Hello friends, family and brothers and sisters and Christ,

I hope this letter finds you well as we rapidly approach the end of another year. Around this time every year I reflect on the gifts, joys, and challenges of the year and take some time to slow down and gratefully consider my counseling work that I get to do at Daymark. One of the blessings and changes that has happened at Daymark is that our staff has grown. We have hired two additional counselors in less than two years and our staff has increased from four counselors when I was first hired to now seven counselors.

And I have really benefited from the collective wisdom, encouragement and support of our staff. We meet together twice every month for lunch as a staff and one new additional thing we have done over this last year when we meet is to take some time for each of us to share our own story.  I have really enjoyed this time of getting to know the other counselors more in depth. And it has also been good for me to practice honest vulnerability with our staff as I have shared my own story and the many peaks and valleys that I have experienced over the years. Doing this was a good reminder that I should never ask my clients to do something that I myself would be unwilling to do. Because so often I’m the one as a counselor asking the questions and listening it’s easy to forget the struggle, pain and fear that comes with letting someone else into the deeper parts of your life, the parts that contain our deepest pain and spiritual battles. I believe it’s essential for counselors to have places where we practice the kind of vulnerability that we are asking of our clients and Daymark staff lunches have been a great place to do this.

This year also started off with two big events that Daymark got to co-host with Tactical Faith, a local apologetics ministry in Birmingham. For the first event, we hosted Dr. Eric Johnson, a pastoral counselor, author and professor who is an expert in the field of Christian Psychology. I was impressed with Dr. Johnson’s obvious humility, profound intellect and love for people (quite a rare combination) as he shared with us his vision for integrating a robust biblical, Christ-centered theology with the best of scientific research from the field of counseling. For the second event, we, also in partnership with Tactical Faith, invited author Harrison Scott Key to speak at Samford University concerning his latest book, How to Stay Married. Key is a Christian who has written a beautiful book on his own journey through betrayal, healing and reconciliation in his own marriage.

I am grateful for the counseling work that I continue to be able to do at Daymark. Counseling work is often hard, slow-going and emotionally heavy, but I have seen God do miraculous things in the midst of this grinding work as He has strengthened and transformed people, healed and reconciled broken marriages and sustained people through some very difficult circumstances.

Thank you to all of you who have given to this work over this last year. Because Daymark uses a sliding scale for payment and we are committed to helping whomever God brings our way, we rely on the generosity of individuals and churches to sustain our mission. We could not fulfill our mission of bringing Christ-centered counseling to those in need without your partnership with us and so I am so grateful for each of you. If you don’t currently give, would you consider either giving a year-end tax deductible gift or commit to giving $75-$100 monthly for this coming year? If you would be interested in this, please reach out to our office manager, Katy Sheffield, at admin@daymarkcounseling.com.  Support for Daymark can be given through sending a check or making an online payment by clicking "Donate" below. 

Many thanks again for your continued support and hope you have a blessed Thanksgiving and Christmas season.