Category: Relationships

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Feel destroyed?: Remember the Fire Lily

I am writing this blog from a hospital room. I have had a week of feeling absolutely destroyed. Can you imagine hearing the words that after 8 years, you might be in cancer remission? I heard those words a couple weeks ago but as the days ensued, I have had side effects that have put me in fear of being fed intravenously for weeks to come.

Sometimes life brings us a break, only to slam us down with something that feels even harder than the last blow. For me, the cancer treatment has caused scarring in my intestines that has made it impossible to eat for almost two months. Two months. Everyone who knows me knows that I absolutely live to eat, so not being able to have solid foods for such a long time has been quite the humbling experience. I am jokingly calling it my “wedding weight loss plan” but it has been pretty frightening. I watched my sweet mama go through a rapid weight loss that left her looking like a Holocaust victim, so I have some trauma that recurs when I face these trials for sure.

My sweet husband read me a devotional awhile back that told the story of the Fire Lily. Fire Lillies are a beautiful flower that only regrow in the event of being destroyed, most commonly by a forest fire. But when they do experience regrowth…awww the beauty.

Isn’t that the way in our journeys sometimes? We really don’t reach our full potential, or develop real empathy, or experience God at the deepest level, until we are smothered by experiences or trauma that leave us forest-fire dead.

I have seen some images lately of destroyed people: People destroyed by war, by life circumstances. I have met with people knocked down by divorce, betrayal and abandonment. But resilience can come when the trauma lifts, the sun shines again and we realize the strength we have because of Faith and Family and Friends….

Today, I got a little break and the scarring is letting liquids pass through. They were able to remove the tube down my throat and tomorrow we will try something a little more fortified and before long, I will be eating along with my family and friends. I am determined to be a Fire Lily.

How about you? What situation in your life needs to be overcome with the perseverance that asks you to push through scorched earth?

As always, let me know if I can help.

With love,


Sonia

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Ministry Update: June 2022!!!



For those of you who faithfully pray and give financially to my ministry, I am forever grateful. This year has been full of health challenges that have kept me from traveling as much but I have been busy from my home office, meeting with clients around the world. Women and couples are connected with me through referrals, through my connection with Paraclete Ministries and through my connection with Thrive Ministries. They receive discounted services because of your generosity. I am letting you in on the countries reached this year and a few clients offered to share their sentiments so that I don’t have to toot my own horn….

Countries served in 2022:
Mexico
Malaysia
Phillippines
Lesotho
South Africa
Papua New Guinea
Nepal
Denver Seminary
Stateside (furloughed or serving in pastoral roles here in the states)

Here are a few of those testimonies I promised:

First off, thank you to those that donate to Sonia’s ministry so that she can counsel me. Thank you isn’t enough but I wanted to start off by saying thank you. As missionaries, you are put on a pedestal of “always having it together” when in reality, you are experiencing some of the hardest things you have ever had to experience. The pressure is suffocating and daunting…Sonia has been a breath of fresh air for this tired, weary and sometimes confused missionary. She met me where I was and gave me confidence and encouragement to talk thru how I was feeling. Please know that by helping subsidize so that Sonia can help missionaries like me, YOU are advancing the kingdom. My family may be on the front lines but you are all behind us, cheering us, supporting us, and encouraging us thru Sonia. She’s phenomenal in the way she counsels! I’m forever grateful for the time I’ve had with her “for such a time as this”…

Missionary, Papua New Guinea


I know what it is to be a missionary with support (financial, emotional, spiritual), and to be a missionary without it. When I met Sonia, it felt like I reunited with an old friend. In that season, I struggled to trust the way I heard God’s voice and doubted His interest in me, but Sonia would say a phrase at the end of every session together: “You are on the right track.” I always thought, “I wouldn’t need you if I were on the right track!” What a lie. 

Sonia is a gift from God to me to accompany me on the track and just simply keep me going forward. She has taught me to love truth and to be kind to myself. Because of Sonia, I felt God’s nearness and tender care for my heart, soul, and mind on the mission field. Thank you for supporting her and allowing her to continue being a bright light that illuminates even the darkest valley.

