Brooke Glaszczak is spending her summer getting hands-on experience.
The weather may be sweltering, but Calvary’s students are finding ways to beat the heat and keep growing this summer.
Brooke Glaszczak is a Biblical Counseling major heading into her senior year this fall, and she is taking the summer to fulfill one of her degree requirements: a counseling internship. Students have a choice in where they complete their internship, and Brooke has been volunteering at Shiloh Center in Harrisonville, Missouri.
Shiloh Center is a crisis pregnancy center that provides women with physical resources, such as diapers and clothing, in exchange for the women coming to counseling sessions and parent training classes. Brooke says she chose to volunteer at Shiloh because her target audience for counseling is women and young adults, and the center is perfect for gaining experience in that area.
Twice a week, Brooke sorts through the piles of donations, organizes clothing, and shadows in-house counselors to watch their methods and learn for their experience. Brooke is excited about the impact she can see Shiloh Center making in the lives of the women who come there. “They are a really good resource for women who have no place to go… from the resources they give and the biblical counseling that they do and just talking to people. That’s a really huge impact because [these women] don’t have help like that.”
While Brooke loves hearing the client’s stories and seeing how God is working in their lives, it hasn’t all been easy. “There are definitely difficulties that I kind of prepped myself for, that ‘this might happen’, but seeing girls come in that have been abused or raped, or girls who come in who are planning on having abortions and just want the pregnancy test… it kind of just hits you in the face.” Despite the difficulties, Brooke is thankful for her time at Shiloh Center. God has used this internship to “encourage me by showing my inadequacies, because I’m seeing in my life where I can’t do anything, and it has to be God. I feel like, especially being a Biblical Counseling major, you’re dealing with people’s issues all the time and so, there’s a lot of dependency on God. Because one person really can’t handle all those things.” Referencing Matthew 11, she commented on how we aren’t supposed to carry every burden, but we find freedom in giving them to Christ and accepting his yoke.
Besides getting her one step closer to finishing her degree, Brooke’s time at Shiloh Center has energized her for the possibilities after graduation. “It’s kind of eased my nerves on what the future will look like because I’ve seen what God can do in the lives of other people.” Between the internship and the intentional time she has invested in spiritual growth this summer, she has found a different perspective. She is delving deeper into the importance of focusing on her own growth so that she can give to others out of that, “because you can’t give out of what you don’t have.”
Through her work at Shiloh, Brooke feels confident that biblical counseling is where her career path is, and she is becoming more excited about her field of study here at Calvary. She views her passion for counseling in light of both story and redemption. “We are coming alongside these people with broken stories and helping them to see how God can mend and heal what’s broken. It’s just exciting to be used in that way to be a part of that process and be a vessel to help with that. I love the idea of it and the system of counseling biblically because it’s a really good reflection of what Christ does for us. He comes alongside of us and helps us; encourages us.”
As she reflected on her time at Shiloh Center, Brooke pulled out this takeaway from her internship, “God can take messy and broken lives and turn them around for good… and God can use anyone in His story of redemption.”