Jill Lamar (MABC, 2016) lives in Philadelphia where she practices counseling at Thriveworks. While she lives in The City of Brotherly Love, Jill’s heart belongs to a different metropolis: New York City. What attracts her so to The City that Never Sleeps? Jill enjoys movement. She loves stepping onto the platform at Penn Station, the bustle of bodies sweeping her into the city where life happens on every corner. Taxis zip along the curbs, pedestrians walk with a purpose, and then, of course, there are the bagels. Languages float through Central Park, their sounds and tones a constant reminder of the world’s vastness. Jill savors time spent in a city that fills so many dreams and itineraries. When Jill talks about her city, you realize two things: she loves pace, and she loves people.
Jill’s love for people led her to pursue her counseling degree from Dallas Theological Seminary. She learned loads from Dr. Gary Barnes, as well as from Dr. Andi Thacker, who helped her through her practicum. During her time at the seminary, Jill worked at the bookstore. Tucked away in the old Greek Orthodox church, her supervisors, Kevin and Kelly Stearn, and other coworkers made Jill feel right at home even though she started seminary in her fifties. They laughed a lot. Sometimes you could find her at the library, conducting research. Mostly, she studied at her dining room table with her study buddy and cat, Petit Singe, an ivory-coated Balinese with chocolate tips and glassy eyes, whose French name means Little Monkey.
After graduation, Jill moved to rural Pennsylvania to practice biblical counseling. For Jill to pursue her God-given calling to comfort and aid those struggling against the darkness, she needed her license. Her three-year commitment to Dallas Theological Seminary merged with a two-year licensure process to form a five-year commitment. Now, Jill counsels at Thriveworks, where she mainly serves individuals—some adolescents and seniors but mostly adults—suffering from anxiety, depression, and some mood disorders. She also does couple’s therapy.
About 80 percent of Jill’s clients do not know Jesus, and so she mostly practices secular counseling. Rest assured, her love for the Lord and her biblical base creatively tint her counseling sessions. While she cannot bring up the Bible or the God of the Bible without client interest, Jill looks for open places to let the gospel shine. During her first few sessions with a client, she always gauges their spiritual temperature, trying to unearth past and current postures toward the Lord. Sometimes her clients are more open to the gospel due to their scars. Jill sees her present ministry as providing a compassionate Christian perspective to those outside the faith. That can prove challenging, especially in Philadelphia where alternative lifestyles are openly practiced and accepted. Since teaching truth directly proves difficult in her context, Jill endeavors to guide her clients toward the truth behind what bothers them. She works with her clients to peel back their coping mechanisms to discover why they developed those mechanisms and helps them create healthy mechanisms for the future. Jill sees what others might call a gag as a challenge. Jill does relish every opportunity to practice upfront, biblical counseling whenever she has the chance. She calls that her “real jam.”
Jill views counseling as problem-solving. It is hard work, determining how you got to where you are and figuring out how to progress toward your desired destination. It also gets harder before it gets better. Jill enjoys it when she sees a client’s external shield falling away. To help her clients shed that protective barrier, she smiles frequently. She is a huge fan of humor, and she is always ready to see her patients. Jill calls them by name, something our heavenly Father does for us. She gives her clients the space to speak without rushing to make a comment or make it better. One time when a client entered Jill’s office, hoody up and eyes glued to the floor, Jill asked if she could sit next to her. The client agreed, and they sat on the couch, thigh to thigh. Jill’s compassion and honesty make the answer to the question May I sit with you? an easy yes.
When asked about loving others well, Jill responded that loving well looks like compassion. She believes compassion puts people at ease, one reason why she employs humor. Compassion is usually seen as stepping into someone else’s situation, which is true. But compassion also extends invitations into one’s own normal. It pulls up an extra chair at the coffee shop and invites others to Thanksgiving dinner.
In his book, You Are the Beloved, Henri J.M. Nouwen, a priest, writer, and theologian, wrote: “Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. . . Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.” Compassion recognizes the whole human experience, the sorrow and joy. It is honest. It acknowledges the ugly things, and, because it takes a good, long look at the ugliness, compassion longs for restoration. There is an ambition to Jill, a right sort of discontentment, that seeks to alleviate suffering. She sits with the hard things, but she is not content to stay there or to let others stay there. Being in the heart of the city, caught up in its pace, exposes you to endless touchpoints with the human condition. While there is pain, you catch sweet glimpses into what God will bring about when he restores his creation—a close community, a multitude of languages, never-ceasing music, and endless light—all fallen but still glimpses. Compassion not only sees the current state of affairs. It seeks to alleviate the pain, soothing the wound and addressing the cause, and it looks forward to future joy. Jill embodies that kind of honest, forward-looking compassion.
