Email: Take a sanity break [SD]

The Band-Aid analogy is a pretty standard way to describe divorce, along with, as I may have mentioned, the whiffle-ball analogy for a codependent personality, where taping over the holes with things and others [becomes a substitute for] authentic personal healing. It's amazing to me how ham-handed so many of these analogies for divorce really are, though, when you look at them. People don't really understand or wrestle with this stuff (like a poet can); they're just repeating what someone else has cadged up with words! The church wants to pronounce married couples as truly one, and in a manner of speaking (of their spiritual potential), they are; but how truly one were they if they became divorced? At least one partner had "gone rogue," spiritually and emotionally speaking. Yes, marital unity is the ideal and the expectation; but a large part of the hurt also comes from making assumptions that did not realistically exist. The church teaches the ideal, but very often falls short of Christ's personal example in understanding and teaching how to reach the ideal.

When I look at many churches in this day and age, I see well planned and catered banquets -- but seated around every table are gaggles of very hungry people -- even skeletal ones vacant of spiritual and emotional life. I see children who are compliant on the outside but ignored on the inside by their parents. I see sad, hurting people who want nothing but a shade of happiness and personal attention. Of course, that is part of why people go to church; but if we expect to fill all of these needs through a congregation instead of building a personal relationship with an ever-loving God... Well, that's more for another time.

I believe that because God knows each of us personally and intimately, there is an ideal and best way for each of us to process our struggles and uncover our healing. When our questions are not being understood or answered or facilitated in discussion, then I believe our counselors or facilitators don't know what they are doing. I have seen "Christian counselors" sum up a course of "therapy" by merely saying, "Well, just do what God wants" or "Well, just do what the Bible says." Anyone can tell someone what to do! It's teaching or leading them into how to do it that makes a counselor truly professional.