My semester is winding to a close. Would you pray for me? And Jim and the girls while I'm away? I leave this coming Friday for a counseling opportunity in China. I've had to finish the semester about 10 days early, which means the last few weeks have been pretty stressful, but I turned in my term paper on Friday and finished my exam tonight! Yeah! My term paper was actually very formative for me as a counselor and I'm thankful to my prof who allowed me to tweak it for my own interest and growth. Now just three more days of clients, winding up lose ends, and I'm off!
Can I sing the praises of my sweet husband for a moment? He took the girls to Aunt Julie's today and cleared the whole day for me so I could finish my exam. And he encouraged me to go on this trip, and has paved the way for me to take advantage of this great opportunity. I feel the love, hon.
I leave you with a quote, thinking about leading others as one being led.
"Paul calls leaders not merely to be humble and self-effacing but to be desperate and honest. It is not enough to be self-revealing, authentic, and transparent. Our calling goes far beyond that. We are called to be reluctant, limping, chief-sinner leaders, and even more, to be stories. The word that Paul uses is that a leader is to be an ‘example,’ but what that implies is more than a figure on a flannel board. He calls us to be a living portrayal of the very gospel we beseech others to believe. And that requires a leader to see himself as being equally prone to deceive as he is to tell the truth, to manipulate as he is to bless, to cower as he is to be bold. A leader is both a hero and a fool, a saint and a felon.
We are both and to pretend otherwise is to be disingenuous. The leader who fails to face [his] darkness must live with fear and hypocrisy. The result will be a defensiveness that places saving face and controlling others as higher goods than blessing others and doing good work. Clearly, the biblical model of leadership is odd, inverted, and deeply troubling. It is so troubling that most churches, seminaries, and other religious organizations would never hire a ‘chief sinner.’ The only one who thinks to do so is God." --Dan Allender, Leading With a Limp
