I plopped down on the couch that my clients sit on during their therapy sessions with me. I looked around and tried to get a sense if they felt comfortable sitting there (kind of like what you are supposed to do in your home's guest bedroom: be a guest---lay on the bed to make sure it's comfy, see if you can reach the bedside table, is there enough light to read by?). My eyes drifted to the bookshelves that went all the way up to the ceiling above my desk. My gaze landed on the shelf of books I'd saved since college when I was an English major: Russian and British literature, great American novels, feminist writings, collections of short stories and essays. Dusty, probably, and not read for years.
I can't get rid of these books....they represent the path I did not take at an important time in my life.
I aspired to be an English professor after I graduated from college. I loved school and what better way to stay in school than to teach? I planned to take the GRE (graduate record exam) soon after graduation to hopefully qualify for a good PhD program in English Literature. Instead, as graduation approached, I inexplicably found myself signing up with a college friend for a program called Lutheran Volunteer Corps. We both requested a year long placement in Washington D.C. My parents disapproved (a part of me secretly agreed) but for some reasons unknown to me at the time I persisted in this plan. What was a year anyway? I would pursue my goal of being a professor after this adventure.
I was placed to serve in a homeless women's shelter located less than a mile from the White House. Naively, I was shocked to learn that homelessness was a reality so close to where the president lived! I committed to practicing "simplified living" with five other women in a row house named after a famous Lutheran pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who exemplified service to others (see the movie about him coming out this month!). The simplified living commitment was made easier for us to adhere to due to the miniscule $80/month pay LVCers were paid in 1983 (worth about $255 in today's dollars).
I didn't know anything about helping homeless people. In the 1980's Washington D.C. was completing deinstitutionalizing many mentally ill and addicted people who had been warehoused in hospitals like the famous St. Elizabeth's mental hospital that housed hundreds of patients. Many of these patients ended up in homeless shelters like the one I worked at. I didn't know anything about mental illness, or how to respond to the scary behaviors the residents often displayed. I didn't know how to cook dinner for the thirty women four nights a week. I didn't know how to talk with them. What was I doing here??
Over the course of my LVC term I learned those skills and many more. I grew less scared and more respectful of these women. Their stories of courage and resilience amazed me. Daily I was grateful for any small ways I could support them. I'm certain I learned more from them than they did from me. I felt that what I was doing mattered. As my LVC term came to an end, I felt inspired to become a social worker. Never mind that I had never taken a single psychology, sociology, or social work course in college. I was determined to find a graduate program that would prepare me for the path I now wanted to take.
And so in the course of that year, a shift incubated deep within me. I said "no" to one path and "yes" to another path.
I returned to Wisconsin and got accepted into UW-Milwaukee's Master in Social Work program in the first cohort of nine students specializing in Marriage and Family Therapy. Now forty years later I have had the privilege of helping countless people change the story of their life toward one of healing and growth. What a satisfying and sacred journey it has been! All because my inner wise self somehow knew I was meant to sign up for LVC and try something completely out of my comfort zone.
I pulled myself out of my musing when I heard my client arriving. I got up off the couch, ushered my client into my office and gestured for them to make themselves comfortable on the couch. I sat in my chair facing my client with my back to the shelf of books that reminded me that I once listened to a voice deep inside me to take a different turn. With a sense that I was right where God wanted me to be, I began listening as my client poured out her story.
When have you heard an inner nudge from deep within you? What helped you to listen to it? What did you learn? How was that experience a gift for you? How was it a gift to others?
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