Wow...2 years later, September 2014

I started this journey in 2011 and now it is 2014. So what happened? Life happened. I got my license. I finished supervision. I had another child and still trying to get the help my first child needs to he can be who he is meant to be in Jesus. Oh, and my wonderful PMDD (Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder) getting in the way which is now a mental disorder according to the new DSM-V.

I have been on two different anti-depressants and hate them both. One makes me numb and other one makes me sleepy. Soon I will be making an appointment with the homeopathic doctor. I found a female close to me and hopefully, she will give me some guidance.

God is here. God is always here regardless of me using his name in vain and my swearing or creating a new name for Jesus. My PMDD has gotten worse since having children and now I am getting older. My body continues to change to whatever season I am in at the moment. Life with PMDD sucks fortunately, I have a caring husband who can take up the slack when I feel like crap. He tries to be a buffer for the children. Yes, I swear at them, too. Sometimes, I just want to beat the crap out of them. I really want to take a 3 week vacation every month and just be lazy. My family gets one good week out of me every month that is 12 weeks out of the year. The other 40 weeks? Yeah, I am a total raging lunatic. The TV show "Snapped" can so easily be me. However, God reigns me in and takes control, sort of. I take my anger out on me. I bite my fingers. I have been biting my fingers since I was 12 or 13 years old. I think I stopped for a while when I was single. I used to bite my fingernails, too; though, that has completely stopped for whatever reason. I tell people that I finished my undergrad program. I stopped biting my fingernails when I graduated. I still continue to bite my fingers.

Yes, I am crazy. Crazy in love with Jesus; yet, my hell is PMDD. 

Year End 2011

I am playing catch-up and it has been a crazy year. I suppose as most years go there have been some good stuff going on and terrible stuff going on in my family. The terrible stuff will be the first to go that way I can get the tears out of my system. I am on vacation and it is coming to an end with tears mostly at night when everyone is in bed. I am here alone with my computer playing games while thoughts run through my head.

Early in January this year, my mom-in-law ended her battle with cancer and the Lord took her home with Him. She decided to stop the cancer treatments during the summer or early Fall and we never asked for a time frame as to how much longer she had with us. Thanksgiving sucked in 2010 as everything was so chaotic. We had planned for a simple Thanksgiving and for some reason it got all complicated. Christmas was spent with my family in Ohio which seemed to have gone better except for the fact that my cousin's boyfriend was a little drunk and decided to throw out some swear words from time to time. January 2011 came around and my mom-in-law died.

In February, my grandma decided to kick the bucket as well. She died the day before her birthday. My mom never gave grandma her birthday present. We had a traditional Roman Catholic burial for her and I said the petitions. My cousins did the readings and my sister and other cousin brought up the gifts. If you aren't Roman Catholic and you are reading this all confused, send me a comment and I will clarify.

Jumping to October, as I said the good stuff will come later, my Uncle Louie dies of cancer pancreatic to be more specific. He went quick considering he was diagnosed in during the summer. The doctors did what they could for him though like my mom-in-law progress was difficult to find so treatments were stopped and he died.

In December, my Uncle Johnny decides to die from alcohol poisoning. He also had some other medical conditions and was taking other medications to treat those conditions so I am unsure as how his body was affected by the mixing of medications with the alcohol. He had a simple memorial service since his body was cremated. My cousin and I did readings and the priest did the petitions. No one did gifts since the memorial service was at the funeral home so only a partial Roman Catholic funeral.

A mix between the two, I crammed 600 hours into one semester to graduate on time. Amazingly enough, I got all 600 hours between two internship sites. God comes through when I needed him the most. He was my strength during this time when I wanted to quit. Okay enough of the bad stuff, now onto the good stuff.

In March, we celebrated my birthday as well as my son's First birthday. In April, I hit the "300" mark on internship hours. In May, I complete all 600 hours and graduate on time with my class. In July, I receive my limited license and go into private practice with my own company Community Recovery Counseling Center, PLLC otherwise known as CRCC. Thanksgiving and Christmas go much better this year than they did last year. Both were very low key which is what my family needed for this year. That covers 2011.

On My Way to Supervision

I have supervision in an hour so I'm taking this time to write because I haven't written here in a long while and God has been moving big time. I mailed in the paper work for my own counseling center which is in connection to Community Recovery, International. We are also looking for space and found a building we love though needs much TLC. We are putting our resources together before we buy the building to make sure that we will be able to handle what needs to be done to the building. The building is located on S. Division just on the cusp the the Hispanic neighborhoods which is perfect because that is an area of people we have yet to connect with in Grand Rapids. We are close to those we offer counseling to which is the ARC, Guiding Light Missions and Mel Trotter. We provide after care counseling for these people who have graduated from these programs. The building is perfect for us because one level will be administration offices for Community Recovery, International and the other level will be the counseling center.

As soon as things are up and running smoothly and we have a steady flow of clients, I would like the counseling center to be an approved site for other MA's and MSW's students who are ready to start on their practicum and internships. This is huge and God is moving in big ways in providing the funding that we need to make this happen.

I already had other counselors approach me wanting to do counseling at the center and we will get there. Right now, I'm working on building the base as well as doing all the necessary paperwork registering a professional limited-liability company. One step at a time.

Graduation

This semester has been crazy though I completed 600 hours with 240 client hours and 360 support hours at two internships. One internship may turn into a private practice within a private practice. I may be opening up my own PLLC--Professional Limited Liability Company. I have been looking at rental offices and the possibility of owning a building. I completed a policy manual for future counselors and interns who may work at Community Recovery, International. I am meeting with someone from SCORE who will help me with my business plan. Will I have a partner to share the practice? Overall, I am glad to be done and I am sad at the same time. Seminary took me 4 1/2 years to complete and I appreciate the support my loving husband, Denver, gave me.

