August 20, 2001

"I DO" IS ONLY THE BEGINNING!

Recently, a young couple called me up "cold," with no previous contact, asking if I would give them premarital counseling. They will be married in the spring in their home church on the east coast, and there won't be time to do the counseling then. Their pastor is requiring that they do it here in preparation, so they called me.

After my usual disclaimer, "I'm not a trained professional counselor, and I just do my best from the years of experience and observation I've had," I began working with them early this month.

Perhaps because they were previously unknown and there is no history of personal interaction, these sessions have felt like brand new experiences to me. My thick file of notes I've used in counseling people before marriage for over thirty-five years, have seemed inadequate, dusty and irrelevant. I've found my instruction and advice this time to be more fresh valid and meaningful.

This has caused me to reflect on the marriage relationships I've helped to launch over the years. My "track record" has really been pretty good—far fewer divorces than national statistics would predict. But the things I've said to people before their marriage haven't seemed to have much to do with their success. The problems people have encountered have usually blind-sided them, from directions neither they nor my counseling anticipated.

What struck me, as I thought more about this, was how little post-marital counseling I've been asked to do. I've watched people go through relationship struggles, and I've sometimes itched to give them some direction or encouragement, but most of the time they have been closed to that. They'll come to me for spiritual counsel, or for help in making life choices, or for comfort through suffering. But there seems to be a pride around the issue of marriage. The exposure of problems feels like failure, and couples go through the same relationship short-circuits, the same hurt and be hurt cycles over and over again rather than asking for help. Sometimes I observe this kind of struggle for years as a caring, but helpless outsider.

The sad thing is that most relationship diseases can be cured, or at least relieved. Often the sympathetic ear of a loving pastor could be the beginning of a process of restoration.

If this strikes a chord with you and you want to talk, I'm more than available. Pastor Connie DeVaughn has fewer years of experience than I, but she has great sensitivity and intuition, and she too would like to help you get out of your frustrating marital rut. Both of us are equipped, not with a wall of counseling degrees, but with the heart of the One who created this marriage idea, who made the first couple "in his image, male and female" (Genesis 1:27).

–Pastor George Van Alstine