I've been BAPTIZED!

I had an interesting first experience today at work. About 10 minutes before the end of one of my counseling sessions I began hearing what sounded like a drip coffee maker brewing coffee right above my head. This would ordinarily not be that unusual except for the fact that there is no second floor above the office I use, nor do I have a drip coffee maker in my office. I did a double take the louder it got thinking to myself, "that is really not a sound I've ever heard before in here and I hope my client doesn't notice that I'm totally not paying attention to a word they are saying as I'm looking around the room for a surprise coffee drink waiting for me."

The next thing I knew my tranquil, safe counseling room had been transformed into a tropical rainforest, complete with water pouring through the ceiling tiles and soggy insulation dangling from the ceiling. If my chair had been 6 inches to the right I would have had a nice little pool right in my lap. I leaped up and grabbed a garbage can to catch as much of the water as I could. Imagine trying to contain water from a fire hose with a teaspoon--this is a similar picture of what good work my garbage can was doing. Soon the church staff came to my rescue and we all had a good laugh about the whole thing. I've always wondered what it looks like when a pipe freezes and bursts, and now I know first hand.

One of the hardest things for me about counseling is knowing how and when to gently end a session. I try to stick to a 50 minute session so I can be sure to have a few minutes to transition between clients. But sometimes it's just very awkward ending a session when a client very clearly is not ready to gather themselves and walk out of the room. It's a good thing this particular client had a sense of humor and could laugh about this. I definitely didn't have to state the obvious at the end of this session, "Well, I think our time is up!"