, I've learned that counseling in some form exists EVERYWHERE. What I love about counseling is when people open up and are REAL and VULNERABLE about what is going on in their lives--- the deeper and more intimate the thought, the better. Well, that can be applied in any relationship I hold. So I've started to follow High School a little bit and they have this mentoring program set up called "Cylinders". It's basically where a youth coach (me) comes to high school youth group and establishes relationships with high school students. The "Cylinders" aspect of it comes into play outside of the Sunday service. It's a small group (me with about 7 other girls) who get together once during the week to do a Bible study and just talk about what is going on in their lives. Well, obviously I LOVED seeing the girls open up and look up to you for some form of guidance. I absolutely LOVE when the walls come down and people get rid of the guard they have up. It's HUGE when people open up about what is going on in their head for others to hear. I truly believe this is when God can work in us the most. So I am now in the process of becoming a youth coach for high school students. Stay tuned for more on that. Pretty excited:)

One more major thing I've realized is that NOBODY is as perfect as they appear. I tend to be intimidated by people who come across as having it all together, and I definitely experienced that when I first started my internship. Things on the outside looked SO out of my league (I think I even wrote a post about feeling that way when I first started). Well, everyone has their own struggles and we all aren't as different from each other as we may think. The best way to tackle that lie that Satan feeds you is to get to know the people around you on a deeper level. Find out where they've been and how they've gotten to where they are now. (This might be another reason I love counseling). Getting to know some people who I thought were better than me has done SO much for me in the past couple weeks. My confidence is back to where it should be.

God is EVERYWHERE. He is HUGE. You will not be able to wrap your mind around the giganticness of Him. I've been shadowing so many different areas of ministry and have seen God at work in each of them intimately as if they were the only thing that mattered. I've seen Him at work in neighborhoods, children, adults, teenagers, in divorce, in death and grieving, in rejoicing, in sunsets, in disasters, in other parts of the world, and in my backyard. He has His hand in EVERYTHING. How INCREDIBLE is that???!? WHAT A GOD!!

Next week I plan on following our Programing Department a little bit to see what it looks like to work in the Public Relations department of a mega-church. Should be interesting.

Again, thank you all SOOO much for your prayer and support. God is GOOD.