Faith

Individual and Couples Counseling Now Available in the Joplin/Webb City Area!

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Hello there, and thanks for stopping by!

I’m so excited to offer individual and couples counseling in Southwest Missouri! If you’re interested in setting up a session, please visit Stone and Sky Counseling or see my listing on Psychology Today. Three-day individual and couples counseling intensives are also available.

Background
Since 2014, I have had the privilege of walking alongside hundreds of couples and individuals in dozens of countries. As a pastoral counselor, empathetic coach, Nationally Certified Counselor (NCC), and Provisionally Licensed Professional Counselor (PLPC), I have experience journeying with people through issues such as grief and loss, life transitions, anxiety, ADHD, depression, trauma, OCD, abuse (spiritual, sexual, physical, emotional), debriefing, Autism, ministry burnout, addictions, and more. With all clients, I take a person-centered, trauma-informed, experiential approach.

Before moving to Cambodia in 2012, I worked bi-vocationally as an ER/trauma nurse and youth and worship pastor. I am also a licensed attorney in California and hold a master’s in clinical mental health counseling from Colorado Christian University. As a PLPC, I am supervised by Dr. Karl Wendt, LPC #001808.

For Pastors and Ministry Folks
My wife and I have been involved in local church ministry, in one form or another, since 2000. Before moving abroad, I was a youth and worship minister for about ten years. From 2012 to 2020, my family and I lived as cross-cultural missionaries in Phnom Penh Cambodia and I served the community as a pastor at an international church and as a pastoral counselor at a local counseling center, working with folks from over thirty nations.

I’ve led trainings, seminars, or coaching sessions in China, Thailand, the Czech Republic, Italy, Kyrgyzstan, Cambodia, Laos, the US, England, and Myanmar.

For Marriages
With couples, I utilize an attachment-based, emotionally-focused approach. I also greatly appreciate the evidence-based tools and resources from Dr. John Gottman. Since 2014, I’ve had the privilege of meeting with several hundred couples who were trying to overcome unhealthy patterns in their relationship, boost communication, improve their sex life, prepare for married life, and more. I am trained to administer the Prepare/Enrich relationship assessment. See the “Roadmap” I often use with couples here.

For Medical Professionals and First Responders:
It is my privilege to offer specialized care for for medical professionals and first responders. If that’s you, keep reading.

If you’re looking for a counselor who understands what a Level 1 Trauma Center feels like during a full moon; if you’re looking for a therapist who’s assisted Kansas City police officers in subduing violent patients; if you want to visit with someone who knows the unique stressors and pressures of dealing with life and death situations during a normal Tuesday, keep reading!

With a background in ER/trauma nursing, law, ministry, and counseling, I now provide individual and couples counseling at Mount Hope Christian Counseling Center in Webb City.

Visit www.stoneandskycounseling.com for more information or to book an initial session.

Stone and Sky Counseling, LLC

with Jonathan Trotter, RN, MA, JD, NCC, PLPC

at Mount Hope Christian Counseling Center

2830 Mt. Hope Road, Webb City, MO 64870

(417) 624-9659 · jonathan@stoneandskycounseling.com

Sex, Missions, and Listening to God {book recommendations for you}

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by Elizabeth

This spring I read three of the best books I’ve ever read. One in particular I couldn’t stop talking about for weeks – but it wasn’t the sex book! I had to start with that word, though, because I knew it would grab your attention. 

Up first, the best book on missions EVER: The 3D Gospel: Ministry in Guilt, Shame, and Fear Cultures by Jayson Georges.

When Christine Paterson of FieldPartner recommended the book and mentioned that it was only $3.99 on Kindle, I figured I’d give it a try. I intuitively knew that American culture held more than just a guilt/innocence worldview and that shame/honor and fear/power comes into our thinking as well, and I was eager to learn the specifics of each worldview.

What I didn’t expect was for the book to so thoroughly rewrite my understanding of culture. I underlined nearly the entire book. At only 80 pages in paperback, there’s no fluff here. Every word seems essential, and every sentence sheds light on world cultures and their differing assumptions and thinking processes. I began to understand shame/honor and fear/power cultures more fully, and I began to see how the Bible beautifully addresses all three cultural concerns (guilt, shame, and fear). 

