When we were still in the early years of our marriage, a newlywed couple met with us and told us how helpless and hopeless they felt about the state of their marriage.
It turned out that the husband had been talking with multiple women from his past, and the wife felt like she wasn’t good enough for him. When the wife’s extended family had found out about the husband’s emotional affairs, they were hurt, scared, and, in a desire to protect her, had advised her that she had a “biblical right” to end the marriage.
The couple had come to us as a last resort, wondering if there was any other way forward than divorce.
We explained that we had a ton of hope for their marriage, that helping couples stay together was always our first goal, and that we had seen God fully restore marriages even after adultery. (To this day, the situations in which we have advocated for separation or divorce are extremely rare.) We then spent an hour or two helping them get to the bottom of the disconnection in their relationship and identifying some tools and strategies for how to begin their journey of reconciliation and restoration.
This couple fought for their relationship and are happily married today. In fact, not too long ago, we asked them to help us lead and encourage young married couples in our church during a special one-day event, and gave them the opportunity to share their testimony.
When they told their story, it was eye-opening for us, because we had never really heard how much that one meeting had impacted them all those years ago. They said that the hope we spoke over them, the tools we gave them, and the adjustments we suggested they make had positively shaped the entire course of their marriage.
Hearing testimonies like that never gets old!
Turning the Tide
Our passion for meeting with couples and families, which we have continued to do throughout our marriage, has only grown since we started all those years ago. This passion is equally fueled by the seriousness of the problems we continue to see affecting marriages and families, and by the effectiveness of the solutions we’ve seen family coaching offer people.
We don’t want to keep hearing about children having to turn the TV up louder to drown out their parents fighting. We don’t want to keep seeing families torn apart because the parents stopped fighting for connection and let go of hope.
What we do want to see is people who have been so hurt and discouraged by relational disconnection decide not to listen to voices of discouragement around them, and move toward voices that will speak hope and healing over them. Again and again, we have seen that just one family coaching session can help them turn the tide toward connection!
The Eyeball-Touching Contest
Our marriage and family relationships are the closest relationships in our lives, and that means they are the most vulnerable.
For couples, sex, money, and communication are the top three areas where disconnection occurs in most marriages. Why? Because these are the three areas where we struggle most to be vulnerable and handle someone else’s vulnerability.
When it comes to relationships between parents and children, there are all kinds of vulnerabilities to navigate together—growing levels of independence and responsibility, changing hormones and bodies, choosing healthy friendships, and more. (We currently have the joy of discovering the vulnerabilities of the teen years. Insert eye-rolling and crazy face emojis here!)
Danny often says that displaying or practicing vulnerability can feel like an eyeball-touching contest. Who can handle their eyeball getting touched by someone, and who can handle being the one who is touching someone’s eyeball? Can you even begin to imagine touching someone’s eyeball during a hard conversation? Talk about feeling vulnerable!
These areas of vulnerability are precisely where we want to bring strength and give tools and resources to couples and families. Practicing vulnerability isn’t easy, but it’s a skill everyone can learn, and the more you learn it, the more you become capable of building connections that are resilient to anything life throws at you.
We believe in family coaching because we know that relational skills are more caught than taught. Sitting down with you for an hour is the most effective way we know of to identify the behavior patterns that need to adjust in your relationships and walk you through strategies for repair and rebuilding on a firmer foundation. We also feel that we can impart far more courage and hope to people in a coaching session than we can through a less personal resource.
Family coaching is something anyone can benefit from! If you want to be encouraged and challenged leaders skilled with the tools of Loving on Purpose, who want you to step into all that God has for your life, then take advantage of this resource.
Sign up for family coaching here!
