| This year, on Christmas Eve, my parents will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. My momâs parents AND grandparents were also married on Christmas Eve. Sounds so cozy and romantic, right? Steve and I got married in June. I mean, you canât really have a celebration with all your friends and family if theyâre busy celebrating Jesusâs birth with their OWN families, right?! Wedding date aside, Iâm incredibly grateful for my familyâs legacy. To be honest, experiencing my parentâs marriage is a big reason I became a marriage therapist! Even though I was far from an expert, I experienced the safety and joy that comes from living in a home where your parents arenât just roommates – theyâre really great friends. In the first 18 years of my life, I learned some things about marriage from my parents I learned that conflict actually makes you closer. Without it, youâre just polite roommates. I also learned that unbridled emotions are impossible to understand. But feelings matter. And we all deserve to know and BE known on a deeply emotional level. I remember during my teenage years when my âunbridled emotionsâ would show up on the scene. My dad would calmly but firmly say, âSweetie – thereâs obviously something on your heart. But we canât understand what that is until you can share it calmly. Why donât we all take a minute to breathe and think about whatâs going on. Then weâll circle back.â Sometimes I would yell âI AM calm!!!â Dad still held his ground. And you know what? It helped, because we did circle back, and we found the feelings that mattered together. That concept isnât just important for parent-child relationships. Itâs important for husbands and wives too. Iâve been a therapist for 16 years now and my deepest desire is that my clients would experience a depth of connection in their marriage they never thought possible. I want them to laugh harder with each other than any other person in their lives. I want them to finish each otherâs sentences (not in a cheesy way, but in a way that reminds them how well they know their spouse, because they have done the good and messy work of conflict and re-connection). That brings me to our church. I love Kairos. Steve and I were drawn to this community for all the same reasons you were – Real people who loved Jesus and one another. Authenticity. A desire to serve. For the last year or so, Iâve been thinking… We pour into parents and individuals REALLY well. We explore deep matters of faith and struggle together to know what it means to follow Jesus with our whole lives. AND Marriage matters too…actually I think marriage matters A LOT! What would it look like if we could focus on enriching marriages (like we do with our womenâs nights and menâs gatherings and Sunday morning bible studies)? I think this is actually the perfect community for it. I think it would be SO meaningful for us to dive into marriage enrichment together. Most people who attend Kairos arenât into, âputting on a happy faceâ or âpretending to have it all together.â We love to be honest, learn from each other, support each other., and encourage each other. So…thatâs it, yâall. Iâm pumped. I hope youâll come to our first Marriage Matters gathering. Iâm not exactly sure where the Lord will lead this ministry or what format it will take. But I DO know that marriage matters! Ryan Jackson and I have been friends and therapists together for about a decade. We figured we could kick off this whole thing with a fun and interactive evening. But for those of you who might be reticent – we promise it wonât be weird. And we wonât be doing trust falls. And there will be wine and chocolate too! Please come. It will be great to do marriage together. – Katie Gohde |
Posted in Uncategorized