28 October 2021 | St. Albans, UK [Vanesa Pizzuto]
From 26 to 27 October 2021 staff from the Trans-European Division (TED) and leaders from across Europe enjoyed the latest edition of the TED Wellbeing Webinars. This week’s instalment included two thought-provoking presentations: “Reparented by God” by Julia Wanitschek, and “Following Your Calling” by Professor Andrew Baildam.
Reparented by God
The first webinar was presented by Julia Wanitschek who is the hostess of The Bond Podcast, a bilingual (English/German) podcast on Christian parenting.
Drawing from attachment theory and the Bible, Julia explained that it is love, not shame, what leads people to repentance and allows children to develop into healthy adults. While many think a child “needs to feel bad about himself in order to have a change of heart, this is not true,” Julia warned. In fact, when a child internalises shaming messages, it can lead him to think, “I am only loved if I make no mistakes.” Because parents affect children’s views of God, shaming messages could hinder their relationships with God as Father.
Rather than shaming children, Julia invited parents to provide good growing conditions for them. To accomplish this, parents need to “cover” the immaturity of their children with their own maturity, modelling good behaviour and emotional self-awareness.
Julia concluded her presentation affirming that, while no parent is fully mature or trauma-free, cycles of transgenerational trauma can be broken. Adults can be “reparented by God”, a healing process that involves allowing God’s compassion to reawaken the heart.
Following Your Calling
The second webinar this week was presented by Professor Andrew Baildam who is a Consultant Breast Surgeon and has been at the centre of developments in breast cancer surgery over the last years.
Baildam started his presentation by stating that, while he knew he wanted to become a doctor from an early age, his education “was deeply punctuated with doubts, fears of failure, periods of elation and scepticism.” While initially he was not a promising student, Baildam pursued his dream with fierce determination. He trained and specialised over a span of two decades because “Medicine was never just a job, it was unquestionably a calling, a vocation.” Baildam believes it was this sense of calling, the sense of being part of something bigger than himself, what fuelled his professional life and led him to pioneer several approaches to breast cancer surgery. This innovation in oncoplastic breast surgery, led by Baildam and other likeminded professionals, significantly reduced the risk of cancer recurrence.
Baildam concluded his presentation affirming that “Having a calling, feeling a vocation has very little to do with what you do… It is not that some occupations are just jobs and other are callings, rather is how you see your work.” Discovering a vocation, according to him, is not necessarily about changing jobs. Instead, “jobs became callings when they transcend me.”
Each of the webinars has been recorded and is available to view on the TED website and YouTube channel.
tedNEWS Staff: Victor Hulbert, editor; Vanesa Pizzuto, associate editor
119 St Peter’s Street, St Albans, Herts, AL1 3EY, England
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.ted.adventist.org
tedNEWS is an information bulletin issued by the communication department of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Trans-European Division. Readers are free to republish or share this article with appropriate credit including an active hyperlink to the original article.