With all this going-on, I've been toying with the idea of child #2. There seems to be a jump on that already at my church with 3 women already pregnant and one approaching me when is it going to be my turn. I laughed. I will be 42 next year. I already have one child. I know several families who are dealing with infertility. I am here to live the life God has given me with or without another child.

Anyway, that's all I have for now.

Neglected

I've started two blogs and both have been neglected. My life has gotten busier much to my discomfort. I do not like leading a busy life; however I also want to graduate in a timely manner so I decided to take on two internships at once. Why did I do this to myself? Because I wanted to graduate this May rather than wait to summer. With the support of my husband, family and friends, I can get this done. This also means my house is messier or cleaning takes a backseat for a while. Laundry takes longer to get to though it eventually gets done. My son's needs are always addressed in a timely manner though my shower might wait for an hour or two.

God's been with me throughout this whole journey and I know it would have never been completed without Him. Time to go to bed. I tried taking a nap though at least my eyes were closed for a couple of hours.

Spring Semester Switch-Up

I was planning on taking another class; however with needing a total of 600 internship hours, I have decided to concentrate only on my internships which are 300 hours each. I will be completing both internships simultaneously and the paperwork will be doubled. I really don't want to be concerned with additional readings and papers which come with taking a class. Here I will be working 40 hours per week for about 17 weeks. I gave myself an additional 2 weeks so I have time to put together 2 binders and make sure I have the required paperwork to graduate. I am nervous and excited as well as looking to see where God leads next.

My Time in Seminary

My time in seminary is close to an end. I have one semester left which leaves me with one more class as well as two internships. I started at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary in the Fall of 2006 working on a Masters of Counseling with an emphasis on Women. My first two classes were Marriage and Family Counseling and Spiritual Formation. I did really well in those two classes so for the Spring Semester 2007 I had decided to up my class load to three classes. That was a huge mistake because I was way over scheduled and thought I was going to die. I passed them all though I never took three classes again until now and of course next semester will also be technically three classes.

In 2007, I also survived Systematic Theology. I took all three classes in the same year starting with Systematic Theology I in the Spring following with II in the Summer then III in the Fall of 2007. Yes, I did it and survived as well as bought the t-shirt stating "I survived Systematic Theology."

The year of 2008 brought some excitement when I learned I was pregnant with our first child in August/September. My due date was June 6th and we were also looking for a house which we bought in October so that semester was a really crazy time for me in getting situated in our new house. I wanted to be settled into a house before classes started so I feel better sitting in class while being pregnant at the same time though we ended up moving in the middle of the semester.

A month later in November of 2008 I ended up miscarrying our first child. I guess the blessing here is that I miscarried a week before Thanksgiving break so I basically missed one week of classes. I thought about dropping out for the semester to recoup; however, I counted how many weeks I had left to finish and decided to plug away then mourn over Christmas break. Papers were as good as they were going to get so I turned those in "as is" and accepted whatever grade they received. Needless to say, Christmas Break really sucked.

Year of 2009 I learned I was very close to graduating and freaked out because I wasn't ready to graduate. I felt very unprepared and scared out of my wits to do counseling. So God decided to switch up the plan. In May, I learned I was pregnant again though this time the due date was March 29th, 2010. Ugh! That is the middle of the semester so obviously I was going to have to hold off on finishing up and go another year instead completing my degree during the summer of 2009.

Fall of 2009 hit I was feeling unmotivated, loss of energy and wondering why on earth I was taking classes in the middle of my pregnancy. Reading was hopeless considering I lost my concentration, hormones were all over the place and my patience went out the window. Sleep is now something of the past since I was at a loss for finding a comfortable sleeping position. However, I trudged through by the grace of God and my Counseling professors were very understanding.

My hope was that I was taking Spring of 2010 semester off as well as the summer because I knew I would be giving my employer my two weeks notice once my maternity leave was finished and prayed Denver would let me be a stay-at-home mom for a season. I also prayed my son arrive a week early so everyone will be able to enjoy their own day and keep from clumping them together.

God answered prayer very directly. Jaedon Daniel was born on March 22, 2010 and Denver said that I will be a stay-at-home mom for the summer and pick-up classes again Fall Semester of 2010. So Fall of 2010 arrived with much tribulation. During the summer, I was able to find a Practicum site, which is a short internship with much supervision, however by the end of August, they decided to close down the program which meant I no longer had a practicum. Ugh! I called and called every place I knew that did practicums and internships though low and behold all of them were full. I prayed and figured the timing was poor for practicum so I dropped the class though needed another class to keep financial aid. I hunted and picked classes and I changed my schedule three times. Classes have started and I show up at my evening Research Methodology class. A classmate talks to me about what he is doing for practicum and would love to have me join him. I said "Really?", to which he responded, "Yes." I got his information and called as to where he is doing his practicum and the pastor called me back saying that they would love to have me. So there I am again at 8:30 p.m. on the last day of the Add/Drop period, at the registration website changing my schedule again to re-add the Practicum class. I was excited that someone wants me to be somewhere to do something in the realm of counseling after being told "No" at each phone call. My heart cried.

So next semester, Spring of 2011. I will complete both internships at the same site as my practicum which in-turn will be my life vocation, or until God calls me elsewhere, so I will be pursuing my LPC (Licensed Professional Counselor) by racking up hours as well as my CAAC (Certified Addictions Counselor). I will be walking and graduating with a LLPC (Limited Licensed Professional Counselor) in May 2011.

Extra Bonus: Jaedon will be 1 year old.