REBUILDING MARRIAGES IN CRISIS
You can help hold together what God has joined together.
James D. Berkley
April 1, 1989
When marital difficulties reach the crisis stage, who is called? Often the pastor. Sometimes awfully late in the process. Sometimes after the marriage has shattered into tiny pieces. But many times the couple can return to wholeness-if everything goes right.
Recently LEADERSHIP surveyed pastors to find which pastoral-care crises they considered most difficult and frequent. Then associate editor Jim Berkley sought the key crisis-counseling principles pastors and counselors suggested for their colleagues. He compiled his findings into Called into Crisis: The Nine Greatest Challenges of Pastoral Care (LEADERSHIP/Word, 1989), part of THE LEADERSHIP LIBRARY series.
The following excerpt looks at the particular crisis of marital problems, which ranked near the top.
Every once in a while I hear of a couple married dozens of years who "never quarreled once." I always wonder if they're amnesiacs or liars.
Place two sentient people together in marriage, and conflict is bound to occur. In measured doses, conflict can be productive; it forces growth and change, compromise and resolution. It releases tensions constructively rather than letting them build to dangerous levels.
But when does the normal jostling of any marriage relationship become a crisis? It depends on the individuals involved.
"Just as some people can handle more physical pain than others, some couples tolerate more marital discord. But a body can stand only so much pounding, and a couple can take only so much anger and quarreling," says Ed Smelser, a counselor at Fairhaven Ministries in Roan Mountain, Tennessee. "Tension is inevitable. Arguments are common. But when the situation becomes so painful that a couple can't see the marriage continuing-that's a crisis."
What is the ...
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