Welcome to better today with your host Shawn Maguire and with over 25 years of counseling experience, this is the podcast. It inspires you to create both an amazing family and marriage. This is the podcast that helps you to navigate the challenges of modern life. In this podcast, you will be given the same tools, techniques, and stories that Sean and his team have used to help thousands of people to transform their lives. If you’re ready to make real progress, that will change your marriage, your family, and your life. Then get ready because better today starts now.
Hi everybody. Welcome back. I am really excited today because I have a very, very special guests. Can you guess do it is you can’t keep saying special, but you are special. I’m a regular guest now. If they knew you, they would know how special you are. So this is my beloved wife, Tanja Maguire. Hey everyone. So we want to welcome her back. It’s a bright and sunny day and she’s reflecting it in her bright and sunny smile, which I personally think is really special. So last podcast Best Premarital Counseling Oklahoma City talked about all the dirty, like she was giving me this podcast. I suspect she’s going to give me happy, Smiley looks cause she’s in a way better mood. Just look at her. She’s over there just beaming with light because today we’re talking about something that is very near and dear to her. It’s how to heal the past, to embrace the future, how to heal the past, your embrace the future.
Now with our Edmund Marriage counseling, Best Premarital Counseling Oklahoma City have seen profound transformations over the past 25 plus years of counseling all over really, and one of those big moves is to get over your past is to realize there are major issues affecting the way that we live our lives and one of them has to do with getting over the past hurts, hangups, wounds, and a lot of it people aren’t even aware of how big and how majorly the impact their daily lives. Have you ever seen his Tanta? Yeah. I’ve had to deal with a lot of it in my own life. And even I would say for a long time, I didn’t even realize I had so much forgiveness that I needed to work through. It just, I was oblivious to it. I mean it, it was showing up in, um, in our relationship and in our marriage.
Yes it was. And so, yeah. So this next thing will be very relevant to you and to our marriage. And I think Best Premarital Counseling Oklahoma City actually done this before in our marriage. It’s a letter of confrontation. Now again, if you have not listened to the first podcast on how to embrace, heal the past and embrace the future, go back and listen to it. But this one is the letter of confrontation because if you don’t ever confront the issues, they will continue to rule you. So you’ve got to confront the issues to deal with them, to address them, to get them out. And this is a way, now, this letter is actually something you’re going to give to the person if they’re available for it. Now, if they’re not available for it, I still want you to write it, but you’ll write it in a much more candid, less tactful, more gut wrenching, authentic.
Stick your finger down your throat and whatever vomit comes out. That’s what you put on paper because you don’t have to worry about managing somebody else’s feelings or about being tactful about what you’ve seen, how you say it, cause you’re just going to let it all go out raw. Now what we can do that, so don’t, don’t feel like if you don’t have the person that is offended or that you’re hurt by, if they’re not available for this, that doesn’t matter. Even if they’re dead. I’ve seen people present, company included, do letters to people that were dead and deceased, but what they had done has continued to wound carrying on way past their death. But you get released from them at some point in the future. So no worries if the person’s not available to do this. No worries, no worries, no worries. I seen in Edmond Marriage counseling.
So many times that prompts people come to marriage with are related to their parents, their mom or their dad didn’t treat them in a way that was honoring or valuable or, or even worse, there was molestation or sibling or something like that, but that person has died and they’re in there. These people were coming in their thirties and forties and they’re wanting to deal with issues with parents that are deceased or some of my patients, or even in their seventies and they’re way deceased. We’re talking multiple decades ago, their parents died and no matter how long the time has been, God has got to be turning any that can bring his healing Bauer to the present and go back through time. He really can and touch those spaces in places that need to be healed. So this letter of confrontation is great. Have you ever heard of this tandem?
I have. Have you ever written one? I have. Have you ever written 10? Yeah. So when Best Premarital Counseling Oklahoma City first got married, we were quite the opposite, weren’t we? We were, I think we still aren’t a lot of ways. What do you think? And Ian and I was definitely, so one of the opposites we were at first was I thought change was just what everybody did. Everybody wanted to change, everybody wanted to move into the next best version of themselves and my wife. What was your belief? Let’s change. She didn’t even know what change, what, she didn’t even know change was possible, let alone the definition that change.
I do have to say when we met my husband, Dear Sean, had completed eight years of school of higher education, higher education. So he had his undergraduate in psychology, he had a master’s in family and marriage, their marriage and family therapy and a masters in Christian counselors in counseling. So he is an engineer by the way. Ninja counselor. Yeah. So he had done a lot of Ninja counseling and was very proficient on this.