Once my eyes were opened to this, I even began to see these three concerns addressed in most of our worship songs. In Western cultures we tend to tell the gospel story only through a guilt-innocence lens, and while that’s not wrong, it is incomplete. We look to God for help with our problems regarding fear and shame, but we don’t tend to bring these perspectives into our telling of the Gospel story, and this hinders our spiritual growth. 

Thankfully, we can offer people a more three-dimensional gospel, one that has the power to redeem their day-to-day struggles with fear and shame, whether in our passport culture or a host culture. God knows the human heart and has offered a solution for all our problems in Jesus Christ. 

This book made me fall in love with God all over again.

Next up, the best book I’ve read in a long time about listening to God: How to Walk into a Room: The Art of Knowing When to Stay and When to Walk Away by Emily P. Freeman

I remember resonating so deeply with Emily’s podcast episode, “How to Walk Out of a Room,” a couple years ago. The episode was mercifully devoid of details so that her principles could apply to all sorts of situations. When I heard she was writing a book based on that episode, I knew I would want to read it.

Emily is a spiritual director and has a master’s degree in spiritual formation, and she has a way of walking with people in discernment that is quiet and calm. She offers a “non-anxious presence,” as they say in spiritual direction circles. (Full disclosure: I’ve been meeting monthly with a spiritual director for about the past year, and it’s been a huge part of drawing my heart back into conversation with God after some dry, lonely years.)

I had a feeling this book would be important, and so I decided not to mark it up but to leave it empty and, in a way, sacred. Instead, I would rewrite meaningful sections in my journal. This helped slow me down and really savor Emily’s words. It helped me process the past, it helped me learn how to make better decisions, and it gave me peace in the decisions I was making. Then one day I looked around and realized I was making decisions much more easily than I had in the past, even small daily decisions, and I had to wonder if this book had something to do with it. 

The thing I love about this book – and that sets it apart from other books purporting to help people recover from restrictive religious environments and explore a more expansive relationship with Christ – is that Emily gives tangible steps people can take to process the past and discern their present and their future. To walk with Emily is to learn together how to listen to God.

And lastly, one of the best books I’ve ever read about sex: The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex: Creating a Marriage That’s Both Holy and Hot by Sheila Wray Gregoire.

This is the book every woman needs to read before she gets married – or after, if things in the bedroom aren’t working, whether she got married a year ago or 30 years ago. Sheila co-wrote The Great Sex Rescue with two other authors, and it’s a great research-based book that helps people untangle their unhealthy and unbiblical beliefs about sex, but The Good Girl’s Guide really gets into practicalities. 

I heard it recommended by a Bible college professor who teaches classes about sexuality, and I wanted to check it out myself. There was an earlier version of the book, but just this year it was revised and expanded, so I read the revised version. This is the book I will give to my daughters when they are engaged or newly married. I still recommend Aanna Greer’s Darling: A Woman’s Guide to Godly Sexuality for those who are quite innocent or naive about sex and their bodies, but Sheila’s book is a necessary follow-up.

Sheila, along with her pediatrician husband, also wrote The Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex: Because Good Guys Make the Best Lovers. I haven’t read that one, but I’m assuming it’s good because that same Bible college professor recommended it and because it’s from an author I trust.

I hope these books will help you or someone you love.

The Beloved of God

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by Elizabeth

The old conversation about women and work has been circulating again. People are quick to take sides. They’re for women working. They’re for women staying home. (Never mind the fact that this is a false binary, and that women who stay at home work, regardless of whether they work for pay.)

To me this conversation seemed like a lot of wasted cortisol and adrenaline. Why would I torture my body with extra stress hormones just to justify my life choices to strangers? 

But it did make me think about the past 20 years of my mothering. For the first several years I stayed at home full-time and cared for our four children. I loved it. I always wanted to have a lot of kids. I didn’t always want to homeschool them, but I fell in love with that path too.

