Hi everyone. This is Sean McGuire and I want to welcome you to the New Vision counselling podcast. Episode number three. Today we’re going to be talking about OKC Christian marriage counseling, what to expect in your first session. You see so many people think marriage counseling only happens when you are in a crisis or one of your spouse cheats on you, or if somebody’s not communicating at a just unbelievably bad level, but the reality could not be further from the truth. If you wait to that point, then you’ve missed out on so many opportunities to deal with the issues before they become explosively big and devastating to your life. So let’s talk about what it looks like to really start marriage counseling so that we can lower the early. The barrier that prevents most people from starting the process and getting the help they need in a part of the New Vision counseling mission is we want to reach people where they’re at before they reach a destination they can’t return from.
For some people that looks like they’ve been an adulterous relationship for many years or they’ve raised kids together and when the kids go off to college or leave for their work and career paths, they have nothing left. A couple is devoid of any real relationship because they’ve spent their years focused on their kids while their relationship progressively died in grew apart. So our goal was to reach people as early as possible so that we can intervene and capture them in a place where change is not only possible, but it’s likely probable and will absolutely change their lives and the future generations that come after them. So when you start OKC Christian marriage counseling with a new vision, you are way more than just a name or a face in the crowd. We start by getting to know the real you behind when everybody else sees that you, that you present to the world is typically very different than the person that we get to know behind closed doors because we created an atmosphere that is caring, loving, compassionate, professional, friendly, pastor shepard, Lee Christian, and you just can be yourself.
That is the only requirement is we want you to show up with your authentic self available for God to change your life through this process. We call counseling and you know, marriage counseling in Oklahoma City and Edmond like we’re, we’re at, could be drastically different than let’s say Florida or California or New York because we are in the Bible belt and people come to us expecting a OKC Christian marriage counseling experience. And you know, some of my peers think that, you know, that’s just an ethical, how could you bring faith into the counseling arena and how would you say we market and we promote ourselves to Christians for Christian counseling, for Christian marriage counseling. We do that in Admin. We do that in Oklahoma City and really around the state. And so when people come to us, they expect to be prayed for. They expect for us to lead them and incorporate their faith in Jesus Christ and the Christian ethics into our counseling experience.
And we do that. And so we bring an opportunity to not just change your marriage, but to progress in your faith and relationships as well with God, with your church, family, with friends, and so this marriage counseling experiences holistic and that includes your entire life, but it starts with you and your spouse. Now you say, Sean, I don’t know. My spouse won’t even come to counseling. You know, that’s unfortunate, but it is not a prohibitive factor. That means you can still be given this process even if they’re not willing to come because God will take the person that is willing and he’ll begin to make changes through the one who was willing to affect the whole atmosphere of the home and relationship. And we do the same thing and OKC Christian marriage counseling. If only one of you is willing to come and work on the marriage, then we will help you become the best version of who you are in that relationship.
And we do that again by starting to get to know the real you. We start to identify what goals do you guys have as a couple and as individuals. Then me identify what issues brought you to OKC Christian marriage counseling. What are those burning fires that we need to address now? And we hierarchy them and we ranked them in order of importance to you. Which ones do you see are most necessary to deal with first? Because many people come to marriage counseling with a few burning fires, but lots of areas they’d like to address. Burning fires would be adultery, severe communication problem, huge parenting, disagreements in loves and outlaw issues, financial crisis or financial issues, career change where you live, where you want to live, where to go to church or did not go to church. These are issues that we see commonly in people’s lives of why they begin counseling.
So one of the things that are is great about it is it’s not just us getting to know you, but in the journey of you telling us about where you’ve been, where you’re at, and where you want to go, which are the three steps in OKC Christian marriage counseling, you get to know who you really are as well. And you begin to start connecting the dots of how the culture that you grew up in. And the diversity that you experienced is so drastically different oftentimes than your spouse, and it starts to make sense of why there’s so much conflict. You know? I know when I married my wife, my belief was that change was mandatory for a Christian that you wanted to change, that people wanted it to make their lives better. Why wouldn’t you want to change and do things differently if that different change helped you have better relationships, help you break free of loneliness, low self esteem, anxiety, and really the issues your parents gave you because that’s what they grew up, but that’s what they had and that’s what they passed on to you.