Lots of books, lots of studying, lots of helping folks out and seminars that I did. And I met Tana and she’s just as beautiful, innocent, naive college student. And I just thought, wow, what an opportunity. And I saw so much amazing potential and I saw so much godliness in her and just goodness of God and all these great things and I thought, and she’s five, nine, so that’s also help. I wanted my kids to be tall and athletic, so Bam. Got It. And the one thing that Best Premarital Counseling Oklahoma City set that that was really distinctly different though besides everything was she did not even know change was possible. Like it wasn’t like that she was avoiding it. Like she didn’t even know it was available. My right.
I wasn’t even aware that I needed to change. I thought you just were who you Best Premarital Counseling Oklahoma City, that the family and the relationship you ships you had were what they were and that’s what you just rolled with.
Yup. And I was really bad at tolerating any of that. So you can imagine fireworks. Yeah. In the future Best Premarital Counseling Oklahoma City go over in law issues and how to, how to do them and healthy and very unhealthy ways because we have examples of both, don’t we babe? We do. And I have lots of thousands of stores from counseling of examples of both as well. And there’s been a lot of letters of confrontation that have been given. Well a few that have been given and a lot that have been written by both of us. Right. I wrote one to my dad who I’ve never met, I’ve never met and I found out last year that he died in a horse accident. He was like the horse whisperer. And before that I didn’t know where he was, never met him. And I wrote this letter and somebody yells, sat in the place of my dad this, this amazing godly man sat in the place, like literally sat in the place.
And I had people on both sides of me that supported me while I read this letter to a main I’d never met. And this guy was the face, the Bot embodiment of him and a, and I was able to literally place my emotions and all that anger and hurt and were were you and all those things on this dude that I never knew as my father who’s just a guy that was mean nice and loving it. And, and it gave me a measure of freedom that I had not previously known. Now the reason I knew to do that was because I had been taught to do that and I had helped lots and at that point hundreds of people through counseling get free in that way. Now in my own process, I believe in doing what I say and I think in therapy most of what I practice out of, there’s something in some way that I’ve done in my own self or been a part of because I think that all the things that Best Premarital Counseling Oklahoma City talking about are valuable to implement in your life depending on the season.
And so when we talk about these letters of confrontation, no, that it’s not just something that is words on a piece of paper or a podcast that you’re listening to while you’re driving some place. Cool. It is actually an opportunity and invitation in writing to break free and when you break free of the past chains, then guess what you have. You have the freedom to create the future, that God intense so past is what you’re coming out of, that that that past has an expiration date. The relationships do people do. The pain does that, that God is a season for you to walk through it. Now, not all relationships have an expiration date, but some absolutely do and if you let them stay beyond that expiration date because their clothes, because they’re familiar because they start with the other f which is family, then you’re going to get sick and they’ll never go to the places and people that God wants you to be with and to accomplish as a person, as an entrepreneur, as a mom, as a dad, as a husband.
So take this to heart. The first thing is about writing a letter as to one, determine if the person’s available. You can do that through asking. You can do that through just knowing if they’ve never said or asked for forgiveness. The probably that’s a Belvia big fat. No, unless you talk to them and there’s a different answer. The other one is to think about what you’re going to do with the letter after you’re done. Now, will you give it to them? Will they get to keep it? Will you burn it? Will you throw it away? You know, I used to have a shredder in my office and we would shred the letter. I remember one time Best Premarital Counseling Oklahoma City put across the top of my shredded it through that somebody flushed it down the toilet, somebody set it on fire and flushed down the toilet and I said, let’s not do that in my office again.
It’s a bad move that can have a bad outcome if it doesn’t hit the water and get, you know, there’s just things that can happen. So decide in advance what you will do with this letter when you’re done reading it. And then the next thing to consider is what you want the outcome to be. Do you want to be free? Do you want to be gone? And that relationship to be done and for you to finally close the gap. This could be somebody that you’ve divorced. This could be somebody that’s dead. This could be somebody that is alive, but because of the toxicity they have, you need to move away from him, family, friend, coworker, boss, previous employer, whatever that person is to you. So make that decision in advance. And then next, if it’s somebody that you’re going to read it too, there’s a good time to maybe have them at another time, get a space to read a letter to you as well.
If you value that relationship and there’s reconciliation available, then you don’t want to have that available to do that as well. It’s a really big deal to do that. You know that tenants are really big deal. We’ll do that. Yeah. So because that, that sets them up for success and it sets you up for reconciliation because if they think they’re coming in there just to hear a few things or to work on something and you blast them with this letter of all the things that they’ve done to hurts you and then you say, I forgive you and thank you, it’s probably going to not end super well for you in that relationship. Have you ever seen that happen?
I, yeah, I have personally had a front row seat.
I seen it happen a lot in therapy. When somebody is not properly prepped or the person thinks the person they’re reading, the letter two’s available and midway through or the very beginning or at the end turns out they’re not. Yeah.
Or if or if you haven’t prepped them that maybe everything in in the relationship isn’t rosy. Right, and they think it’s great. Yeah.
