Early on Saturday morning after having gotten back from Kansas City late the night before, I went again to the airport and flew out for Virginia to be one of several speakers at the Love4Life Conference put on by the Association of Christian Counselors. I am so glad that there is an organization like this one that focuses not just on counseling for those who really need it, but on bringing a Christian perspective that can help people narrowly address their emotional and mental and behavioral issues, but also the spiritual roots of those issues as well, it’s such a valuable perspective. And this conference is one that they hoped to make an annual conference and I was honored to be invited and it was fascinating for me to be at this conference with people who I have watched and respected so highly for years, people whose books have sold millions of copies and it has literally saved millions of marriages.
People like Willard Harley who wrote ‘His Needs, Her Needs’ or Bill and Pam Farrel who have written I think almost 30 books including classics like, ‘Men Are Like Waffles–Women Are Like Spaghetti’ or John Trent who has contributed so greatly to the relationship fields and I was the new consumer in this incredible group of people, and it was really wonderful to be able to sit with them and talk with them and hear how their ministries have progressed over the years and just to be able to share life with them for just a few minutes.
As I left the conference I was just so struck by how grateful I am that God has dropped me into this world of being able to share through books and share through speaking. Some of these things that I stumbled across as an Analyst and was able to just approach differently than perhaps a Pastor would or a Christian Counselor or a Psychologist would, but as an Analyst on Wall Street in getting a certain ability to investigate issues it has been so neat to see how those Wall Street experiences and skills has been able to be used to investigate the key surprising things about relationships, and I am just so grateful for the ability to do this.
Now, I will confess that sometimes they can be very tiring, so people always say, “Oh, that life must be so glamorous” and I just hoot, because if they could have seen me this morning they might not have said that. I had to get up at 3:30 in the morning in order to be driven an hour to the airport and catch a 6 o’clock in the morning flight. I got back so early the sun was barely up, but at least today is Sunday I get back into the city at 7:30 and will have the whole day to be with Jeff and the kids.
Before I have to leave again tomorrow for New York, it’s a busy week, so it was worth it to get up really, really early in order to be able to spend a day with my little peanuts.
