Unexpected Blessings

I need to start reading the second book for my certificate program in spiritual direction.  I will try to make progress on that in the next few days.

In the meantime, I've gotten feedback on my reading response that I wrote for the first book in the program.  As I thought about this program, it didn't occur to me that we'd get this kind of feedback.

In fact, I don't think I've ever gotten this kind of feedback on anything I've written, and that includes my thesis and my dissertation.

I remember turning in a rough draft of my thesis (or was it my dissertation?), but I was sure I was close to finished.  The comments that I got made it clear that I was nowhere close to finished.  I was crushed.  In retrospect, I shouldn't have felt so crushed--it was part of the process, and my committee members were exceedingly gentle with me, even as they were clear that they would be requiring more of me.

For my current certificate program, we write a response to our reading and send it to our group leader.  The response is supposed to be no more than 2 pages of single spaced type, and we have some questions to guide us, questions like "What were your biggest "take aways" from the book?" and "What most challenged you?"

I had no trouble analyzing the book, and although I worried I might be too verbose, that, too, turned out to be a non-issue.

Yesterday, I got the feedback from our group leader.  I read it quickly, between work tasks that were leaving me drained and irritable.  Reading that response was like having a cup of tea and a delicious scone with a friend who knows me deeply.  Wow.

This certificate program has already offered me so many gifts that I didn't expect to receive.  Yesterday's feedback was yet another gift.