Welcome to day 4 of The Thankful Project. Today's prompt is: An Experience. To learn more about The Thankful Project, find the list of prompts and join in the fun, click {here}.
I'm linking up with Kenzie at Chasing Happy for this post.
Wow. As I reflect, I'm realizing that I've really been blessed with a lot of great experiences for which I am thankful.
I'm thankful for the opportunity I had to grow up in a small town, knowing pretty much everyone.
I'm thankful that I was able to spend 6 weeks of my life living in Australia, learning how to share the Gospel.
I'm thankful that I was able to experience pregnancy - a life growing inside of me.
And even more, I'm thankful for the experience of motherhood.
But today, for this post, I'm going to write about my experience in Seminary.
My time in Seminary wasn't just an "experience". It was a FULL year of my life. A full year that I spent begging God to give me a different story. A different plan for my life. It was a hard year.
But it was the best year. I grew so much in that one year. And that one year really prepared me for the life that I'm living now as a wife and mother.
First off, let me just say if you know an amazing Pastor, THANK THEM! Be thankful for them and appreciate the time that they spent in Seminary. Seminary is hard. Before Seminary I thought that Pastors just read the Bible and "heard" from God all day. But "reading the Bible" is so much more than just reading. Getting in depth in the word requires a lot of historical contextual knowledge and understanding of another language. The Bible wasn't written in English after all and translations don't always give the full picture. A word in Greek can mean one thing in one context and a completely different thing in another context.
Anyway, being a Pastor and studying in Seminary really requires your brain. It pushes your limits, both spiritually and emotionally as you struggle through learning things that you "thought" you knew.
The Seminary Program which I was attending was actually for Marriage and Family Therapy. I loved my program. It was Biblically sound and encouraged me to explore what I believed and who I was in light of those beliefs. Even more, it encouraged me to explore my own family and who and what had made me the person that I had become.
Through that year I struggled with a lot. My struggles were not just with the demands of a Graduate Program, although those struggles were definitely big enough. Who knew you were actually supposed to do the readings in Grad School!?!? I never read in college.... Oops.
Beyond the struggles of balance and finding time to live life and love God and still complete my program successfully, I was also struggling with a lot spiritually and personally. What had I been believing about God my whole life and why? And what about my beliefs about men???
Yep. I learned a lot about my beliefs about men in Seminary.
Up until my classes in Seminary, I had maybe had 1 or 2 male teachers...Elementary School through College. I was also raised mainly by my mom and grandma so my experiences with men were quite small...and somewhat negative. I viewed men as "incapable" and "in need of a woman's help".
It wasn't long before my Seminary experience started poking at these thoughts of mine. I didn't trust my male teachers. Since I was doing a Marriage and Family Therapy Program, attending therapy yourself was highly encouraged {almost a requirement}. But let's be real, classes were digging up so much junk in my life that I probably needed the therapy to survive that year!
It wasn't just the therapy that year, but it was also what I learned about myself and about God that really changed who I was...who I am today. It was this experience that prepared me for meeting the man who would become my husband. Helped me develop skills to learn to have a healthy relationship with him.
It was even this experience that lead me to Minnesota. If I hadn't come to Minnesota, I know that I wouldn't have met my husband and I wouldn't have my baby boy. And for all of that, I am thankful for that lousy year that I experienced in Seminary and I would do it again in a heart beat.
What experience have you had that you are thankful for?
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