marriage counseling

I remember reading Mindy Kaling's hilarious book and her writing about how annoying it is for her, as a single woman, to hear her married friends talk all the time about how hard marriage is. She'd think to herself, you married him. Figure it out and get over yourself. You're married. And when I read it I laughed and then for months her words frequently came to mind.

Because it is hard. And because I think it does have to be said. No matter how annoying. Because the other thing that is so annoying is watching marriages fall apart. Except it's not annoying, it's devastating. In the past two years I have heard way too many stories of couples I knew growing up, friend's parents, family friends who have ended their marriages long after the kids left the house. The last one I heard about was a couple that made if 45 years before they divorced. What in the world?

With each of these couples, and I'm thinking of three in particular, I tried my hardest to wrap my head around what could have gone so terribly wrong during year 38 to cause such a rupture in their relationship to necessitate such a decision. Obviously, I don't know the answer. These were couples I knew from a far. But for each one, when I heard the news, I was first filled with disbelief followed by deep sorrow. Sorrow for their pain, for their kid's pain and their grandkid's pain. Sorry for whatever it was they were still looking for and how they didn't feel they had found it yet.

I believe marriage is the ultimate way God refines us. What better way to teach a person selflessness, servant-hearted giving, forgiveness, patience, self-control and real love than in the context of marriage. That almost makes me laugh a bit. Because it's brilliant. God is brilliant! If you want to teach a person patience, have them be united to the same person for the rest of their life and see what happens. I bet they grow in the art of patience.

When I heard of these divorces, of people I knew in my childhood, people I knew from family functions, people I looked up to, it shook me up. Because we're all fallible. And I believe there is a very real enemy who would love to see all marriages destroyed. And he seems to be working extra hard lately.

After Rory and I moved to the country and added a second baby to our family we started getting a bit short with each other. We had bad sleep for about a year there, and it left us both pretty crabby. Plus we had this huge transition on our hands: a hobby farm in a new town with two kids. There were so many variables it was hard to know what was at the root, but whatever it was we were taking it out on each other.

I called many marriage counselors in our area, asked friends for recommendations, looked on the internet. But most were a 30 minute drive from us, and the one I found in town had just stopped marriage counseling because, as she told me on the phone, 'it's so hard to spend so much time with couples when there is so seldom any resolution.'

In a last ditch effort, I asked a staff member at our church on a Sunday morning if she knew of any marriage counselors in the area. She smiled and said she and her husband love to counsel couples. I remember telling her, "I'm not afraid Rory is going anywhere. We're both in this for the long haul. But if he's not going anywhere, we've got to figure a few things out." I thought it was cheeky and funny, but it also was true. Marriage is a long time. And it might as well be awesome.

This couple used a curriculum that structured our sessions. We had homework each week and met for three months. There was always prayer involved and I even went in for a special session to pray about one area that needed special attention. My parents came every Tuesday afternoon to watch our  kids so we could go. And some sessions were incredible, and others were helpful but hard and had us sitting in silence on the drive home. But we could feel the ways God was reshaping our relationship. Marriage at its core is a spiritual commitment, and through prayer and these hard conversations God was able to reshape our hearts.

So much good came from those Tuesday afternoons. It really amazes me to think about it all now. They helped me make a critical distinction in my conflict resolution. I don't like conflict, but I also can't react very well in the moment. I need time to process. This was a HUGE breakthrough for me. Because even though I don't like sitting in the tension of conflict, it often takes me a day to process what I am feeling and why I am feeling it. To learn this with Rory was life-changing. We now know to stop conversations in the moment, and to decide on a time to talk through the heart of the issue.

When we took the huge marriage inventory at the beginning of our session we scored really high on communication. Our scores were almost perfect. But our score for conflict resolution was terrible. Which felt so validating! Rory and I can talk a subject into the ground and back out the other side of the earth and back into the ground again. We're great at talking. We just don't know how to work through all of those words. So we focused a lot of time on skills and language for conflict resolution.

And then we began the weekly family meetings. Those started in direct response to our marriage counseling. I later likened counseling to seeing a physical trainer. It's good, and there is a lot to learn. But if you don't put into practice what you're learning, if you don't exercise on your own time, or make actual changes with how you spend your time, a weekly visit to a physical trainer isn't going to do much good. Same with a marriage counseling. Once a week isn't going to cut it if you don't decide you will actually change how you behave within your marriage the rest of the week. Those family meetings are like our power work outs, where we literally work out the nuts and bolts of running a household and created a space to have some of the bigger conversations that need to happen in order to feel connected.

We still have those meetings every week. And when we can't meet on a Sunday, Rory will break over lunch on Monday to meet. He insists. Because it's that important for both of us.

I guess I'm writing all of this out because I want to say a few things to the world. First, Mindy Kaling, your book is hilarious and I just want to add my voice to the other annoying married people out there to say again, "marriage is hard." Because it is, and I think it's good for people to know that. Because the movies, romance books and basically everything in the world would want us to think it's an all-the-time fairy tale. Second, I am so sad for every single marriage that doesn't make it. I'm sad for the broken hearts, the broken families and the broken lives that are left in the wake of divorce. Third, marriage counseling is incredible. Incredibly hard, sometimes awkward and incredibly worth every single minute. Rory and I are light years ahead of where we were in September when we started. From now on I would always start the search by asking if anyone does counseling within the church. It's less expensive for one, and for two, true healing comes from God alone. To find a counselor that believes in the restoration found in Christ Jesus alone is imperative.

So go build an incredible marriage. Walk through your valleys and fight to make it to the other side. The stories of redemption, reconciliation and restoration are always the greatest stories of all. And our God is the author of every one of those stories. They're the ones He writes the best.