At the time I knew in my head how hard my husband was working to allow me to stay home and also pay the bills, but I don’t think I fully grasped his sacrifices. Only now, having learned what it’s like to earn income while trying to remain an engaged parent, can I more fully appreciate all that he did during those years. And I am impossibly grateful.

Because amid the exhaustion, I loved those years. I loved playing with my kids and reading aloud to them and being free to just traipse all over whichever city on whichever continent we lived for playdates and errands and homeschool activities. 

I felt a unique sense of purpose in those years, contributing to society by contributing to my family in (obviously) non-monetary ways. Along the way, we created our own family culture. Sometimes I didn’t realize what an incredible gift that really was.

Fast forward to today, when I still stay at home and homeschool my younger children, but I also work from home part-time. Now I understand more fully the financial pressures facing my husband these last 20 years.

Working from home also makes me appreciate the years I had with my kids as my main focus. As fulfilling as my freelance work is, it can be hard to live with a divided psyche, to have my heart in more than one place.

And yet I am impossibly grateful. Grateful that I’ve been given work that is meaningful to both me and the people I serve. Grateful that I’m able to bring in extra income and help pay the bills while still mostly staying home. The economy is different now than when we left America in 2012. It’s even harder to live on one income now than it was then.

And so families sacrifice. ALL families sacrifice. Whether we’re sacrificing one spouse’s income so they can stay at home with the kids, or whether we’re sacrificing one spouse’s time to either leave the house for work or to work from home – whether part-time or full time – everything is a sacrifice. Families are working hard to take care of their kids and their bills, and the last thing any of us needs is to feel judged or to judge others for our choices.

So when I first read about the recent gender roles controversy, I wrote it off. I thought some of the claims people made were silly, but as I said at the beginning, I didn’t have the time or the cortisol to waste on a conversation that is so nuanced and complex and personal and which so many people reduce to maxims and memes.

The longer I heard and saw people talking about it, however, the sadder I got. There are a lot of women walking around without knowing their worth. Without knowing their belovedness. Without understanding their deep value to God apart from what they do.

When we know our belovedness, no one’s opinion of what women should or shouldn’t be doing with their lives can push us off kilter. We know who we are, we know who God made us to be, we know who loves us, and we know the ones we love. We don’t have anything to prove to anyone, because we are secure in Christ’s love. 

I can say, “I am a child of God, and I know my Father loves me.” And I can say to you, “You are a child of God, and your Father loves you – whether you stay home with your children or whether you work from home or whether you work out of the home or do any of it for pay.”

This is what I wish we all knew, truly knew, deep in the viscera of our bodies and the basement of our souls:

The woman who stays at home? Loved.
The woman who works from home? Loved.
The woman who works nights so she can be with her kids during the day? Loved.
The woman who works days because it’s the only way to make ends meet? Loved. 
The woman who stays home when her kids are little and then goes back to work? Loved.
The woman who works because she genuinely enjoys her job? Loved.

You are the beloved of God, and no one can take that away from you. You are hidden in Christ with God, and your real self is found in Him, not in the approval or disapproval of other men and women. You are a child of God, and that is the most important thing about you. 

The God who adopted you as Daughter will lead you in ways that are personal and particular to you. Your life may look different from mine, but we are all the beloved of God. He is ours, and we are His. 

May we cherish each other in the same way the God of the universe cherishes us. May we honor each other’s choices, just as we honor the same God who leads us in different directions. And may we remember that our value comes from Him, not the particular ways we serve our families and communities. For we are the beloved of God, and no power on earth can convince us otherwise.

2023 Year in Review (in photos)

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by Elizabeth

The cry of my heart for ever so long. I encounter God so deeply in science. My girls gave me this mug for Christmas. I love it, and I love them for giving it to me.

My firstborn explaining trusses to me. I took Statics 20 years ago when I was pregnant with him, and here he is 20 years later taking the course himself. I actually remember very little about it, but it was fun to geek out with him over the E (engineering) in STEM.

