Right Where I Should Be

I’m one who is prone to skepticism, and I’m pretty realistic and unfortunately able to rationalize God’s moving as “just how things would have turned out,” but I know that this is where I’m supposed to be.

Last summer I went through the TrueYou workshops in Chattanooga, which were intensive weekend workshops emphasizing self-awareness, growth, and getting ride of self-defeating habits—in other words, it helps people to be fully alive. That changed my life. And since then I went to all of the workshops as a facilitator and brought as many people as I could with me so that they could experience it as well. From that I gained wisdom as to how to counsel people and effective interactive processes that I could use in group settings.

One of the girls in my nursing class was going to go to Africa as a student missionary, and that got me thinking that maybe I could do the same thing before getting a full-time nursing job. If I went to a place and did nursing, then that wouldn’t make it bad that I didn’t get a job right away. (There is a lot of competition for nursing jobs.) So I looked into some places in Africa and I emailed Pastor Tom as well, mentioning my degree and experience with counseling about. (Yes, Egypt is in Africa, but it feels more like part of the Middle East to me.) Malawi and other places fell through, but Pastor Tom wrote back saying that a week of prayer speaker had just emailed him saying that they have a strong need for a counselor on campus. There are many students who struggle with anxiety, phobias, post-traumatic stress, and have faced great struggles in their lives both don’t have anyone to help them work through things. They need a non-administrative person that they can talk to. He said that they know me and trust me and asked if I would come. My friend David firmly believed that God wanted me at NUA, and I took that seriously. After some time, I accepted the position. A couple weeks later I was looking through my journal from last fall, and in several places I mentioned how my dream job would be working as a high school chaplain. I also talked about how badly I wished I could counsel people. I had forgotten that I had written those things and even wanted those things so much.

Initially, my primary role was to be a counselor at the school. Pastor Tom also asked if I would help him teach his Bible 11 & 12 classes, which are about marriage and family for the first semester. He said that before any marital or parenting advice, they need to understand themselves, so he wanted to spend a good chunk of the semester helping them to understand themselves and others and how to have functional relationships in general. Thank You, God via TrueYou!

About a week before coming here, I got an e-mail from NUA’s nurse practitioner Peggy Miller, who said that something came up in the family and she wouldn’t be able to return to Egypt from the US for a while, so I would be the nurse on campus until she comes back. BOOM. Just graduated with nursing. I would also be teaching her Careers/Life Skills class, which includes first aid, childcare, career paths (personality testing implied!), etc. How perfect. Who would have known that this was going to come up? God.

Here I am, sitting on the Deckers’ massive couch trying to plan for classes and figure out what I need to do. I’ll write more about the actual place later, but I just wanted to give God credit for bringing me here.