Why wouldn’t you want to break free of that and then build on the good things that came out of her childhood, the good things that God has promised and wants to do in your life. That was my belief, but guess what? My wife’s belief and her way of practicing it was drastically different. She didn’t think change was possible because the environment she grew up in was with a, a dad, a mom who divorced early on, very tragic hard life where she raised her to her brother and her sister because her mom had to work and trying to make ends meet just to survive. And so she grew up in chaos with not a lot of structure, really never, I don’t know that she was ever really disciplined by your mom or her dad. And so that was a very different experience than me who grew up with ultimate structure, who grew up with a mom who was very disciplined, who got up early every day, who, when she was six, when she was 19 excepted or really 25 accepted Jesus Christ.
And then her life radically changed for the better and became progressively different. So I grew up with all these rules, expectations, and my wife grew up in chaos and really no boundaries and things were just all over the place. And she had to go get groceries and pick things up for Kate, her family, her brother and sister. And so when we, we got married and we started to do life together, man, it hit the fan and went everywhere. All the poop that we brought from our past and the different expectations, you know, they say a marriage is to empires uniting. And as Christians, unless Jesus is the king, they will destroy each other. They will devastate each other. But when Jesus is the Lord, and we introduced him to the counseling sessions as the authority in the Bible, as the road map of how to do life well, then no matter what empire you’re raised in and what belief system you start with, as you grew up with God, he bends the knee, helps you just submit to his will, his perfect plan for your life.
And as you do that, he starts to work and he starts to show you the areas of your life that need to die, that need to change. For example, in my life, I needed to see that my way was not the only way. And that forcing people to change is not God’s loving way. It’s, it’s, it can be brutal. It can be harsh. Got Invites. He never ever forces love can’t be forced. You can force people through fear, through domination and control. And so that’s something that I’ve been learning throughout my marriage is I needed to let my wife be who she is. I need to learn to let God’s grace be sufficient, the trust that he’s going to work in her heart and make the changes necessary. It’s not my job to save or rescue. Um, it’s still to this day a hard thing. When you love someone, it’s hard to let them make decisions that you think are not the best one.
For her. It was the not vilify me and see me as the Emmy. She was raised in, in, in a great deal subconsciously to hate men. To think that men will take advantage of you anytime. Men, you know, for me, I was trying to help, but she experienced it as severe control. And as you know, I’m better than her. I’m smarter than her, which in my mind I would never marry somebody that was not at least twice as smart as me because I love deep conversations and I just moved fast. And so I would, I just could not believe that she ever thought that I was smarter than her. But this was a conflict that we had because of her, her mom’s experience and the people in her family life. Men had a tendency to dominate and overwhelmed the women. And so that’s what she grew up with and that’s, it wasn’t even a conscious thing that she was aware of until we got married and really started to get into some counseling that got exposed.
The areas of our life that needed to be addressed and changed on both ends. And so this is the start of where we begin because so oftentimes if you bypass the diversity of our backgrounds, the cultural differences that we experienced before we get married and what we bring to the table, well then you’re gonna miss belief systems that you can deal with behaviors, but their belief systems will eventually dominate the behaviors again, unless you go deep diving into what is causing me, where is this behavior coming from? Why do I keep making my life chaos? Just when it starts to get peaceful while you’re creating your childhood because you want to get healed from that. But if you don’t know that and the counselor doesn’t dive into that, well, then you’ll continually create these cycles of destruction. So that’s the first thing. Another thing is I believe in organic counseling, but I’m going to do that and the real details and probably the next podcast podcast number four, I’m going to get into the, what we really talk about and how that approach begins to move the needle.
So we start with identifying what the issues are. And in podcast number four, we’re going to deal with how to set goals and how to move forward and what specific steps that we begin to take in marriage counseling. Because you know, I’ve seen so many people in Oklahoma City and Edmond all around this Okc rocks the world kind of mentality that Oklahoma City people have really translates well into counseling because they come with, you know, Columbus city people, [inaudible] people. Really, Oklahomans are just amazing people and they’re salt of the earth and so they’re willing to do the work. And so the next podcast I’m going to tell you that kind of what that looks like and how those steps are. Again, because the goal is to lower the barrier of entry into counseling so that we can maximize how many lives are impacted, how many marriages are safe, how many families are kept together or restored because God wants everyone whole healed living their best life for him.
Now, Hey, I hope this was really helpful. If you like this, you can go to our website cause some of you will say, Sean, I need more. It’s called New Vision counseling.org get in touch with the touch with us that way if you want to follow us, we have a Facebook and an Instagram page and that’s New Vision Counseling Okc and if you found benefit in what we’re doing through this podcast and please rate us like us on our podcasts, it really helps to get the word out. The Google reviews are big as well. That just means a lot to us because this is a ministry that we have to bring the love of God into every home we can reach. Hey God bless, and until we meet again, I’ll see you real soon.