My journey towards my doctorate and landing at Regent University, as an Assistant Professor, has been packed with many opportunities to trust God and rest in the certainty of His goodness, even when it seemed like things were a little awry. I often refer to my life as an open book in which God continues to write His story.
The story began in St. Louis, Missouri where I graduated high school and headed to Columbia, Missouri where I attended the University of Missouri-Columbia, better known as Mizzou. When I started I had every intention of leaving with either a degree in Architecture or Law, what I left with was a B.S. in Housing & Interior Design. After leaving Mizzou and moving back to St. Louis for a year the direction of the story took an unexpected turn.
The next chapter of the story would last for 17 years with me spending those years serving with Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC). During that time I had the awesome privilege of helping young adults and adolescents learn what it meant to have a relationship with Christ. While working with CCC I lived in California, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and finally Florida. In addition, I served on missions teams that went to two U.S. Inner Cities and overseas to Africa, Philippines, and Singapore. This chapter was filled with many opportunities to see people come to know Christ. However, the story began to change again, as God began to burden my heart for people who struggled with emotional and psychological scars from painful experiences in their past.
After an 18 year hiatus from school, God directed me back to school to pursue a Master’s degree in counseling. I received my Master’s in Counseling from Reformed Theological Seminary in Oviedo, Florida and I thought the academic journey would end. But after a brief stint in private practice and working in with youth in a drug rehab facility, with women in a prison, and young men in a prison aversion program, God once again changed my plans and a new chapter of an academic journey began.
This chapter of the story found me departing Orlando, Florida and moving to Chicago, Illinois where I attended Wheaton College and received a Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology. In the new chapter, during my doctoral training, I obtained a pre-doctoral Internship position at Philhaven Hospital. This brings me to the current chapter in the story that God continues to write of my life. A major theme that has been present in each chapter has been my desire to learn, train, and teach others. It is my hope and prayer that the years at Regent will prove to be a chapter that God is honored and glorified now, as much as He has been in the past, as my story continues to be written.
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