Get Professional Help When You Need It:

"There is absolutely no shame in getting marriage counseling. Even if you're not on the edge a good counselor can help improve your marriage in so many ways." — Mary and Jeff Rogers, married 19 years, Columbus, OH.

I have been counseling for the last thirty (30) years. 'Been married the last 24. So, my only credible marriage counselor is 24 years old. You can forget all the theories I had prior. No theory can replace experience. I see a lot of unmarried ministers thinking of themselves as marriage counselors. They have no clue. I don't care about the name they carry, they have no clue what marriage is.

Marriage cannot be known nor understood from the outside. It can only be known from the inside. There is a science, and there is an art to marriage. Science can be taught. That is what those unmarried noise makers herald. There is more to marriage than science and theories. Marriage is ONLY known by being soaked in it and excelling. Until you are in it and it does not swallow you, you have no clue what marriage is.

We all can do with some help on the marriage journey. While in it, you are lost in the daily activities and requirements it demands of you. It is very easy to miss the cues and tiny vital details. More so there are issues of the heart that the mind has no words to communicate. So, one is either silent on them or overly reacts such that the true message is lost in all the unnecessary emotions aroused.

These are times when the help of a true counselor might make a difference. The job of the counselor is not to tell you what to do. His or her job is to help you find yourself, and your voice. The counselor's job is to deliver you from being lost in the picture and help you step out of the frame. Until you so do, you are missing the whole picture. You are being tactical, and not strategic. You are possibly being penny wise, pound foolish.

A counselor, in helping you step out of the frame, allows you to have a holistic view of your marriage and or relationship. You see the present from the past and the future, and how it is affecting the three persons in every relationship - ME, YOU, and WE. Until all three are well served your marriage will not last, nor be healthy, fruitful, and life-giving.

Hoping this helps.

The Saint.