Editors Share | Professional Resources to Support Your Marriage
/The challenges and circumstances in our lives can push us to our limits of virtue. In certain seasons, you may feel called to seek professional support as a source of encouragement and clarity for personal growth and/or in the ongoing relationship with your spouse. God has empowered professionals with gifts and strengths to support mental health and marriage; receiving their gifts to strengthen our lives is receiving a gift from God.
Today, the Spoken Bride team shares some of their own experiences with professional resources that provide support in their own lives.
PHOTOGRAPHY: VISUAL GRACE
Andi Compton, Business Director
We have used Holy Family Counseling via phone which has been fantastic for us. Not having childcare, whenever we have a session we either do it when the kids are at school, or put a movie on for them and do the session in our room. It allows us some anonymity too, which we appreciate. Counseling has helped us heal some very deep wounds.
Jiza Zito, Co-Founder and Creative Director
Throughout my engagement, I was working as an intern at the Theology of the Body Institute in Exton, PA. Being fully immersed in St. John Paul II’s rich teachings on the true meaning of our bodies, life, and creation on a daily basis profoundly impacted me. The theology of the body has personally brought a great deal of healing while at the same time answered many of my own questions on “the meaning of the whole of existence, the meaning of life” (TOB 46:6).
Whenever my then-fiancé-now-husband was able to permit some time in his schedule, we would attend the various events and courses that were being offered together. The seeds that were planted in our hearts through the theology of the body have certainly bore fruit throughout our life as a married couple and continue to do so as time passes.
Mariah Maza, Features Editor
My husband and I have never sought professional help or spiritual direction, but that doesn’t mean we never will. In fact, I have kept my heart quite open to it as we anticipate the coming arrival of our first child and a lot of military-related separations in our near future.
Growing up, I had the mentality that couples who went to counseling were those whose marriages were falling apart or were going through major life crises, because that was the stereotype I saw in the media. Although that can be true in many cases, I now understand the major benefit that can come from marriage and family counseling even for couples who are “fine.” We don’t have to learn healthier habits only after a problem arises.
Life’s inevitable changes will always have an effect—good, bad, or a complex mixture of both—on a marriage. Even those marriages who strive to keep their foundation rooted in Christ. Whether or not you have already attended counseling or spiritual direction with your spouse, keep an open heart and mind! God has given us spiritual and psychological resources to keep our souls and our hearts healthy.
Stephanie Fries, Associate Editor
As a child, my family participated in Catholic family counseling to help us build stronger communication and conflict resolution skills. Fast forward nearly 20 years, and my parents have founded a nonprofit focused on supporting the family through professional counseling and education.
Now, as a wife and soon-to-be-mother, I desire to pursue some form of professional or spiritual direction to continue guiding my self-awareness, emotional literacy, and communication with my own young family. This desire is an ongoing prayer, and one I trust God will provide an answer to when the time—and opportunity—is right. I believe that pursuing professional support for personal growth requires a discernment process in order to ready the heart and to collaborate with the right means of support in a specific season of life.