God has been using the ministry I'm involved in at KMBC to grow deep roots in my faith and to transform my life to reflect Him better. I have had a desire to serve vulnerable children and families since I was young. For the past year, I have been working online with a counseling agency offering telehealth counseling to children and families. This has been a growing experience for me and has also helped to cover financial needs as my work at KMBC is on a volunteer basis. While telehealth is useful, my hope has been to move into face-to-face counseling. Because of this, I have been looking for a paid, part-time position that will allow me to counsel in person.
The search for a position at a Christian counseling agency in Eastern Kentucky - specifically Breathitt County - led me to realize how scarce Christian counseling services are here in Eastern Kentucky. To receive Christian counseling, people either have to drive an hour or more to attend counseling in person or have a device and internet strong enough to facilitate telehealth counseling. Many people in this area who need these services do not have the time or resources to access counseling because of these hurdles.
Over the summer, God began to give me a burden for the people of Eastern Kentucky outside of the ministry at KMBC. This place feels like home in a way I haven't felt in a long time. There is a stark need for integrated Christian counseling in this area. The same hurdles that kept me from finding a job in Eastern Kentucky, keep people from being able to access faith-based clinical counseling. Through the summer and into the start of the school year, God has been growing this love and desire in me to step into the gap I see and provide those services. He has given me the desire to counsel kids and families in this area.
One of the major hurdles to this was that I am associate licensed in Kentucky, but not yet fully licensed. As a counseling associate, I cannot own a counseling business structure - something that would be necessary in order to begin counseling independently. I pursued many avenues for making this happen. But those options I thought were plausible just kept falling through.
My hope was to be here to counsel children and families in person, making integrated counseling services available in this county. And to do that I'd need a business structure. The structure would take care of billing insurance, signing off on notes, and the necessary administration.
At one point, I really thought all the pieces had come together just perfectly. But then more things fell through. I struggled with wondering why so many aspects had to be such a challenge when I was pursuing what I felt God leading me to do. But of course, it would be a challenge. I'm actively working toward something that would benefit people in an area that has long been underserved. That's not easy. And the enemy doesn't want it to happen.
But God gave me something that's been called "sanctified persistence." Sometimes it isn't so sanctified. Others call it a strong will. But when hope was dashed once again, I still wasn't willing to just give up the idea entirely. So I contacted the counseling center in Louisville that I work with remotely. They quickly agreed to expand my work for them to include counseling in person in Breathitt County. There will be more hurdles. I'm sure.
I'm making contacts with the local Christian schools as an initial inroad and expanding to the community from there. Having this structure for this counseling ministry checks all the boxes I asked God for - It is a paid position, which helps me stay at KMBC as a volunteer; it is in the counseling field, which helps me accrue hours for full licensure; it is working in person rather than through telehealth; it is here in Breathitt County, which not only saves me time and energy not having to drive over an hour to work, but it means that I get to work with the people that God has given me a love for here in Eastern Kentucky.
Praise the Lord with me for His provision, faithfulness, and goodness!