Work....

I've been writing a lot about work lately, I guess that is because lots of things have been going on. This week works was sort of odd, my first 'Key key' graduated, so that was really great to see. I had a great bond with him and good talks about getting away from small town Manitoba and how to drink in moderation. Team meetings, which are usually the worst part of the week, actually went fine--my incident with another staff wasn't brought up. I am still a bit torn if I should stay, I like the work..but I keep on thinking I can find similar work in Winnipeg.

So yesterday I got a call from a job I applied for last week, so I'll check it out. I think a lot of it depends on money and stuff as bad as that sounds its a reality of life. One benefit would be the proximity, it would be in Winnipeg..therefore I wouldn't be spending 150-200 on gas each month. I guess we will see, I know the work will not be as rewarding...I think...at BHF we have various educational seminars (Anger Management, Substance Abuse Awareness, Life Skills, Grief & Loss, etc), so I think it would have to be considerably more money. I also just got my benefits through work, which are free so Trisha and I can see the dentist for the first time in along time. I am a bit torn...I am planning to see my good friends Joey and Jen in Yellowknife in April, if I switched companies that would have to be put on hold. I guess there is just a lot of things to think about...I always come back to that I would leave BHF over a staff not the teens. I always thought that BHF and me are a great fit, the kind of place I can stay for along time. Oh well I am rambling, things will have played themselves out within a week.

Life at BHF

Well I must say working at BHF has been a roller coaster as of late. The bad is a co-worker who at time is very good, particularly as it relates to one on one counselling and organizing and helping new staff understand paper work. However, I think she gets stressed out very easily and reacts strongly in certain situation and uses words without thinking about the consequences. This past week she used the word blackmail in a situation, if that is the correct use of the word then blackmail happens everyday in schools around Canada. So anyways I laughed a her use of the word in front of teen, who took offense to my laughter. I am definitely at fault for that, which followed by me getting sick the next day due to stress at work. Thankfully we've had a couple of chats not related to that incident, but the conversations have been peaceful. I guess just part of working with peopel who have a different temperment than I do. The good is on Wednesday I will be graduating my first 'key kid', which is pretty exciting and stressful at the same time.

So I started looking for work elsewhere, but at my core I do not want to leave because I am skeptical that working with teens in a different setting will not compare to the healing and restoration that happens at BHF and at the same time if things continue I can't stay and with having to drive 45 min each way to work just adds to my motivations to leave.

I guess we will see how things work out....

A interesting chart on emergent...

I know we all hate labels in regard to emerging church stuff, but it is helpful at times to look at these, espeically when you hear people talk about emerging christians/church all beleive the same things. Scot McKnight has posted an interesting chart on his blog . I think depending on the day I would belong anywhere from emerging to emergent, but definitely to the right of Mark Driscoll. I wish that Driscoll would have been left out of the chart, because he is so easy to be made an example of because of his conservative side, he is basically John Pipper with an iPod.

I guess I'm an addictions worker

So my life has taken me on many journey's. During my years at Providence College, I constantly fought about what it means to feel 'called' to youth work, but having a particular passion for the church. I guess this last statement needs to be qualified, church has been a struggle for me. I guess once you go down a certain path a lot of 'mainline' churches are no longer an option for you, since you are thinking about life and church so utterly different. Providence was a place I was able to fall in love with the church again(maybe for the first time), but the church I fell in love in with belongs on the fringes of soceity.

After my intership at a fairly conservative church in Winnipeg, it was clear that I needed to take a step back from 'ministry'. Just a quick word on that word 'ministry', I feel most Christian are involved in ministry and how many Christians use this word is crippling to the work of the Kingdom. In spite of many struggles during my internship including a periode of depression and seeing a counselor(I must admit my counselling session were extremely helpful for 'reclaiming my story'), I got through my internship with a better understanding of what it means to be a Christian in postmodern/pluralist world.

So I got married and after going through two horriable jobs I stumbled upon my dream job, a Treatment worker at a therapeutic community in Selkirk. So a therapeutic community is a treatment centre(aka rehab) that does not believe in the disease model. So we feel that addictions and behaviors are largely due to learned behavior( an example is if you grow up seeing you parents drink their problems away and turn to drugs for stress relief a child will see turning to drugs as a viable copping mechanism, this model is very much aligned with the family systems model I learned in counselling class at Providence). Anyways I love the job, I am able to use all my gifts and develope a better understanding about addictions and aboriginal culture, which I feel more called to ministering with than any middle class setting.

I guess in the last little while I feel blessed to have this oportunity to be involved in the healing and restoration process in these teenagers. I keep on meeting amazing people, commited to being a positive presence for these teenagers, who honestly were born into family and situations where they have very little supports and are thrown to the wolves of life. I keep thinking to myself that if I had been put in a similair situation, I'd gotten into drugs, sleeping around, involved in crime without friends and family to give me direction.

My world is definitely changing, learning a lot about the effect of addictions and growing up in a world where teens are left to be the adults in a culture that almost encourgages addictions as normal. Sometimes I wish we could just keep these teens at the centre, because even though they accomplish so much during treatment we are throwing them back to a world that is going to eat them up, where everyone is addicted to drugs in some form or another..maybe the most heart wrenching fact is that most of the teenagers are exposed to drugs by their parents and some of the time before the age of 10. So I am an overworked, underpain, underappreciated, but hopeful addictions worker......