Counseling on Counseling

Dear Pastor Lawyer,

Mr. and Mrs. X have been married a long time, but are only just now learning the mechanics of reconciliation: honest confession, restitution, forgiveness and peace. Before their conflict management style was avoidance until things cooled down, and pretending the conflict or sin never happened, without ever confessing it and seeking forgiveness. They are making progress, but undergo times of serious, major, derailment.

Mr. X has been a colossal abdicator for decades, but is seriously repenting over the past two months. Mrs. X is prone to fantastic Vesuvian displays of anger—where any attempt on Mr. X’s part to talk it through, confess sin, deal gently is met with only greater anger. During these times—sometimes as long as a week at a crack—Mrs. X threatens to leave, calls Mr. X untold hurtful names, and is impossible to be near. Mrs. X, almost in a Dr. Jekyl/Mr. Hyde sense, does untold damage when she is angry. Also, any attempt on Mr. X’s part to confront on sin usually is met with defensiveness, and the potential of another Vesuvius.

Inevitably, after a while she cools down, and sincerely asks for forgiveness—and it is readily granted. However, there are a lot of (metaphorically speaking) broken dishes, furniture, and other damage. Besides asking for forgiveness, what are some of the means that Mrs. X can make restitution to heal and fix what she has broken? I am thinking she needs to see the damage she is wreaking around her—but besides confession and forgiveness, how do you make restitution in this circumstance? What can she do to make it right?

Thanks in advance, Pastor Smith

Hi Smithy,

I have a few suggestions that might help your situation. It sounds like Mrs. X is really interested in “fixing” the situation with her husband. However, she might be afraid of what trusting her husband would mean for their relationship and for her as a person. She is probably used to things the way they are and is afraid to let things change. It is difficult not knowing how things on the other side of change will look after the dust settles. Change is hard. What she needs is to know God and how he has fulfilled his promises to his people for millennium. She needs to know that because she is a child of God, God will uphold her as well. Faith is trust in a faithful God and so Mrs. X needs to see God’s faithfulness to his people over time. I suggest taking her to (could be homework) many passages where she can see God acting in other people’s similar situations and let her identify with those folks (that cloud of witnesses thing).

Further along this line of thinking is to take them both to passages that show how great God's forgiveness of their sin has been. They need to see that "he who has been forgiven much loves much." And they need to know the story in Matthew 18, about the servant who is thrown into jail for not forgiving his brother, in their bones. They also need to see and understand passages that talk about the ramifications of sin. How does sin affect those we love who live around us? They also need to understand God's grace and what Grace means. They might do some homework thinking about Titus 2:11, 12 and how grace teaches us to say no to ungodliness and to live upright and holy lives.

Another tack you might think about is to observe Mr. and Mrs. X interact together about a specific problem. It might be that Mr. X isn’t being all that sensitive when he confronts his wife and is actually pushing all Mrs. X’s fear buttons. You might need to coach them in how to talk about sin, to confess, and what repentance means.

Third, and this one could come at any time, ask them both what they are trying to accomplish by their behavior. Ask them if it is working. Show them that it obviously isn’t and give them ideas about how they can change their behavior in faith that God will work in their relationship to change them into Christ’s likeness.

You might give them homework that involves them describing (journaling) an event of outbursts, ask them to tell what they wanted to accomplish by their behavior at every step in event and why, ask them what the actual outcome was, and help them think through ways they might act differently in the future to produce a Biblical outcome.

Finally, it sounds like Mr. X is not in the position to be a strong arm quit yet. It is important that he stop abdicating his responsibilities in the family, but he probably should not start with being the spiritual Gestapo. That is the easiest and most obvious responsibility he has abdicated, but it is also one that needs tenderness and compassion, both attributes he probably needs some practice in in other venues of their marriage. He does need to love his wife, but he needs to do it in ways that build her confidence in his love for her. She probably needs to know that he isn’t going to leave her (check to see what her fears are about) or that he is going to be the man of God he is trying to be. He needs to pour on the romance, and servant hood in a bunch of other ways before he begins to play the heavy when she is upset. He might need to stand up to her, but he might also need to wait for a while on that front until she trusts him to be gentle with her.

One last thing, I guess that last one wasn’t final after all. It might be helpful for the X’s to examine why they react and interact the way they do. Sometimes it helps folks to know that instead of being Biblical they are imitating their parents, or friends, or someone else. It could also be that their reactions, which imitate others, is clashing with their expectations of one another and these expectations might also be based on things in their past. For example sometimes men expect to act as husbands like their father acted. And the wife is expecting her husband to act like her father. So when the husband acts like his father and not like her father, things get sideways. Sometimes it helps in the whole process to know that they both have to leave the past and the world in order to follow Christ and to act like him. And it is important to remember that change is hard and scary and takes a lot of patience and forgiveness.

I hope this helps,

Pastor Lawyer