Anne Marie Norling

Most of what I know about people I learned in two places: the Navy, and a kitchen table. The first taught me what it costs to be far from home and under orders. The second taught me that a person is formed slowly, in ten thousand unremarkable conversations, by someone who does not leave.

I served in the United States Navy. Years later my husband and I homeschooled our three children from the beginning through to college — three scholar-athletes, two of them now commissioned officers in the Army. Watching a child of yours deploy is its own education. It has reorganised how I read the Psalms.

Why counseling

I am working through a master’s in biblical counseling, on my way to licensure and to practice. The draw is not theory. It is that so many people are carrying something heavy and have nobody sitting with them while they carry it — and that Scripture speaks to that condition with far more precision than it usually gets credit for.

Counseling, done well, is not advice-giving. It is the patient work of helping someone see clearly: what is actually true, what they are actually afraid of, and what God has actually said. That takes training, and it takes a person willing to stay in the room.

Why writing

I write because the thing I want to say to one person in an office is usually needed by a hundred people I will never meet. The devotional studies come out of specific seasons — the first was written at two in the morning, praying for a son in a hot zone, and it is addressed to the parents who are awake at the same hour.

The essays are the wider room: what I am reading, what I am working out, what the coursework has forced me to reconsider. The academic papers are the underpinning. I have posted them because I would rather show my work than ask anyone to take it on trust.

What I am working toward

A counseling practice. Books that are worth the shelf they sit on. And, in the meantime, writing that sends people back to the Word with steadier hands than they came with.