Emotional Development Hours

In order to maintain my Professional Engineering license, the State requires me each year to complete fifteen (15) EDHs (Emotional Development Hours)[i]:

The purpose of the requirement is to ensure that engineers maintain some degree of emotional competency in order to overcome the stereotype that Professional Engineers are emotionally and socially inept. 

According to the regulations, EDH units may be earned as follows:

 (1)  Successful completion of emotional experiences such as depression, weeping, or intense sadness.

 (2)  Attending sessions lead by a licensed professional counselor.

 (3)  Successful completion of qualifying emotional movies, videos, or musical performances, with documentation of appropriate emotional responses by independent third party evaluators.  

 (4)  Attending qualifying seminars, in-house courses, workshops, or emotional presentations made at meetings, conventions, or conferences.

 (5)  Teaching or instructing in (1) through (4) above.

In order to get an early start on the year, I decided to jump in and was able to complete six (6) qualifying hours yesterday!

I had been thinking about our tendency to be overwhelmed by our inadequacies and to feel like a failure when we compare ourselves to others.  Thinking this to be a common issue with many of us, I had prepared some remarks at church to address this kind of thinking.  During the time of singing we had, my mind was racing and I was looking at verses and my eye caught this:

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.  2 Cor 4:7.

The desire for self-adequacy is something that I struggle with, and I did not see this left hook coming from God, which laid me out on the canvas:  It is part of God’s wisdom and design that we are inadequate for what He gives us to do, so that the power and glory are His and not ours!  How much we want to have our act together, to be self-competent, to be changed and perfect so that God can be proud of us!  And all the time He wants us to inadequate in ourselves and adequate in Him.  It’s really all about Him showing off His mercy and grace and not about us accomplishing our self-sufficiency. 

I was overwhelmed by this amazing thought, and wept through most of our worship, discussion time, and afterwards, for a total of three qualifying EDHs.

Afterwards, we went to a local farm so that the children could ride a horse and then we went hiking.  The way my brain is wired, I can only process one information stream at a time.  Really.  One thing.  Usually when faced with being aware of my surroundings and be maintaining coherent thought and social responses, I choose the latter.  I can seriously drive for miles and not see a thing along the road.  Yesterday, I excused myself from the group surrounding the horse ride and walked through a small portion of woods on the edge of the field.  I decided that I would actually look at the natural surroundings and closely examine the things God had made.  I also continued this on the hike.  I walked around like a newly-seeing Bartamaeus, and with childlike wonder, I…

·         focused and scrutinized the exposed wood and pealing bark of a dead oak,

·         enjoyed an ant crawling along a twig on the ground,

·         experienced the amazing creative composition of the varied brown leaves on the forest floor

·         felt the rough bark of a pine and examined a pine needle stuck in the layers of bark

·         observed the artistic patterns of rock and mica in the bare hillside

·         drank in the intricacy of the tiny blue berries on a green cedar tree

·         discovered three tiny God-crafted purple wildflowers who had survived the earlier cold weather

·         considered the beauty of death and decay and the cycle of life in a crumbling, spent pinecone and in the tired, rotting farm structures.

Beauty and God were everywhere and I was overwhelmed by His presence, and this world that I, for the most part, mostly miss because I am elsewhere focused.  I walked silently in awe, in tears or on the verge, in the presence of God in his outdoor gallery.

For this I was able to document another three EDHs. 

Though they are a pain (no pun intended) to get, emotional development hours are a good, healthy requirement.  Fifteen hours a year of having emotions is really not too much after all.  

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[i] Just kidding!