Chapter 3: Marriage Counselor

A Soulmates Marriage is a journey.  Because that is so, we evidently need a guide, someone who is ahead of us on that journey who is willing to assist us.  I will refer to such a person as a Marriage Counselor.  This person can be male or female but for simplicity’s sake I’ll use male pronouns when referring to him. 

Conflicting Counselors
Having two or more counselors giving us opposing sets of directions creates conflict in a marriage.  If the wife listens to one set of directions and the husband to another, they will head in divergent directions. 

"No man can serve two Masters" ~Matthew 6:24 

"The Listener" by James Christensen

All of us have taken plenty of advice from people about marriage both consciously and unconsciously even if we have never gone to formal counseling sessions.  Parents, religion, community, church leaders, friends, coworkers, family members, fellow church members, TV, movies, books, the media, the government, and many others all have something to say about how to play the marriage game.  From childhood up, both spouses formed their own ideas of what the marriage relationship should look like based on all of these influences, especially their relationship with their own parents, their religion, and their community.  Some ideas may coincide with the rules of a Soulmates Marriage and some may not.  Determining this for ourselves is left to our agency but it's important for a husband and wife to make these decisions together otherwise they may end up on opposing teams.

"But he, knowing their thoughts, said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and a house divided against a house falleth." ~Luke 11:17

This doesn’t mean there cannot be multiple people on the Soulmates Marriage Counselor team.  I believe there can be and are supposed to be.  But they need to be united in their counsel.    

"And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them." ~Moses 7:18

Personal Example 
When Sherm and I first started having more serious issues (around the years 2002-2005), we chose to read and follow the programs of a few different self-help books and audio CD's on marriage.  They got us talking about it and making a greater commitment to spend more time together but for whatever reason the conflict between us continued and even seemed to increase.

In 2006 I began to develop my communication relationship with God to the point where I chose him to be my Marriage Counselor (see Paradoxical Parenting and It's My Party).  All the questions about my marriage and all the conflicts we were having in it, I took to him in prayer.  

"We can rebuild her.  We have the technology"

The answers to these questions are what led to my own repentance process--cleaning up my act, clearing my Chakras and getting the #Motes&Beams out of my eyes.  The growth, the release from bondage, the joy that came into my life little by little has been the most amazing experience of my life.  I changed.  Through the atonement of Jesus Christ I was rebuilt.  

Sherm eventually came on board with this Marriage Counselor but he could never really trust the counsel coming from God to me (personal revelation) and then to him.  So he set out to improve his own communication relationship with him but still struggled with this and instead desired to go to local church leaders for advice.  Eventually he wanted to go see an actual marriage counselor.  I didn't want to because I had chosen mine already.  I only wanted to hear his counsel and it seemed going to someone I didn't know and who didn't know me or the situation as well as God did would just be in conflict with him.  

But eventually I decided to go.  I figured maybe Sherm and I needed more help than we could both access together directly from God.  After all, I was the person Sherm was in conflict with, so being the one receiving the personal revelation for our marriage basically put me in the role of Marriage Counselor for him.  Very awkward situation for both of us.  I also wondered if I was being prideful by not accepting help from others who were trained in this area.  But I think this was more fear than pride because I had been to a few other counselors for my own personal issues in the past who either had not been able to help or who had just made my conflicts worse (see blog post Anxiety and Depression).  I wanted to fix it with God's help just like he was helping me fix all my other problems (see Before & After).  But I decided that maybe God could help us more if we added another member to the Marriage Counselor Team.  So we went for several months.

The whole experience was incredibly enlightening for me.  The marriage counselor was kind, patient, non-judgmental, empathetic, and in tune with the Spirit, generally speaking.  And this was someone Sherm could trust.  But what ended up happening was that everything the marriage counselor said or gave us to take home and read, the Lord basically took over.  He spoke to me during the counseling sessions.  He whispered things in my ear about what was being said.  When I read the material the counselor gave me, he picked it apart--organized it--showing me what was balanced with his ideas and what was not.  

"Wondrous Sov'reign of the sea, Jesus, Savior, pilot me!" (see hymn:  Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me)

I usually question everything.  It's one of my strengths but often times becomes my greatest weakness. I do it to the point of being a Doubting Thomas. So back in 2009 when we were going to marriage counseling I was constantly challenging the personal revelation I was receiving.  I wondered how I could know this wasn't just me.  I found three reasons:

1.  I wasn't that smart.  I didn't know before what the Spirit told me.  And the things he was telling me were brilliant!  (Isaiah 48:6-8) 

2.  The Holy Ghost confirmed them.  The Spirit wasn't trying to make me feel prideful or envious towards Sherm or the counselor.  That's not how he wanted me to use the knowledge he was giving me.  He was trying to teach me and show me what I needed to know in order to resolve the present conflict I was in and obtain Sustainable Attraction in marriage, which was the desire of my heart.  When you spend a lot of time talking to God, writing to him, reading the scriptures, and paying attention to the Spirit you feel in your daily life, you know how to distinguish true thoughts from false ones.  The Holy Ghost is very distinctive and cannot be mimicked.  It's the same kind of Spirit I feel when I read the scriptures, take the sacrament, when I'm in the temple, or listening to his prophets speak.  It testifies of truth, regardless of who is saying it.  And because I became proficient in feeling his confirmation of general truths, I was able to know when he was giving me specific truth.  That same Spirit was in attendance when I received personal revelation.

" My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me" ~John 10:27

3.  What the Spirit told me did not conflict with the scriptures or what the prophets have said.  It only was validated by them.  I always challenged what I was hearing by asking, "Well, what about this scripture?"  Or "What about what this prophet said?"  I do this because I'm more interested in being guided by the Lord than in manipulating my thoughts and ideas to do things my own way.  What if my way is wrong?  Then I won't obtain a Soulmates Marriage.  And what good is my life if I don't have that?  I'm pretty sure this is the measure of my creation.  That can't change so I yield to this Heavenly Counselor (D&C 88:18-19).  That is my choice.  And I, like Martin Luther, say, "This is where I stand."

After I developed the ability to receive personal revelation at a faster rate, I would not stop listening to and implementing the counsel.  I wouldn't stop even after Sherm and I started going to counseling together.  Because of that, a pretty good rift in our relationship was created over time.  I was flying at an intense rate of change and growth, taking advantage of every blessing the atonement of Jesus Christ offered.  I went to the temple all the time alone.  I studied my scriptures and prayed for hours alone.  I did not wait up for my husband.  I just kept assuming all the problems were mine, repenting for everything, and asking Sherm himself for priesthood blessings all the time to help me do it.  I believed this was the resolution process.  It did resolve the conflict in me and even improved my relationship with Sherm, meaning I started treating him much better than I ever had before.  But unfortunately it created a different kind of conflict between us.  We just got farther apart in attraction.  The fighting stopped but for whatever reason the marriage wouldn't develop and the Romantic Attraction wouldn't return.  It's so important for husband and wife to listen to the same Marriage Counselor and apply his counsel together.

The issue was that I seriously couldn't breathe without this developing relationship with the Lord.  I couldn't, wouldn't come away from the amazing beauty.  The more I saw, the more I needed to see.  I needed to understand it all.  And the doors were wide open to me.  I only heard, "Come."

"And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus." ~Matthew 14:29

Chapter 4