My four children overlooking Horse Bluff at Camp Tahkodah. Their great-great-grandfather Dr. George Benson cashed out a life insurance policy to purchase the campground — that’s how much he believed in it. 

The older I get, the more I’m thankful for such a heritage for my children. (They have a beautiful heritage of faith and family traditions on my side too.) Benson later sold the camp to Harding University, who still owns and operates it.

Horse Bluff has always been my favorite bluff. 

In many ways the song “Sing My Way Back” from Steffany Gretzinger represents the year 2023 for me. Re-entry challenged my faith and seemed impossibly hard at times. In a very real way I lost access to the one thing that could have strengthened and sustained me in that time.

My relationship with God thrived on the field, but upon returning unexpectedly in 2020, I found that not only had I changed while I’d been overseas, my passport country had also changed.

For a long time everything felt dark, and I felt dead inside. But somehow in 2023 I found my way back to His heart.

Much of this change was accomplished through working with a spiritual director. I’m so grateful to Danielle Wheeler for answering my questions about spiritual direction and for connecting me with a potential director.

We are more completely our true selves when we are in communion with Christ. That’s part of why I felt so much unlike myself during re-entry. I’m thankful to be making my way back to both God and myself.

Brooke Ligertwood’s “Honey in the Rock” represents another aspect of my year. I first heard it a couple years ago and disliked it. I wasn’t experiencing life like this and thought it was out of reach.

But 2023 has changed all that. It started at the beginning of the year with some financial challenges — we had to make major foundation/crawl space repairs, and the bill for these necessary repairs frightened the living daylights out of me.

I’d had anxiety around money for decades — ever since adolescence when my family faced adverse financial circumstances. I’d carried that anxiety through life, memorizing and reciting Matthew 6:25-34 over the years and praying for my daily bread with the Lord’s Prayer. But the anxiety remained.

I had to do some deep inner work on my money fears this year, and it wasn’t pretty. About halfway through the year I began to find some healing.

But that wasn’t the only way I found “honey in the rock, water from the stone, manna on the ground, no matter where I go.”

This year was a series of progressive healings, only one of which was with money. There was healing in relationships, healing in my ability to reach out to others. The manna God offers isn’t just physical nourishment, but I hadn’t experienced His manna in a long time.

Of course, now I can look back over all the years of re-entry and see honey in the rock everywhere. But for so long I couldn’t see the stars, I couldn’t taste the honey.

24 years ago this handsome guy asked me to marry him at this camp (albeit a different bluff). We’ve returned to this place as often as we can over the years — it’s as close to Home as he gets.

And it’s been the place where we’ve often made big decisions. The decision to start a family (remember that big tall guy explaining the trusses?), the decision to go to nursing school in KC, the decision to go to the mission field.

There were no big decisions to make this year, but I came away with a very grateful heart for 2023 and the God (and people! you know who you are, College Heights Church!) who brought me through it.

“Home is wherever I’m with you.”

Re-enacting our engagement for our children.

There’s no one else I would rather do life with. Here’s to 24 more years — and 24 more years after that.

Book Review: Where the Light Fell

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by Jonathan

I thought I’d like this memoir from Philip Yancey, but I had no idea it would be such a page turner, lurching from fundamentalism to racism to grace to dysfunction to mercy to LSD to classical piano to faith and on and on and on.

“An upbringing under a wrathful God does not easily fade away.”

For someone who’s written so much (and so gently) about suffering and grace, I should not have been surprised at the terror, trauma, and healing present in Yancey’s story.

“Like every secret, it gained power as it lay hidden.”

If you’ve wrestled with religious burn out, or if you’ve had a hard time reconciling the church with Christ, you might resonate with this book.

“As a boy wandering in the woods, a teenager constructing a psychic survival shell, a lovesick college student running from the Hound of Heaven — in all those places I found what T.S. Eliot called ‘a tremour of bliss, a wink of heaven, a whisper.’ I came to love God out of gratitude, not fear.”

This book will endure for quite some time, I think.

Find it on Amazon here.*

*Amazon affiliate link