My background and education is in engineering but for a while now my passion was not in what I studied or what I did for work but Christian counseling. I really thought I wanted to pursue some form of counseling. I love one on one interactions more than big crowds and I love listening to people’s stories and to understand where they are coming from. I did a 65 hr DV and SA training so I could start volunteering at a women’s shelter and work their crisis line for families of domestic violence hoping it would give me a taste of what counseling would be like and whether I would really like to pursue it or not. I had only been volunteering for about a month and it was challenging and stressful but at the end of my shift it felt exhilarating. I had even thought about eventually taking some online classes from a counseling center to get certified.
And then my small group took one of those spiritual gifts test to help us identify the areas where we were well, spiritually gifted in. And as we worked through the test together as a small group and shared our insights and findings I was shocked to find that counseling was not one of my spiritual gifts. In fact, I don’t even think it was even any where near on my chart of strengths. I was discouraged and disheartened because exhortation was not my gifting and felt like it was telling me this is not what I should be pursuing. I got mixed responses from friends – some saying this test should not be regarded so seriously and failproof, others saying this is a pretty good indicator of God showing us where our strengths lie and how to make good use of it, and others saying that our spiritual gifts can and often do change over time.
I continued to volunteer off and on for the next two years and then slowly it just died a slow death and I knew that my time there was done and I didn’t want to keep volunteering there anymore. And throughout that whole time that spiritual gifts booklet was always hanging in the back of my mind.
Whether right or wrong, that test had left a big impression on me and I don’t know what to make of it. Needless to say, I don’t feel as passionate about pursuing counseling as I once did before. Maybe that time is over, or maybe after volunteering I realized it wasn’t for me, or maybe it really was just never for me. The thing is, I don’t know what I feel passionate about nowadays. Sure every time I listen to a This American Life podcast I feel like I’ve found a new cause to get involved in but that lasts about as long until the next podcast. As I have been reflecting on this I believe God has been teaching me that I’m not defined by my passions or my failures in it. He wants me to submit to his heart not the cause.
I feel the need to blog 