Last month I received an avalanche of responses on my Facebook page to last month’s blog “Let’s Not Call it Abuse”. Many women recounted painful experiences of invalidation, minimization and silence from their Christian counselor when she disclosed what was happening at home. From the overwhelming feedback I received, it obvious I hit a raw nerve and I think it best that we, as biblical counselors pay attention.
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<p> Back in my early days of ministry, I was a kindergarten teacher at a Christian school. Those were the four longest years of my life...actually, that's not true. They were four great years, because I was finally with an age group that I could relate to!</p>
This is the third installment of a series of blogs regarding important steps a counselor must take to help restore a destructive marriage. In the first blog I talked about the importance of all forms of safety in a marriage (such as emotional, physical, financial, spiritual, sexual). In the second blog, I addressed the importance of sanity. We want our counselee not only to think biblically but to be walking in grace and truth. When wrong thinking fuels, justifies, and excuses sinful behaviors, it’s not possible to heal a destructive marriage. As biblical counselors we want to help a couple build loving and godly interactions, but this takes awareness, repentance, perseverance, and a good amount of time in order to build a new history together.
Do you want to remedy the shallow stereotype of “take two verses and call me in the morning?” Are you ready to stop placing band-aids on your friends’ suffering and sin? Then engage in mutual gospel conversations based upon a biblical way of looking at and living life. Gospel Conversations: Ephesians 4:29
You can guess the age of my children by the title of this post. You may remember the scene I’m about to paraphrase. McQueen lost a race (and the chance to get out of town) to the old, run-down Doc Hudson because he kept sliding out of the turn on the small town dirt track.
When our Christian counselee says something like, “I just can’t forgive myself” as biblical
I’ve recently moved from the city to the country. I used to live within ¼ mile of Interstate 15, one of the busiest freeways in the world. I knew that we were near the freeway and I knew that it was noisy, but I never realized just how noisy it was until I returned to our old home. I was surprised, no, shocked, at just how loud that freeway was. It seemed deafening to me. Wow, I thought, I never heard this before! Aside from a trivial vignette about our transition from urban to rural life, is there something more to be learned here? I think so. I think we can learn that a noise can be so loud that we just don’t hear it anymore.
One of the great joys and freedoms of working at TS is the ability to have more time to counsel people. In the past, I counseled families for an hour to an hour and a half per session. With an arbitrary time frame like that, many decisions have to be made by the counselor based on how much time is available. Proverbs 25:11 says, “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.”
We seemed to have it all: professional success, adorable twin daughters and a good marriage by worldly standards. But our picture-perfect image concealed a widening chasm between two people unable to connect on an intimate level. This led to 10 disappointing years of marriage, seven painful years following our divorce and one remarkable, true-life story of a love rescued by God.
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way,