Reconciling my calls

Through most of my high school and college experience, I wrestled with what I now recognize as two calls; one to ministry, one to psychology.  I chose to study psychology at a Christian college as a compromise between the two, but I felt towards the end of my senior year of college that I had to choose ministry over psychology, for a variety of reasons, one of them being a pretty drastic lack of connection with the faculty in my department and a fear that I would not meet the more exacting standards for admission to a graduate program at a university.  However, in the past year and a half I have gained a new appreciation for my former course of study, and come to embrace a unique call to both psychology and ministry.

Now, any minister worth their salt will tell you that a good deal of any ministry lies in one-on-one relationship building, leadership development, and counseling.  Often in ministry these three are blended together so totally that its difficult to tell when one stops and another begins.  My heart as a youth minister is to latch onto the lost and the hurting kids - and as a psychologist, I can tell you that I think they are ALL lost and hurting on some level.  And usually, the problem kids - that is to say, the ones who are hurting badly enough that they can't mask it and play to expectations like the "good kids" do - have problem parents.  If there is one thing I could tell the parents of the kids I work with, it would be that you cannot underestimate the ways in which the things you do - especially the things done behind closed doors, even the things you think your kids don't know about - affect the way they relate to every other person and situation they encounter.  Parents have incredible power to help or to harm, and sometimes the difference is as small as the inflection on a statement.  This is, I believe, my call - to help hurting kids, to help confused and overwhelmed and hurting parents, find a place where they can connect and become the family that God created them to be.

I also believe that youth create their own family within the church structure, and we need to recognize the power of what we do.  I have seen and can testify to the changes wrought by relentless loving on the part of youth leaders for a wayward child.  Once, that wayward child was me.  Now, I have wayward children of my own, and I understand how Herculean is the task set before us - to love others fearlessly, to allow our hearts to be broken by them because God's heart is also broken for them, to give of our time and our resources so sacrificially so that our students can be filled with love, can begin a journey to wholeness of identity and self.  And that - that sounds like a journey worth the taking.