May of 2009 was a very momentous month. My wife was at the very end of her doctoral
program and was defending her dissertation.
I had been serving as the bishop of the Young Single Adult ward in
Glendale (Glendale 7th) for three years and two months, and my Stake
President took me aside at a gathering and said that he was going to release me
from that responsibility. Towards the
end of the month, I rented a cap and gown and walked across the Pasadena
Playhouse Auditorium to receive my Masters Degree diploma in Psychology from my
school.
My wife had been attending school since 2006 and would be
awarded her doctorate the following month.
I did not want to be released from my ecclesiatical responsibility because I loved
it and the kids so much, but in the formal exit interview of my bishop calling,
I was asked along with my wife to be in charge of the Stake’s Addiction
Recovery Program, something that was right in line with what I had been
studying at school. My graduation
allowed me to began the process of working in earnest on accumulating 3000
hours of single, couple, and group therapy that would enable me to be licensed
as a Marriage and Family Therapist. Interestingly, all the many hours I spent in the ARP program could not count toward the 3000 hours.
It was about this time when our son, Robert (BJ), was in the
throes of his addiction to heroin. It
would be over nine months later when he would finally run out of options and
would check himself in to an inpatient rehabilitation program.
But in the late spring of 2009, he was not thinking of
stopping. My wife and I were emotionally
wrestling with him and with each other as we attempted in the best way we could
to deal with the tornado that our son was in our family.
I know now that God was very mindful of my wife and me and
gave us the blessing of working in the above mentioned ARP. I witnessed there on a weekly basis, beyond
those few with whom I was seeing professionally, the devastating effect that
addiction had on people. My wife led the
Group of family members who were dealing with the devastating results of a
loved one’s addiction, and it became very therapeutic for her personally to do
that work twice a week. Our ARP responsibility lasted for a few years.
Robert eventually started working the Twelve Steps that we
were so involved with, and he began making changes in his life with God’s
help. I continued to accumulate my 3000
hours, learning more and more about addiction and learning important truths
about the human experience, and at the same time, about myself.
When unfettered from drugs and from the shame that fueled
the drug use, he began to flourish. He
began to see himself in a different way.
He began to see God in a different way.
He began to see life in a different way.
In his work with the Twelve Steps, once he was ready, he began to do a
daily Tenth Step, continually taking inventory of his daily life and when he
was wrong, promptly admitting it.
One of the most special days of my life was the day when, as
the first people to make amends to in keeping with Step Nine, he sought to make
amends with his mother and me. She and I
both recall thinking how thorough he was as he recounted so many ways in which
he had caused problems for us.
He decided to attend a nearby community college, and then
after a time, decided along with some fellows at the Beacon House, to follow
in the steps of his addiction counselor, Mary Cook, who had been a integral part of his transformation, and take a four semester program to
become an Alcohol and Drug Addition Counselor.
He enrolled at California State University, Dominguez Hills. The leaders at Beacon House asked Robert to begin working with incoming guys, and that provided him with both experience and the hours he needed for his studies as CSUDH.
I finished my 3000 hours of qualifying therapy work and
submitted my hours to the State for approval.
That took way too long—eight months—but everything was in order and I
was approved and given the go-ahead to take the licensing exam. Since it
had been five years since I had graduated, I did not feel prepared to take the
two-part exam and opted to take a test prep course. I have written somewhat about doing that in a
previous blog posting.
In the meantime, Robert completed his four semesters,
studied for his own licensing exam, and then took it and successfully passed
it. This was the first time in his
educational career that he had seen coursework and schooling to its completion. He did not graduate from high school nor
community college, although he will likely be graduating from Harbor College in
the next 12 months. He isn’t sure if he
is going to attend a university and obtain a bachelors degree.
So I am scheduled to take my big exam on February 5th. I have been studying hard to prepare myself
to take the 200 question multiple choice exam.
I am very hopeful that I will pass it, which will then allow me to take
a 75 question Vignette Exam (questions about case studies). I will likely take that test some time the
end of February. I long to get these
test behind me so that I can have my life completely back and that I can lose
the “I” (Intern) after the MFT initials.
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