Missionary, Mexico



Thank you so much for all the time you have spent counseling with me! It has been such a huge blessing. I feel like I am going back to the field in a better place, with more awareness and with tools to help me be more of the person that God intended me to be. Thank you for your encouragement to take the hard steps, for your explanations of the crazy situations and for opening my mind to new ways of thinking about things. Your ministry is such a blessing! Thank you for filling a huge need that exist in the missionary world.

Missionary, Nepal

As I journey on as a global worker, missionary who advocates for spiritual, physical and mental health, the road is never clear of how the Lord plans to use me. Your partnership in my work is so important.

On a personal level, Mike and I are adjusting to living in our new land of Waco, Texas, which is very different than the states of California, Utah and Colorado, where we have lived before. We are learning a new culture and language and making new friends at a stage of life where that isn’t the easiest. Moving our business and our home has had its many challenges but I continue to marvel at how God uses my personal mountains to equip me in my ministry. As I interact with women who willingly face the challenge of relocation to the ends of the earth to spread the love of God as they serve as nurses, work with sex trafficked, fly airplanes into places no one else will go, to serve and minister to the unseen and the forsaken….all for the Glory of our Lord…I am empowered to soldier on! I am blessed to be a part of the Great Commission in the way that God has equipped me.

What is your part in the Great Commission? Are you equipped to PRAY? To GIVE? To GO? Or all three? Would you like to know how to best connect with organizations where you can be a part of something bigger than yourself?

As always, let me know if I can help.

With love,

Sonia Nelson

To give to the Nelson Ministry at Paraclete Ministries click here.

 

 

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Boundaries: Embrace your role as parent

I have some really wonderful children who constantly outshine anything I have done in my life. I wish I could take credit for it, but I am quite sure it is a blessing straight from the Lord. However, I have been very intentional in my parenting, and I think every once in awhile I think there is something worth sharing with parents who are not feeling confident in their role.

One of my proudest moments as a parent happened in a doctor’s office. I had taken my daughter for her required physical so that she could participate on her school dance team. The PA performing the exam, was unmarried, no children and looked not much older than my daughter. After discussing a vaccination specifically for sexually transmitted diseases, she asked me to leave the room so that she could have a private conversation with my daughter. My daughter looked her straight in the eye and let her know that there wasn’t anything she would confide in her that wouldn’t tell her mother. As it should be.

Parenting is much more than helping a small person become a big person. As parents, we should strive for much more than survival in our young. We have an opportunity, as parents, to instill in our children values and influence that will help them navigate life long after they leave the shelter of our roof.

There is a battle out there right now and popular culture is trying to minimize the influence of parents on their children. As a psychotherapist who also has a Masters in Education, with an emphasis in child development, I want to warn you of some of the dangers in influencing young minds with subjects that can lead to behaviors and mental health that can be very destructive.

There is a movement right now to introduce sexuality to children as young as kindergarten. On a very basic level, what rational human thinks a 5 year old needs to worry about sexuality? Let kids play in the dirt, play with dolls…but there is no need to apply a sexualized meaning to any of these activities. Children are natural explorers and experimenting with forms of play does not have to be an indicator of their adult sexual preference. In fact, when we are too eager to make experimentation a life long decision, we run the risk of sabotaging long term goals.

Data supports that children who are sexualized early in their lives tend to have more promiscuous teenage years and are more likely to experience sexual trauma. Know that if you are facilitating conversations that they are not developmentally ready to handle, you are not promoting mental health, you are sabotaging it.

For those of you who are frothing at the mouth right now, thinking that I am narrow minded and not in touch, I want you to know that I sit with many clients who suffer their entire adult lives because of early sexualization. Healthy sexuality comes not from early sexualization but from protecting the freedom of childhood that allows kids to try any number of activities without making them about sexual preference.

