That makes no sense!

I was watching The Karate Kid (the new version with Jackie Chan) and I noticed how it parallels marriage counseling in a lot of ways. Here's the rundown. Dre is this kid who wants to learn how to fight so he finds a "master" and convinces him to teach him how to be a great fighter. The teacher tells him, "come to my place and I will teach you how to fight." Now, Dre obviously has an preconceived idea about what his training will look like. He knows where he struggles so he has ideas about how the teacher will make him strong in those areas and those areas only.

So when Dre shows up to learn, the teacher gives him chores to do. The chores that he has Dre  doing seemingly have no connection with what Dre came for...to learn how to fight. You've probably seen the movie so I won't detail the whole thing, but the seemingly insignificant and irrelevant chores that the teacher had Dre doing actually taught him the basics on which he would build a very strong fighting skills. Dre became frustrated with the teacher when he was repeatedly told to do things that HE thought had nothing at all to do with marriage counseling...I mean, karate.

It may not make sense to you at first...

People come into the therapy room with preconceived ideas about what they need to work on and how they need to work on it in order to get better. The truth is, whether they admit it or not, they want and expect to "get better fast." When I tell them to do something that is beyond their immediate understanding they are often hesitant and resistant to doing what is asked. If it "doesn't make sense" to them then it must be wrong and can't work, right?

When I was riding back from dropping my son off at college I was listening to a book which isn't a marriage book but is what I believe to be crucial to the success of marriage. I begin to think, "Man, what if I told every client who came to therapy to read this book first?" I imagine almost everyone would be like "I came for marriage counseling, not this." 

Sometimes, in order for you to be helped you have to trust someone other than yourself. You can become trapped in the prison of "I have all the answers" and block your own progress. I call it a prison because it is as if you are trapped and blinded by what you think you know. The people who have the most success in therapy are the ones who come with an open mind and say "I don't know how to do this, can you help me?" It may not make sense at first, but there is a process to having a great marriage and the process starts way before pointing the finger at your spouse.

I remember one time when I went to Vegas, there was a guy on the strip painting with a little scraper and spray paint. He had on display things he had already painted and they were amazing. But when I walked up he had just taken a blank canvas and started painting it. As I'm watching, I know he knows what he's doing because I see the previous results, but I do not understand why he is doing what he is doing. I figured that eventually I would be able to recognize what he was painting before he finished but I never did. It wasn't until he finished completely and then flipped the picture right side up that I saw the masterpiece and I was wow'd! Not only was I amazed at the amazing picture he created but also at the fact that he did it all upside down and I couldn't recognize it until he was completely done.

In the above scenario, I would be the scraper and spray paint (the therapist). The artist would be God. The canvas would be your marriage. And the reviews that you see on google about A Better Family Now would be other peoples lives on display to show you what the artist can do. You have to decide if you are going to go thru the whole process when you may not understand it all and may not see the real results until the end, or if you know better than the therapist. Therapy works if you do.