Marriage & Family: Creating Harmony in the Home: MARRIAGE COUNSELING

This post is the second in the series "Marriage & Family: Creating Harmony in the Home." Today, I'm focusing on Marriage Counseling. If you have any topics you'd like me to address, please leave me a comment and let me know. :)

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What comes to mind when I mention the words, "Marriage Counseling?"

Is it sadness? Embarrassment? Failure?

Or is it the opposite?

Does it evoke feelings of accomplishment? Renewal? Dare I even say, excitement?

In many families, if you decide to seek marriage counseling, you are made to feel like your relationship is falling apart. Like it's a "last ditch effort" before walking down the hall to the divorce lawyer's office.

Well, I'm here to debunk that myth.

Brian and I have been married for 13 1/2 years and we've sought marriage help from our Pastors, been to a certified marriage counselor, and attended many marriage retreats. And every time, we leave with better communication skills, revived feelings about the sacrament of marriage, and renewed excitement about our marriage.

Don't get me wrong, we don't skip down the hallway holding hands every day. Marriage is tough. Especially after a decade (or several decades as in our parents' cases) together. Things can get stale. Dull. Almost like you're living with a friendly roommate and not your spouse.

This is not how God intended for marriage to be.

And if your marriage has become more of a friendship and less of a husband-wife relationship, that's where marriage counseling can really benefit you.

Having a third person to help navigate the conversations is so important. They know the questions to ask to help get things back on the right track. They can make sure each person is not only being heard, but being understood. Because so often, after we say the same things over and over to our spouses, they start hearing the voice of the teacher from Charlie Brown "Waa Waa Waa Waa." That's not good.

In doing some research for this post, I came across a statistical study by a large national law firm that specializes in divorce. Here are their top 5 reasons that people get divorced:

1. Lack of communication. This is one of the major reasons why divorce happens. Distance is created quickly if you don’t share your feelings, don’t tell your partner what’s happening, and keep your feelings to yourself. A successful relationship constantly keeps the lines of communication open.

2. Finances. Money talks and can make your life better or in some cases worse than you were. If money becomes a consistent topic of disagreement, the road to divorce is certain.

3. Feeling constrained. You may feel your marriage is holding you back from achieving goals and taking opportunities. If your partner can’t support you, then they don’t support the marriage.

4. Trust. Do you really trust your spouse? Trust is one of the leading factors in having a successful relationship and marriage. Your marriage is unlikely to survive if you don’t trust your spouse.

5. Expectations from each other. When expectations aren’t met, it can put a strain on the relationship. This leads to a personality conflict because one or the other spouse won’t bend to sacrifice their time and comfort.

Almost every one of these stems from proper communication! If we don't communicate to our spouse when we're feeling stressed about finances, or feeling constrained or feeling distrust... of course you would want out.

Happy marriages with strong communication and a healthy sex life do not end in divorce. They just don't.

But if you aren't able to achieve these things on your own, a marriage counselor can most likely help you to do so. And there ain't no shame in my game when it comes to telling people that when we hit rough spots in our marriage we seek professional help.

In 2009, after enduring years of painful and failed fertility treatments, I finally got pregnant, and then ten weeks later, I had a miscarriage, I went through a period of deep depression.

In my mind, felt like Brian moved on from the miscarriage far quicker than he should have because I was still deep in my grief.

I cried myself to sleep many nights. It was bad. I felt angry at him. I felt betrayed. I felt so alone. All the while, Brian hadn't done a single thing "wrong," he just didn't understand why I was still so sad all the time.

So our pastor suggested we see a Christian marriage counselor. And I'm so glad we did.

It wasn't a magical "cure." Things didn't improve instantly. But having that counselor sit in front of us and say the words, "Brian, Stacy needs you to be with her. Be with her in her grief. Be with her in her sadness. Be with her."

It changed everything.

That counselor was able to communicate to Brian the words that I could not come up with on my own.

I just sat there are cried my eyes out because I felt such a sense of relief. Finally, we were starting to understand each other again. And that day, a real healing began in my heart, and our marriage stood strong through the toughest time of our lives.

Most recently, our marriage counselor moved and started his own church, so we needed to find a new professional. We talked to our pastor and he recommended a local Christian marriage counselor for us. We weren't embarrassed to ask for a recommendation. We know that in the end, it is something to be proud of. We are doing something to make our marriage stronger.

We want to have a healthy, strong marriage. We want to set an example for our kids. We want to continue to legacy that our parents, and their parents, set for us.

Our marriage is far from perfect - no one's is. And once we can all accept this and set realistic expectations in our relationships, marriages could grow so much stronger.

I love my husband even more today than the day we got married. It's interesting the way tragedies and celebrations, and all the up's and down's of life, can bring two people closer than we ever thought possible. God is good.

If you gain nothing else from this post, I hope that you'll walk away with the knowledge that there's nothing to be embarrassed about if you seek out marriage counseling. Quite the opposite! You should be proud that you're doing something to make your marriage stronger and better. Kudos to you.

Thanks for reading this post. If you have any suggestions for future topics, please leave me a comment and let me know. And since I like to leave things on a happy note...

Some Thoughts On Marriage

This year, Brian and I will celebrate our 13th year of marriage.

And despite the fact that "13" is supposed to be an unlucky number, I happen to feel particularly lucky to be celebrating 13 years.

Not because our marriage is always roses and rainbows - trust me, it's not - but because my generation takes marriage a lot less seriously than generations of the past.


It's so much more common today for couples to decide they are headed for divorce, instead of being willing to see-it-through the not-so-great times in order to get back to what attracted them together in the first place.

Our pastor spoke about marriage last Sunday, and I wanted to share some of his thoughts because even if no one reading this blog needs to hear this, I know I will want to re-read this again at some point and I'll know exactly where to find it!