So parents, here is the free counseling: TALK TO YOUR CHILDREN about who they are and what interests they want to pursue, not in the light of sexuality but of personhood. Encourage your children to have individualistic thinking when it comes to the preferences they choose and confidence that comes from within, rather than from the cheering crowds. This will allow them to make choices about faith, lifestyle and even sexual preferences outside of public approval. Don’t we all know that public approval of almost anything should be questioned just a little bit?

As always, let me know if I can help.

With love,

Sonia

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Baggage: Leave some behind

I travel a lot. Even in the pandemic, I am a Southwest Airlines A-lister. I travel for work, for health and for fun. As a result, I may buy more luggage than the average person. I research brands. I have had soft sided and hard sided. Sometimes I know right away that I bought a lemon, when there is an early scratch or tear. Sometimes I think I have finally found a winner only to have it broken as it emerges onto the roundabout. Oh so frustrating.

Our travel baggage and our emotional baggage share some characteristics. We can invest in ourselves as we do our suitcases and feel confident in our sturdiness, only to find that sometimes circumstances outside our control can trigger, tear and break off parts of us that put us in need of repair.

As we move forward in the journey of life, it is important to know when to ditch the baggage. When we hang on too tight to our hurts from the past, we actually put ourselves at risk of more hurt. Like the time I thought my suitcase had one more trip left in it and it fell apart on vacation so I had to spend precious hours supposed to be spent on relaxation, searching for a new bag for my trip home.

Have you had your heart broken by people or circumstances and no matter how hard you try, the damage done seems to impact your current life situation? Is it time to ditch the old hurts and trauma and start living with renewed thinking? It might be time to reframe some of the messages that can play in your head when past experiences insist on negatively impacting your current job or relationship.

Just today, I was sharing with a client how a past work situation left me very wounded when I felt completely betrayed by a woman I had trusted with my commitment, time and money. When I was finally able to reframe the situation, to highlight that I emerged from that experience with a number of new friends, better boundaries and my current mission agency that treats me very well, I felt the release of the trauma. That baggage doesn’t have to impact me negatively anymore if I don’t allow it to. I refuse to be a person who doesn’t trust or can’t give of myself fully because of past wounding.

What situation in your life needs a little reframing? When we reframe, we allow ourselves to keep the memories in the what-doesn’t-kill-us-makes-us-stronger journal of our life. This helps us to journey on with confidence, wisdom and stronger boundaries. It also helps us to feel accomplishment, instead of defeat, when we look at those stamps in our passport of life and realize how we often grow the most through trials.

Maybe it is time for you to evaluate some of your past hurts and kick some of the lasting ickiness to the curb to focus on the strength you have as a result. As always, let me know if I can help.

With love,

Sonia

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Fear: Informant or Guiding Light

My clients all know that I am a big fan of emotions. Popular culture tries to tell us that emotions like happiness, peace and excitement are good emotions and feelings like sadness, anger and apathy are the bad ones. I believe that because the Lord gave us emotions, all emotions are good emotions. They are only bad when you lose control of them or they take over your life.

Fear is one of those emotions that we tend to put in the bad category because it can be mean to us when it runs wild. Fear run amuck can lead to depression, anxiety and poor decision-making. But fear itself is not bad at all when used appropriately! It can keep us out of dark alleys, creepy rest stop bathrooms and bad relationships. Fear can remind us of what happened the last time we did something silly and can warn us when people are trying to hurt us.

When fear is used effectively, it informs us of the dangers in life. It reminds us of past mistakes and slows us down if we are moving too fast. This is fear acting as wisdom. This is the kind of fear that we want to be grateful for. If you are afraid to commit to the job, or relationship, or credit card application that is just like the last job, boyfriend or payment plan that burned you, you might want to respect that fear and take a little time to do some more investigating before you leap into a situation that could result in some self sabotage.

But if that fear is the gripping kind that causes you to act irrationally and keeps you from moving forward in life because it tells you that every career move, possible relationship or financial commitment might ruin your life forever, you are giving it too much control. Fear should never be used as a guiding light because quite honestly, decisions made out of fear are rarely the best. Fear used as a guiding light can keep us from standing up for ourselves and can lead to accepting less than we need or want. Fear used as a guiding light restricts our strengths, limits our rational thought and ultimately steals our ability to thrive.

