Counseling is a privilege. It's a gift to be invited into people's lives and journey alongside them through life's good, hard, and ugly matters.
My mentor would often talk about the "fine china" of people's lives. He would say, "like fine china that doesn't get brought out for everyday use, the hardest things in life are often kept in the cabinet." These are the most delicate things in a person's life.
But why bother? Why bring out the fine china of our lives?
Because they matter.
Deep down inside, we care. We want our lives to matter. We care about our messy relationships. And we want things to work out.
But often, we feel stuck and we don't know what to do.
Counseling allows for wise, candid, and fruitful conversations about things that really matter.
I care about counseling because I care about people. I care about the things that matter to us and the struggles that we face. I care to make sense of our existence in a meaningful way, and know that we are moving in the right direction in the midst of chaos.
It is a privilege to step in to the broken, messy places with reasons to hope and move towards change. I love understanding the person in front of me with a vision of who the person can become. I believe humans are created to reflect the goodness, the truthfulness, the beauty, the peaceableness, the loveliness, the kindness of Jesus. And this is where my theology and epistemology are foundational to my counseling philosophy and framework.
I also care that counseling conversations consider a solution-oriented, a practical roadmap for concrete change. When we can start living out the changes in the details of life with new motivations, that is significant. Any visible signs of change, even in the posture of our hearts or minds, are a reason to celebrate, hope, and persevere.
Wherever you are on your journey, may you find reasons to hope. Reasons to change. Reasons to move towards a direction that helps you flourish as a human being.
Your life matters.
And so do your relationships.
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