Anna Sanders’ official title at Grace Christian Counseling is business office manager, but she carries an unofficial title that offers a deeper look into her work with its clients.

“I’m a soother,” she said. “I see everyone first, so I can fit them with the right person (counselor) based on their needs. I’m the one who gets to sit with the client who’s nervous or crying or afraid because they don’t have the means to be here but need to be here.

“I get to reassure and make them comfortable with the fact that we’re here to help them, no matter what.”

A native of Saltillo, Sanders will have been with Grace Christian for three years in December. She said working there “is very trying at times, but at the end of the day, it’s very satisfying. It’s soul medicine. You know you’ve reached out and helped someone who didn’t have anywhere to turn or didn’t know there was an option.

“When a tragedy happens and that phone rings, it’s me they talk to. If something happens in town and that door buzzes, I’m the first person they see,” she said.

“So when I hand somebody their paperwork and they look over their paperwork and they see the fees, and they begin to be visibly distraught and upset, because they know they do not have that much money in their pocket right now, I’m the one who gets the privilege of telling them we’re going to help them regardless. It’s difficult sometimes to keep my composure.”

As part of her job, she handles the insurance billing, receives payments and does all of the scheduling for clients and counselor.

“I do all of the credentialing so we can bill insurance, which is a big deal, because unlike any other place in town, we are credentialed with over 50 different insurance companies and employee assistance programs.”

But she finds working with the clients the most interesting and fulfilling part of her job.

Sanders said she began meeting with clients her first day on the job.

“There are a lot of strange experiences, because you hear a lot of different stories and different paths of life, but that’s what makes this job interesting.

“One thing I’ve learned is no matter where you’re at in your past, there’s always someone who has had a longer past, a harder past, and at the end of the day, you all merge together.”

Situations involving parents affect her the hardest, Sanders said.

“Being a parent, I can understand a lot of those feelings for both. Sometimes things happen we don’t understand; sometimes things happen that were intentional; sometimes, you just know. It’s easy for me to put myself in their emotional area sometimes, but at the end of the day, it’s hard, because as a parent, the one thing you want beyond everything else is for your kids to be healthy and happy.”

There were times immediately after she began working when she wondered what she had gotten herself into.

“Definitely, the first few months, I had a lot of those look at myself in the mirror moments and say, ‘Did I really make this move? Was this the right thing?’”
She said she’s occasionally referred to in the office as the “unlicensed opinion giver,” because so many people come and talk to her first, and she tries to get each person matched with the right counselor.

She said fitting a counselor to a client is important, because each counselor has a different area of expertise. Sometimes, a client will request a certain counselor, and some counselors will only see certain types of individuals.

“Over the past three years, it comes natural, like it just flows; I know who does what, and who’s going to be here at what time and it just all kind of stays together like a well put-together puzzle.”

And that puzzle has become a little harder to work, because Sanders has returned to school and is a full-time college student at Alcorn State, where she is a senior, as well as working fulltime.

“I’m self-taught in a lot of different things that we do, and I’ve kind of had to mold different parts of how I do things and how I talk to people, and it’s all based on the situations I’ve come in contact with here.”

This semester, she said, she has to travel to Alcorn’s main campus in Lorman for two classes three days a week. And while she’s in class, “I’m getting text messages and messages from work, and I know when I come back into the office, I’m going to have a stack of messages. I just jump in and get it done.

She said her major is business administration, adding she has no desire to become a counselor. “I’ve found my best place is behind a desk,” she said.

And she has no desire to leave Grace.

“Most of people don’t look at Grace and see what we see. To us, it’s bright and beautiful and colorful and it reaches into every part of our town and our surrounding counties. People don’t see that there’s poverty level and then there’s below poverty level, and we reach into that below property level.

“This is definitely family to me. I have a T-shirt I wear sometimes that says, “Saved by Grace and coffee, and that’s very true.”