The Bible has 365 references, one for every day of the year, that remind us to keep our fear in check. One of my favorites, Isaiah 41:10 says, “Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.”

Ask yourself: Is fear your informant or are you allowing it to be a guiding light?

As always, let me know if I can help.

With love,

Sonia

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Processing: Is it never ending?

I find it kind of funny when counselor terms start to be used in pop culture. Of course, the definition changes as people throw around terms like bi-polar, narcissist, OCD…and unfortunately sometimes people who know a little bit about these diagnosis don’t always get it all the way right…but it is still a step in the right direction of the general public realizing that sometimes people have a reason behind their confusing actions. A term that I am hearing more and more people use is PROCESSING. In a general sense, when used in a social context, it often means that you aren’t ready to respond to a comment or situation because you are still sorting it all out and haven’t reached a conclusion. It is also a good way to avoid a conversation that has the chance of getting heated when you don’t have the energy for that. For example, “I am processing all the changes that are going on in the world right now.” This open-ended processing could go on forever and that isn’t really how processing is used when you are sitting on the therapy couch.

Processing, in a counselor setting, is a whole bunch more than that. Healthy processing leads to improved emotional health and hopefully some personal empowerment. I thought it might be helpful to share some things I look for when I am processing with my clients.

As you may have guessed, a prospective client never calls me to tell me how great everything in their life is going. There is always a life situation that seems overwhelming, confusing, traumatizing or paralyzing. They often have thoughts in their head, feelings in their heart, pain in their body and maybe even some money invested in a lawyer…and together we need to find a way to get all of those things to have less of a negative effect on their daily walk. I like to process following a multi-step journey: thinking, feeling, articulating, advocating and finally, empowerment/life change.

THINKING: Each of us has a lifetime of family life, education, peer groups, experiences, jobs, church life, and sometimes some trauma that leads us to our opinions of how to view our current situation. As we face a new energy-draining situation, our mind calls on past knowledge and experience to give us an opinion of how to go forward. Sometimes this opinion is spot on and other times, it is informed by something traumatic (triggers), leading us to some foggy thinking rather than clear and rational thought. Talking with a therapist about your history lets them know what life experiences in your past are informing how you respond to the situation in front of you.

FEELING: When faced with a tough moment in life, our emotions can sometimes get the best of us. In those moments of feeling abandoned, hurt, betrayed, or scorned, our response might look like anger instead of the real emotion. Sometimes there is a tendency to shut down, cry or have an anxiety attack instead of expressing the actual emotions being experienced. Being able to properly identity what emotion you are experiencing helps you to respond to a situation properly rather than with an emotion-response that fuels the disfunction in front of you.

ARTICULATING: Most people have a tendency to either bottle up emotions or let them run wild. This leads to arguments and interactions that become shut down or turns the conversation from an ant to a mole hill. Articulating at the right time, with carefully chosen words that accurately express how you feel and what you hope to see happen, leads to healthy interactions with people you love or at least have to live or work with on a regular basis. Having a safe space to write your script is important when navigating tough situations.

ADVOCATING: Once we have processed a situation or dynamic that required some unpacking, it is important to use that new understanding to advocate for yourself and others in a healthy manner. When you have processed well, you should have an understanding of why you were affected a particular way, an ability to express how you feel about the situation and words to describe how you would like to go forward with this new knowledge and clarity. You should know better how to explain yourself and what needs are being met or need attention.

LIFE CHANGE: Often at the summation of counseling, I will ask a client, “How will you know that the issue we have been processing is leading to life change?” It is important to have a goal for your processing that involves empowerment and improved relationships. People who utilize processing skills well, have better communication and conflict outcomes that indicate good boundaries, met goals and resolved conflict.

It is always a good self check to ask yourself if all your processing is leading to more drama or to a feeling of confidence with forward life movement. If there is a situation in your life that needs some working through, find a quiet space, a trusted friend or….let me know if I can help.

With love,

Sonia