Saturday, November 17, 2012

The Keeping Room

As I have been sharing here for the past year and a half, my new favorite quote is, "most people over estimate what they can do in a year and under estimate what they can do in 10 years."  We are living there daily at our house pushing ourselves to keep taking that next step as we walk down a 10 year path to the reinvention of John's career and our life.

One of the places I find inspiration to keep walking this path is from the stories of people who have done what we are doing.  Who have set 10 year goals and made it to the other side.  Today I want to tell you about my friend Jen.  When her kids were just starting school God planted in her heart a passion to return to school and get a Master's degree in psychology.  Her faith had been growing during those pre-school years and God had given her a desire to provide true Christian counseling to hurting families.  She started, one class at a time pursuing this goal.  Keeping her priorities in order and letting God lead the process, she raised her children while pursuing her Master's degree.  Along the way God refined the vision and she began developing a purity ministry for young girls.  Starting with one small group of girls she now leads several groups of girls and a group of boys, encouraging in their walk with God and their understanding of His plan for relationships and purity.

I will admit that over the years her classes just became part of her day to day life.  While I knew they were leading to a goal, it was easy for me to loose track of that and just see this as what she would be doing forever.  But she never lost track of her goal and was constantly preparing for the day she would move from student to counselor.

This past year she did it.  She graduated and became a Christian Counselor in the state of Georgia.  A long pursued goal.  She didn't do it in a year or even 2 years.  Honestly, I lost count but I am thinking it was 8 years of schooling.  Without missing a beat, and because of her ability to set and pursue long term goals, she moved flawlessly into the next phase of the plan, build a counseling practice while growing her small but growing purity ministry.  This fall she launched a blog to promote her business and her ministry called, "The Keeping Room".  A name she came up with way back at the beginning of her education.  It really is excellent.  Short, simple but powerful messages to help you grow in your faith as you live daily life.  Check it out at www.keepingroomchristiancounseling.com

So with 8 years of education behind her but with 4 years until her youngest child is out of the house, she continues to live in that long term goal.  A goal that wasn't to get an education but to build a successful Christian counseling practice to work in when her children were grown.  As we sit at 1-1/2 years behind us, just at the beginning of starting to strategically think about how the choices we make in the next 6-7 years will affect our ability to launch John's career, I can look to examples like Jen and be encouraged that we are really going somewhere, we will really be standing on the other side of this educational journey someday and it will most definitely have been worth the effort.

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