After two years of radio silence, I think it’s best that I begin this tea time just like I have all the other ones by saying: Wow! It’s been forever since my last post. Ah, yes, what better or other way is there to begin a tea time?

There has been a lot that has changed since I last wrote a tea time. For one, I graduated with my Bachelor’s degree in Psychology which bolstered my success in acquiring my first full-time position working with psych patients at the hospital. The immense ways in which this position has grown me is beyond anything I could’ve imagined when I started a little over a year ago. I was extremely anxious and didn’t know what my role would look like in the lives of our patients beyond the series of chronological tasks that I was being trained to do. I questioned if the very little confidence that I had was at its peak, and if I really was mentally, socially, and emotionally equipped to enter into my dream profession- therapy. I was insecure about entering as the youngest staff member on our unit, without a husband or kids or other family in the area that I could come home to after work, or talk about amongst my coworkers as a topic of bonding. All of my friends went their separate ways after we graduated. Isolated and anxious for what God had in store for me, I set an expectation that I would only have to survive in that position for six more months, and then I would be off to grad school, closer to my friends and family, and I would finally feel comfortable again. For me, freedom was found in my comfortability.

That was when I read the email I had been so desperately awaiting, learning that I had been rejected from my dream graduate school. I had become so comfortable in my lifelong series of academic successes that this one brought about a sort of grieving process as I mourned the expectations I had set for myself in the upcoming days, months, and years. I now had to reprocess and eventually accept the idea that I would have to continue working in my old college town that I excitedly anticipated leaving for four years indefinitely, and without real, local social support to keep me afloat.

I can now say nearly a year after coming in as (as my now work bestie says) “a little tadpole”, I have learned to embrace the uncomfortable and less-than-ideal circumstances, because God is and has proved to be greater than my plans. Had I not stayed in my current position, I wouldn’t have made the friends I have now, nor would I have learned what it means to be assertive and set firm boundaries, nor would I have cultivated my attitude of gratitude for the things that I have, and things that I don’t. In true future therapist fashion, I have learned that in order to truly grow and secure real, trustworthy, and wholesome relationships with others, I, too, have things that I need to work on and learn. The key to learning these things? Owning that truth. Bathing in my humanness. Becoming comfortable in the uncomfortable.

I arrived home yesterday afternoon after a morning of leading a rather heavy group therapy, of a few. I had a patient who had, to a room made up of mostly men (with the exception of myself and one other female), made the decision to express her vulnerabilities about her past of surviving sexual violence and abuse. After a moment or two of great anxiousness and hesitation filled up the silence in that room, I told her that if she felt uncomfortable, it was okay not to disclose anything that she felt would, in the end, counter her therapeutic progress, but she bravely insisted on telling her story. She wept as she spoke her side of the story out loud for what was seemingly the first time. She inspired a snowball effect of others processing their deep hurt in a string after her, some also crying as well. After the group ended, I asked her how she was doing. She was withdrawn and anxious, telling me that she felt exposed and embarrassed. I knew exactly what feelings she was talking about- the ones where you feel as though your deepest, darkest feelings and thoughts and experiences were announced on a loudspeaker for the whole world to hear. For her, that room was the whole world. I acknowledged her feelings and reminded her of her bravery, and what she just allowed herself to do. The immediate uncomfortable is never going to feel comfortable, but as I told her, one day she will look back from a place of comfort and find that where she found it was in an emotional, physical, and mental place so uncomfortable that it seemed impossible.

These are the moments that teach me and inspire me every day. They fuel my passion for life, the human potential, and the goodness and peace that can come from feeling out of place, unaccepted, isolated, or lost. Channeling your worst forms of anger, frustration, and sadness from life’s twists, turns, and hurts into a harnessing of the power you hold is one of the beautiful employments of our human emotion that God has gifted to us. If there is anywhere that true growth, healing, peace, and freedom is found, it is in all the all the places that you allow yourself to be comfortably uncomfortable. Challenge yourself to that freedom. Challenge yourself to a space that is comfortably uncomfortable.

Xoxo, C.

“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” ~ John 16:33