Teaching and Shepherding

In the last five years, I have taken an assessment of spiritual gifts 3 times. Twice it was because we were supposed to go over it with our community group following sermons that were related to the topic. The last time was as part of a kid’s ministry training. The assessment I took, which I will link below, has nine (9) categories that it scores you in. They are evangelism, prophecy, teaching, exhortation, shepherding, showing mercy, serving, giving, and administration.

The top three scores are what you focus on. The site gives you a description of them and those are the ones everyone cares about. Every time I’ve taken it, two of my top scores have been the same. If you guessed it was teaching and shepherding, you’re a smart cookie that knows how to read titles. In addition to teaching and shepherding, showing mercy, administration, and exhortation have all taken turns rounding out the top three.

When showing mercy was in the top three, I was in the depths of my counseling career. Administration popped up when I was jobless and doing a lot of things on my computer to get organized and find employment. And now exhortation has jumped into the mix, but we’ll talk about it more later. Let’s focus on the big wigs: teaching and shepherding.

Let’s start with teaching because it’s easier to spell. It’s had the top score every time. Ever since I was a kid I wanted to be a teacher. That was my backup plan if my singing career flopped. I spent many a summer working at my mom’s preschool. When I was in high school I started teaching in children’s church with preschool-aged kiddos. I volunteered in college to work with kids and then I became a counselor. And I grew to love teaching when I worked as a counselor. I miss teaching my guys, especially social skills. It wasn’t until I heard some of my guys say that I’m a good teacher did I actually think about it.

Most of us know what teaching is. When you’re teaching, you’re conveying information in a way that others are able to grasp. People tend to associate the gift of teaching with being a teacher in a class setting. But you can also teach through the material that you write. You can prepare curricula or write books. You can research information and make that data available for others to use. Or you can do what people expect and verbally convey that information to others yourself.

Teaching is pretty straightforward. Shepherding is a little more confusing for some. Shepherding tends to be equated with pastoring. I get it. It has to do with the translation of a Greek word and the fact that good pastors will have the gift of shepherding. But just because you have the gift does not mean that you are meant to be a pastor. I don’t really want to be a pastor though I do want to be a ministry leader.

When I think of shepherding, I obviously think of a shepherd. And what do shepherds do? They take care of their sheep. They feed them, they lead them, and they protect them. So, someone with the gift of shepherding does the same thing. You’re not just teaching a group, but you’re invested in seeing them grow and learn. You don’t just meet with them weekly, but you care what happens in between meeting times. You care about the people, not just the end result. You desire to feed them with God’s Word and love.

Now that we’ve talked about those two, let’s touch on exhortation. This is one where every time I see it what comes to mind is speaking. Nothing else, just that it’s a gift involving opening my mouth and letting words come out. And guys, I am not a fan of that. I prefer to talk as little as possible to people I don’t know. Unless they’re a kid…or I’m getting paid. But I think this kind of fits me.

Those with this gift motivate and encourage people to take action. And guys, I am an encourager. I was distressed when I found that out. The thought of someone encouraging me into action is disturbing for some reason, but yet I do it to others. Again, I’m totally cool doing this with the kids I work with but I’ve done this with my guys at the jail. And it felt good. As you might be able to tell, I’m still coming to terms with this.

I’m so used to being straightforward. “This is what you need to do. Now do it.” Now, I’m here to help and encourage them. I want to applaud the steps they’ve taken and give them the motivation needed to take the next one. I don’t work in the jail anymore, but I still feel that way towards adults in the groups I lead.

I can see all these gifts working together to achieve goals and direct my path. This is already long enough, so next post I will talk about how these spiritual gifts are being used in my life and how they seem to support what I feel led to do.

Spiritual Gifts Survey

What I’ve Been Up To

Hey, hi…it’s me again. I’ve been so focused on getting things together to relaunch my other blog that I forgot about this one.

Since posting my last post, I have graduated from school…again, and I got a master’s degree…again. Now I’m figuring out what I want to do with my life. I work full-time as a preschool teacher and do a little counseling on the side. I would love to work with counselors, supervising them and teaching them, but I’m not getting much response on the sites I’m listed on. I would also love to help people navigate the mental health treatment routes. But I also love teaching the little ones.

I love working with the kids and helping them be kind and responsible and so many things that adults forget how to do. I loved working in the jail with my guys, but I want to teach the next generation how to be decent people to prevent them from ending up in jail. There were so many basic things that my guys in jail didn’t know. Things that should be taught in school along with the alphabet and math.

I don’t see my work changing anytime soon, but I want to use my time wisely. I did take a break after graduation from doing anything productive in my downtime. I needed to rest and recharge. I’m glad I took that time, but now I need to buckle down and work on things. I don’t have any important deadlines to meet, but if I want to make something happen I need to actually work on it.

At the end of the day, I’m not trying to create and teach solely for the betterment of others. I’m doing it so that I will continue to learn and grow. I don’t want to be complacent or grow stagnant. I want to grow as a person, in my faith, and in my chosen career fields. If I continue to grow and can help at least one person, I’ll be content with my life.