That can be a challenge too. That could be a really big challenge. So we’re going to go use a six stage this, this guidelines to kind of go through to help you write this letter and I want you to think about a few quotes that might help you to consider it. One is that somebody said it was resentment is like drinking the poison that you want to use to kill your enemies and looking at them, waiting for them to die. I think a guy named Nelson Mandela said something like that a long time ago. And then another quote to think about is, as long as you, you don’t forgive who ever in whatever it is, we’ll occupy rent free space in your mind. And I’d like to add that and they’ll take up real estate that’s going to cost you dearly because the taxes you pay will eventually make you go bankrupt. So think about those things as we go through this and the value of writing this letter because it’s going to have a big impact on your life.
So in the world of relationships, there are sequences, there are cycles that we all go through. Now you’ve got to understand when you do this letter, there’s a good chance your relationship may take a dip if you have the person there. If you don’t, they’re, they’re really two different experiences. If the person’s there, then your relationship will likely take a dip and it may be a quick dip. It may be just for that hour that you read the letter and that you process it through after you go to lunch. He may be able to talk about it. It may be for a week, you may be here for a month. I had one lady that was for a few years. Her mom didn’t even speak to her afterwards, but now they have the best relationship they’ve ever had. She’s in her forties her mom’s in her sixties and it’s better than it’s ever been. So just just be prepared that it, as you read this letter, it may not just have this snap to it. Immediate effect. What do you think to,
yeah, I think you have to be prepared for that. But also I would say just know that a lot of times, well I guess this is what I would say, is that if that relationship that is currently the way that it is, is toxic to you, then
it’s, it’s, it’s a good thing to take a break. If that break needs to happen, that’s a good thing. And then when it’s available to come back, it’ll be restored and it will be something that brings life to you instead of being toxic. And so I dunno, just something to think about, you know, in that process because I know it can be really hard. Uh, when relationships do take a break after you, you know, you were a real, something like this. It can be. And so now that we prepped you for this letter of forgiveness and we’ve gone over what it’s going to be, I think we’re going to do the letter of forgiveness in part three because we’re coming to the close of this one. But I, I really wanted to sell you on the idea because if you’re not bought in then you’re probably not going to activate on it.
And I would just tell you as a part of my normal flow of counseling, every relationship, every when I do Eben marriage counseling, every relationship that I walk people through, whether the command for the cat bit the dad and he can’t stand the cat, I can’t relate it all right Dan. But it includes some kind of a experience of forgiveness, of giving and receiving forgiveness of giving and receiving forgiveness. So before we go to the next one, I just want you to get in mind who the person is that you are going to need to forgive and then get prepared to take some notes to write this down because we’re going to go through how to do the forgiveness process and experience it. Give it an enjoy it. And there’s lots of ways to do this. I’m only covering a certain amount of the ways that we go over, but I really just want you to buy in how much God can do in the Bible’s clear when it says, you know, if you don’t forgive your brother, your sins, your heavenly father won’t forgive you yours.
But if you do forgive them, then your heavenly father will forgive you your sins. And I don’t know about you, but I love the scripture that says love covers over a multitude of sins. And so do you want to live in a world full of love? Or You let the grace of God cover over the sins? Not that it ever, ever, ever, ever tend to make them right, but it certainly covers over them. And let’s God’s grace be sufficient so that you’re not tethered to the sins of another for the rest of your life. Well guys, I hope this was amazingly helpful to start and I want to say thank you for listening. Tanta thank you for being here. I know you took a break from being the homeschool maestro. Mom, is that an alliteration? Because I use three m’s school, my show. I guess that was just to my stroke.
I needed one more magnificent mom. Homeschooled maestro. Magnificent mom. That was alliteration. Yes. Got It. They use all these big words and homes go up to try to keep up, but thank you for listening and I hope this was a great step, but there’s somebody you know that needs to forgive or move past their pass. Please send the first two videos and then the third one or podcast to them, and then the third one as well. And if this is a great start, you say, Sean and tandem, we’d need, I need, I need more great news for you. We have at New Vision canceling that live. We have a team of counselors that Mary Biblical principles with cutting edge counseling techniques, and we join you in your Best Premarital Counseling Oklahoma City story, but don’t just sit on the couch and take notes. We jumped in it with you. And the great news is alls you have to do is call or go to our website.
Nivision counseling.live in Edmond. Marriage counseling is a lot of what we do. We also do trauma work. We do anxiety, we help people break through the bondages of unforgiveness and live a life free from the pain of the past. So do that today. And it also means a lot. If you’d go to Google and rate us, it just really helps get the word out about what we did because man, I really appreciate the opportunity to so in a servant to your life at this level, have an amazing day. And he can do that by creating it. One great decision after another. Capitalists.