Photo by John Althouse Cohen

By Jerrica Ching

On January 31^st, I attended an internship fair for my graduate counseling program.  As a third-year graduate student, I have grown accustomed to a certain amount of heightened anxiety and stress.  After I attended that fair on January 31^st however, I learned that my stress level could actually rise even higher.  There were several classrooms packed with representatives from various internship sites accompanied by their colorful and information-packed poster boards.  They answered questions, they let us ask questions, they gave us contact information, and we gave out cover letters and resumes.

Over the next two weeks I was constantly writing e-mails, making phone calls, and driving back and forth to various interviews with the internship sites.  I thought I had been stressed at the fair but during those two weeks I was proven wrong.  Then on February 10, I received my first e-mail response back from a site. I nervously clicked on the e-mail to read:

“Hi Jerrica, Thank you so much for interviewing with us.  Unfortunately we will be unable to offer you an internship placement with us.”

I think I took it a lot harder than I intended to; I would usually describe myself as confident but at that moment while I read that e-mail, I began to question everything about my ability as an aspiring counselor.  What if everywhere else rejects me too?  What if I’m not as capable as I thought I was?  What if…?  The brooding list and the angst continued on for a good five minutes.  That night as I tried to fall asleep on my bed, I kept on tossing and turning with more questions forming in my mind.  Finally I switched on my light and grabbed my journal.  It’s a journal that I keep at my bedside that’s full of pages with the titles of, “Things that are bothering me right now” or “Reasons why I can’t sleep.”

As I was scribbling away all of my worries and anxieties, I suddenly stopped and asked aloud, “What am I doing?”  I looked down at the list I had made and realized that for every negative attribute I had listed, I could think of a positive one to counter it.  I reminded myself that being asked to attend an interview was a great thing.  I also reminded myself that just because a site didn’t offer a position, it just meant that I wasn’t the best fit for the site.  I was comforted with these reminders, and slept a lot easier that night.

The words of Jeremiah 29:11 tells us that the Lord definitely has plans for us.  The thing about these plans though is that the Lord knows what plans He has in mind, but we just might not be ready for Him to show them to us yet.  These plans that he has formulated long before we even knew about Him are good plans; they’re plans for us to prosper, not to be harmed, and are plans of hope.

A week after I received my first e-mail response from an internship site, I received a phone call from another internship site offering me a position for the upcoming year.  I jumped up and down for a few moments after the phone call ended, and I also closed my eyes and said a silent prayer, thanking the Lord for always planning everything out for me, and for reminding me to always have hope.

Jerrica K.F. Ching is in her third year of study as a Marriage, Couples and Family Counseling student at George Fox University.  She received a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Dance from The University of Hawaii at Manoa.  She is currently researching the racial ideologies of colorblindness and multiculturalism, and the implications these hold for counselors-in-training who strive to be culturally sensitive clinicians.