I need to come up with a work schedule for myself. That’s the next step. And I also need to finish the books I read…and try to read a little faster. I am such as slow reader, then I don’t even remember what I read. Those are my next goal. Time for goal setting and creating plans, my friends. It’s time to move forward and take steps toward what I want.

And on that note, it’s not so much what I want. I want to relax and do nothing that requires thinking once I get home from work. But I’m still trying to be obedient, and God wants me to speak. With that comes continuing to gather knowledge and wisdom so that I can help and teach others.

One more thing before I go, I recently took a spiritual gift assessment for the umpteenth time (by that I mean 3rd time in the last 5 years). We’ll talk about that next time and I promise next time will be sooner than my last post. I don’t know if anyone actually still wants to read this blog, but in all honesty, it’s for me. It’s my online journal, more or less.

But off to make a schedule for myself. I’ll talk to you lovelies later.

Allow me to introduce myself…

Allow me to introduce myself…or more accurately, re-introduce myself. It’s been over two years since I last wrote on here. My last post was about my job ending and not knowing what was next for me. I’ve done a few things since then, and I’d like to share that with you.

My name is Jasmyn.

I love Jesus, my family, and my friends. I’m a counselor and a teacher. I’ve lived over 3 decades and I’ve learned a lot. I also still have a lot to learn. I decided to go back to school during the pandemic and am in my last semester. I can’t wait to be done. Doing research for school is stressful, especially when it’s a 5-week course.

I like to read and write, but don’t do it nearly as much as I wish I did. Talking to people is not my favorite thing. I’d rather sit back and observe, but when God says to speak, you can only be silent for so long before you end up in a situation where silence isn’t really an option.

Okay, silence may still be an option, just not a good one. So, I write. This is my form of speaking up. I actually started this blog to help get my feelings out. If I’m being honest, I don’t like to talk about my feelings. It also takes me a while to process what I really think and feel. Writing gives you time to process it. Writing allows you to paint a clear picture (or a muddy one if you prefer). It allows for creativity.

I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with my blogs yet. I now have 4 of them. One I started as part of a school assignment and I want to turn that one into something good and useful to the world. One was for me to be creative and share writings or do writing challenges. Another was geared towards faith and counseling, combining them in an effort to progress my career or maybe just follow where I feel God has called me to.

Then there is this one. This blog. It was the first one. It was where I tried things before posting them on other blogs. It’s where I tried to figure out things. I don’t know where it’s going. I don’t know what I want this blog to be, but I do want it to be.

I’m still on a road to somewhere. I don’t know where that is, but I want to find out. And if you want, you can come with me. I plan to spend some time looking through my past posts to see where I’ve been with this. I don’t know how often I’ll be posting on here, but I’ll let you know when I figure it out.

I plan to post again soon and share some of the things that have happened to me since we last chatted in 2019. But until then, stay safe my lovelies. I hope your 2022 is off to a good start.

Very Brief Update

So much going on in my life. The brief version: my company decided not to renew the contract with the jail, meaning that my position, as it stands now, will have it’s last day come Sept 30. I have the option of staying with my agency or going to the agency that is taking over the contract.

The long version: I’ll you that once I get to the other side.

I found all this out August 17th, which was my coworker’s last day. Things have been crazy and overwhelming. I don’t know what I plan to do work-wise. Life is a rollercoaster.

I just felt like writing it out, but I’m too tire to fully write it out. So more to come later.

 

Weekly Prayer or Not

After church I just had a meeting with my pastor regarding the prayer team. The person who actually leads the prayer team was there as well. The pastor stated that we’re the only ministry that meets weekly and suggested us meeting every other week or seasonally. This wasn’t the gist of the meeting, but just something that is staying with me at moment.

For me, the prayer team and my community group are my supports. Without these two things I honestly wouldn’t interact with people outside of work. That’s something that I need to work on, but I’m not ready for that at this moment. Or maybe it’s more of a not wanting to do that.

I definately see the benefits of having time off scheduled into our year. We more so play things by ear. We also didn’t meet this summer. The person who leads it was only going to make it the first Tuesday of the month, so he suggested cancelling the other Tuesdays. My response to this was that we don’t need to cancel because he won’t be there. Somehow that translated to me volunteering to lead it. Not the first time this has happened.

Honestly, I think that if we weren’t meeting this summer I would be in a worse mood than I have been this summer. Usually my community group continues during the summer, but almost everyone is having a baby this year. I’m actually have a baby shower to go to in about 30 minutes as I type this. And we have had new people come and seen growth after weeks of me being the only one there.

After the meeting I talked with the prayer team leader about taking off from the end of November to the start of January. And we can do another break at another point in time. I’m not sure about the everyother week thing. But we’ll pray about it.

The prayer team has never been something where people felt they had to come every week. It’s always been show up when you can. If I wasn’t leading it I probably wouldn’t have come every week this summer…maybe. I tend to vary my attendance based on whether I can leave work on time to make it or not.

Rest is important. Weeks off is important. I think because we don’t have a dedicated schedule showing when we take off it seems like we never take a break. I have no problem with having the time off. I just need something in my schedule, some time with fellow believers outside of Sundays.