I hope you will take a moment to read through these quick notes, and then I'll share our own personal "story" at the end...


The theme of the sermon was baseball. He broke down marriage into 4 "Seasons," and then explained why it's worth fighting for your marriage, even when times are tough.

Here are the seasons:

1. The season of "Infatuation." (Spring Training)
This is when there is excitement and optimism for the relationship. You both want to do your best to impress the other one.
The hormones are raging and the "love" that is felt is often times blinding us to reality.
The important thing to acknowledge is...this season is NOT sustainable.
There is no relationship that can live in this "infatuation" season forever. It doesn't see you through the next 30 years.

2. The season of "Reality." (All-Star Break)
The reality season reveals, what infatuation concealed.
We start noticing each others "bad habits." We see each others faults.
Resentment can begin to creep in and we start thinking, "There's something better out there."
This is the most difficult season to get through without giving up.

3. The season of "Re-commitment." (The Surge to the Playoffs)
This season tests your character.
You have to decide to stick it through and re-commit to the marriage.
There has to be a mutual submission in this season, where both spouses are willing to make allowances for each others faults/mistakes/past hurts, etc.
"Each man must love his wife as he does himself, and the wife must respect her husband." - Ephesians 5:33

4. The season of "Blessing." (The Playoffs)
If you can make it through the difficult years - whether its raising a family and the challenges that come with that, or years of financial struggle, or health problems (or all three!) - there is a reward at the other end.
God wants to bless marriages. He wants to bless husbands and wives. He wants to give us peace, prosperity and health. God truly rewards those who commit to their marriage and put Him at the center of it.

Our Story...

Brian and I met in college. I was a senior and he was a junior. It was one of the most unstable times of my life.
I had been dating a guy off and on since high school. He was a wonderful man, but we were not meant to spend our lives together. And as much as we tried to make things work, all we ever did was end up fighting.
So when I met Brian, he was so different from the guy I had been dating, he was totally mezmerizing to me.
I immediately feel into the infatuation season. Hard.

Fast forward three years and we were standing at the alter in front of all our friends and family committing to spending the rest of our lives together.
It seems so incredible to me now, that at that tender age of 25 I was ready to make that kind of commitment. In reality, I probably wasn't. But I was head-over-heels in love and totally infatuated with him, that I would have done whatever it took to be able to sleep in the same bed with him and wake up next to him every single day.

The first few years were wonderful.
We were both making great money.
We bought a house.
We bought cars.
Life was good.

Then we tried to start a family.
It took a lot longer than we expected, but we were eventually successful.

Then everything started to get tough.
I didn't recognize it while we were going through it. But looking back now, I can see the beginning of the "Season of Reality."

We moved to Tampa when I was pregnant with our first child.
We left everything we knew - my parents, our friends, our church - in Orlando.
We didn't know a soul.
It was an incredibly lonely time for me.
Then we had sweet Payton.
He was perfect. He was my world.
I focused everything on him, and very little on my husband... who was now also dealing with a crashing housing market and losing most of our income.

Brian and I were living under the same roof together, and yet we were so alone.
He didn't want to worry me about the finances, and I didn't want to tell him how miserable I was without my friends and family.

Fast forward a few years and we started trying for baby #2.

Fast forward 4 years of bank-breaking fertility treatments, emotionally-draining medical procedures, a completely bottomed-out housing market, having no money for anything, and desperate for the "black cloud" to be lifted.

Then we got pregnant.

Then we lost the baby.

Then I slipped into depression.

No money. No pregnancy. A job hanging on by a thread. And a marriage that had been so difficult for so many years, we barely recognized it anymore.

Enter, the "Season of Recommitment."

We went to counseling. Initially for me, but turned out we needed it for the marriage.

I remember the counselor saying to Brian, "You need to BE with her. Not just listen. But BE there with her in her pain."

It was a real turning point for us.

We both decided we wanted to turn things around.

We were tired of the years of doctors telling us when, how many times and what time of day to be "intimate." Our sex life had lost all of its luster.

We were done with trying to do life on our own. We needed a support system. We needed Christian friends and Godly counsel.

Fast forward another year and little Parker was born.

Fast forward a couple more years and the housing market has finally turned around and Brian now runs his own mortgage company.

Our life has stabilized. We've found our groove. We've found true happiness and joy with each other again. And we've found that we absolutely cannot make our marriage work unless God is at the center of it.

As I said, not every day is roses and rainbows. We have our fair share of arguments. He still does things that drive me NUTS (like rubbing his feet on the carpet or separating out his egg whites - sorry honey, I had to document that) and money doesn't come easy. But we know that despite the differences and annoyances and struggles, we're in it for the long haul.

I have no doubt that 13 years in, I love Brian so much more now than I did the day we got married. I never would have thought it possible back then. But I do. He is everything and more than I ever dreamed he would be back on that alter 13 years ago.

We want God to honor our marriage, because we're honoring Him through it.

We want the "Season of Blessing."

If you're looking for a great resource to start some healthy discussions in your own marriage, please take 10 minutes with your spouse and each of you take the Love Language Quiz by visiting this web site: http://www.5lovelanguages.com/profile/
If you find it valid, I encourage you to read the book, "The 5 Love Languages" by Gary Chapman.

And if you want to take it even further, I cannot tell you how important it is to plug into a small group at a local church with other married couples.
It is life-changing.
I promise you that.

What a surprise...

I have to brag on my hubby for a moment.

He gave me these flowers last Friday before he left for a camping trip with Payton. Why, you might ask? Me too.

He said, "These are for giving birth to our two amazing boys."

I said, "Isn't that was Mother's Day is for?"

He said, "This is much more important than Mother's Day."

How sweet is that?!?

I love you Brian.