never been here before

My new place of employment has a unofficial tag line. "No drama... no avoidance." Things are dealt with honestly and directly, and any drama is not tolerated. It's taken me awhile to adjust to this kind of environment. And I suspect it will take me a bit longer to find my footing in this. Hopefully not because I thrive on drama, but because I am just not used to things being dealt with directly and without avoidance. I don't know anyone who likes confrontation. That would make me question if they understand what confrontation means, or perhaps would make me question their sanity. But there are some people who at least understand that while confrontation is hard and challenging, it's also an opportunity. And it's healthy, certainly more so than the alternative. There's the phenomenon I learned about it one of my classes in seminary: triangulation. Triangulation is when a third party somehow gets involved in the brokenness between two people. It...

Yesterday, someone said this to me: “The first time we sat down and had a long conversation, shortly after we met, I had a sense of who you were and what you’d been through. Then I called you three weeks later, and you were a completely different person. It was after you’d been with your friends in St. Louis and and were currently with your family in Nebraska. You were a different person because you were in a place where you felt supported and cared for, with people that made you feel loved." This was new information for me, because I suppose I don’t see what I’ve been through as something that altered who I was, but something I just had to live through and come out on the other side of. All this transition stuff, moving, new job, leaving my old life completely behind… the life stuff, the tasks…  they had overshadowed how my soul has been altered. I don’t say that last phrase lightly. But it’s true. My soul has been altered.  There are wounds still fre...

Trauma is an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape or natural disaster. Immediately after the event, shock and denial are typical. Longer term reactions include unpredictable emotions, flashbacks, strained relationships and even physical symptoms like headaches or nausea. While these feelings are normal, some people have difficulty moving on with their lives. Psychologists can help these individuals find constructive ways of managing their emotions. from  http://www.apa.org/topics/trauma/ It’s recently been acknowledged to me that what I’ve been through in the last few months is an actual trauma. I didn’t go through a terrible event, but rather a series of challenges that added up to a trauma, according to my counselor. So basically, for me, this just means that I’ve been screwing up a lot lately. It has not been a good time for me to make decisions or deal with the stress of transition and job change and moving. Plus so much more. I me...