But these are just the ramblings in my head. Don’t expect to me to post two days in a row like this on the regular. I thought about waiting to post this, but I think my mostly unfiltered thoughts should be posted on the day of them. My organized posts I can schedule. I just need to think of some things that I want to write about on this blog.

I will talk to you soon, lovely people of the internet.

Don’t Call It a Comeback

I’m not going to say that I’m back. I noticed that it’s been a year since my last post on this blog. My sincerest apologies. I honestly didn’t realize this until last night when I decided to see how long it had been for all my blogs. I think this was the only one that I hadn’t written on duing this calendar year.

I’m not going to say that I’m back. I’ve realized that everytime I say that I’m back on one of my blogs, I then don’t post again for another few weeks. If I do make it a few weeks before temporarily abandoning my blog fam, it usually only last a little bit.

I’m not going to say that I’m back. Instead I will say that I’m trying to get my priorities straight. I’m trying to make time for the things I like. And I like to write. (That probably explains why I have 3 blogs.) So this is me making me a priority in my life. It feels so good to be sitting somewhere that is not my apartment writing something. Honestly, I feel so light and peaceful. I wish I felt like this everyday.

Now that I’ve told you that I’m not going to say that I’m back, I should say what I am. I am here and present. I need to find a spot to go where I can reset daily.

I am a person looking for myself. I am loooking for my purpose and direction. I know I’ve complained about my job on here before. It’s draining. It’s tiring. It’s demanding.

I give so much of myself to various things. To work, to the children’s ministry, to the prayer team, to trying to help everyone else. I give and I need to give to myself more. That’s where I’m at right now.

I am trying to find balance. It’s not that I give too much to these things, but that I forget to replinsh myself. My nights are filled with watching a couple episodes of a tv show and eating. Numbing, not refreshing. I don’t need to numb myself anymore. It’s the easy solution. But it does nothing good for my anxiety.

I am a person trying to live a healthy life. Improve my spirtual, mental, emotional, and physical health. I honestly had no clue how much of a difference this would make. I kind of want to avoid my apartment now, just finding places to write.

I have a new fancy tablet, so I can write by hand or type things out. I think it’s the perfect size for typing, but seems a little big when I’m writing by hand. I don’t mean too big in that the size makes it uncomfortable. It just looks bigs when I’m writing by hand, though it’s only about 2 inches bigger than a standard size notebook. I’ve recently been carrying around a standard size notebook and it seemed big to me as well. I think it’s just because I tend to carry smaller ones around with me to take up less space.  But I just bought it yesterday. It’s lightweight and I can write on it, so it accomplishes my immediate needs.

I’m trying to figure out what I want for this blog, as with the rest of them. I always thought I could just be real and say what I want on this one. This was my first blog (if we exclude my one week affair with blogger). I don’t always feel comfortable opening up to people, but I knew I needed to do it more so I started this blog and some stranger commented on my first post. I felt heard and removed from the situation all at the same time.

Well, I need to stop writing. I need to go to the bathroom. I also need to work out and eat lunch. And clean. But thanks for joining me on my breather.

Let’s Get Healthy

Okay folks. I know I’ve said it before about getting healthy, but I am going to commit to it. Overall I eat healthy… until I get lazy and decide not to cook. I walk a bit due to buses… but honestly it’s not that much. And I exercise regularly… for a week or two… every few months…

If I’m doing it with people it’s doable. If I have a set time, it’s doable. If I actually spell out what changes I want to make, it’s doable.

I got under 200lbs, which is awesome. Now I’m trying to get closer to 175. That is my next goal. I can totally do this. I just lack motivation in several areas of my life right now. (Hence why I ate out most of the last week or two and haven’t cleaned my place in… way too long.)

I try to be honest, which is why I’m telling you guys. You know, accountability. I didn’t weigh myself yesterday because I’m sure it went up. So I’m guessing 15-20 lbs more than I’d like. And the issue isn’t so much the weight. If I had more muscle, I wouldn’t really mind the weight.

If we get down to it, I really just want to feel and be healthy. So I’m giving myself two things to do this week:

1. No chips. I can stay away from them easily, but I’d rather not. So I don’t. But I will.
2. Work out at least 2 times in the next week. Workout should be at least 20 minutes, but preferably 30+ minutes.

Both these things I know I can do. And by telling you all, I will do them. Though right now my knees hurt. It’s been not a good week for my lower limbs.

On Wednesday I stepped on a rusty nail. Thankfully I had my tetanus booster shot 3 weeks prior. The Friday night/Saturday morning, I was on my bed, feet on the wall, and I must of locked my knees. I was in a weird position and it cause pain in the back of my knees. Thought I was find, but went to the museum and *Bam!* knee pain. Woke up today. Fine for a while then *Bam!* knee pain. Then both knees. Oh my poor back of my knees. It’s not so much a hurting as something doesn’t feel right. Like I did too much after exercising.

But anyhoo, my plan for the week. You are welcome to join me in this. You can use the same two changes as me or make your own. I tend to do more than what I plan when starting out because I’m a part-time overachiever.

Well I’m going to go cook. Talk to you lovelies later.