Pre-Marital Counseling: Lesson 1 & Why We Chose To Do It
As we creep closer and closer to embarking on this life long journey together as man and wife, we decided we wanted to take some extra steps to solidify and enhance our foundation as future Mr & Mrs. One of these steps we chose to take was participating in premarital counseling.
The reality in today's climate is that more than 50% of marriages end in divorce and what saddens me the most is to think that so many of those people were exactly where B & I are right now. Smitten and doe eyed and ready to take this next big step. I feel however that so many couples however, dive in head first without learning how to swim in the emotionally charged ocean that is marriage. You guys have heard me say it before: relationships are a LOT of work and like anything else in life there are good parts and bad. They're not easy and I honestly don't think they were designed to be.
With that in mind, why wouldn't you want to be a part of an experience that forces you to lay all your cards on the table in front of the person you care most about, and work through/discuss/accept everything about one another before committing yourselves to one another for life. Marriage isn't supposed to have a built in escape route...in you go in with that kind of mentality, you might as well have never said those vows in the first place.
Last week, B and I went to our first pre-marital counseling session. This was something that we both knew we wanted to do and we chose to ask some very dear family friends/couples that we look up to in both their relationship and faith if they'd be willing to conduct our counseling. Even before our first meeting, I couldn't fathom how people marry one another without doing some sort of pre-marital counseling! It's designed to help you both grow together before binding yourselves to one another for life...who wouldn't want to take the steps to help build that foundation!? We've agreed to meet twice a month for the next couples months and I'm already excited for our next meeting!
As I was looking for some inspiration for this post I found this beautifully simple quote that was so fitting for what we took away from our first meeting.
"A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers." -Ruth Bell Graham
I'm going to keep the details of our conversation private but I did want to share the scripture that we read and discussed as well as some highlights we took away from our first session! I hope that some of you will discuss in your own relationship and maybe learn a little bit more about one another. Vulnerability is not easy but it's how we as people grow.
For our first session we were asked to review the following passage and consider the following questions:
Acts Chapter 9
How would you describe what "being a Christian" means?
What part does the bible play? (if at all)
What did you see/what are your thoughts about what was read in Acts ch. 9?
Some take away points from our discussion:
God chose us, we did't choose him. We as believers simply accepted his invitation to know Him! He chooses us despite all our flaws and believes each and every one of us is worthy of his love.
No matter our mistakes, God never turns away from us.
It's okay to ask God for help with whatever is on your heart or weighing on you in your life.
God just wants to have a relationship with us and we can build on that relationship by diving into the word.
We all show and practice our faith differently; the importance is in your personal relationship with God, whatever it looks like.
We can't wait to share more with you guys as we go through this process together!
