Doctorate info?

The class I am taking now is in career counseling. We look where we’ve been and where we are going, checking out our own personalities and how they affirm or defer from our goals. Part of the assessments we do is a career daydream. Mine was wonderful!

 

My daydream was wonderful also. I already had the love story with a romantic, whirlwind courtship and marriage, so that wasn’t part of it. In mine I encountered total peace. No more worries about the car, the kids, the house, the bills or health insurance. I was working in a quiet, comfortable homey office with three or four other counselors, did the busywork of assessment interpretation, researched several things, and had several clients throughout the day. I was not in “charge” of anything other than my own work in the office.  It was a totally peaceful day and work was very productive. Coming home (to a nice, clean house without anything to fix—like a hole in the wall—to my wonderful husband, who is by now retired, who has made a wonderful meal. Ah, the wonders in a dream!

 

Talking to a friend later, she had just come home from a 12 hour day, working with foster parents. Those long hour days I don't look forward to, but know will be coming. I see most group sessions (if I do any) will be in the evenings. With some of those I want to "help", evening is the best time for them...foster parents need group sessions, not just meetings. If they meet for the soul purpose of talking about how foster parenting is affecting their lives and how some others have found ways of creative discipline (it is an art with foster parents) as well as ways to encourage the kids to do well, it would have helped us, but there wasn't any that sufficed. My husband wants me to get a doctorate after this and I may use that as my dissertation :) I'd have to be doing it in a different county, tho, the one I'm in so sorely disappointed us I couldn't work with them. I'd also have to work in how to teach the kids to forgive--their parents, the system and others to give them a better chance at life. Like the way I think as I write? MAPP classes try to prepare you, but it's different when you are actually doing it.

The Lord still teaches new things in His word...

    I have been learning quite a bit lately. Not only in my studies for school, but from the Word of God. It has seemed that lately too much was just reminders of things I have learned before in the 30+ years as a Christian. I was beginning to feel stale in my study of the Word. Last Sunday, my pastor started a study in the book of Daniel. I was thinking, OK, more about eating good food, lion's den, fiery furnace, etc.

    Yet the pastor brought a new look I hadn't thought about before. In order for Daniel and his three friends to be able to be taken away from home as teenagers and to be so strong in their faith, they had to have great parents that instilled in them a love for God and faith in Him that was unwavering. I had never thought about their parents! They were not even mentioned, but they didn't have to be. These boys showed in their actions what they had been taught growing up. Another interesting thing was when the pastor referenced Josh McDowell and a statistic. Did you know that it is best for fathers to be involved with their kids to keep them from trying drugs? Yes, that seems to be common knowledge. BUT did you know that it is better for the father to be missing in action than to be around yet not involved? It seemed the stats showed kids between two or three times more likely to try drugs with a non-caring father that was part of their lives.

    Another verse I had overlooked was 2nd Corinthians 2:17, "Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, like men sent from God." Direct hit for the TV evangelists that beg for money. The Lord still amazes me every day with how His word can be related to everyday life over 2000 years later.