By Ellen Truschel.
Hello. My name is Ellen Truschel and I’d like to welcome you to my Blog. I’m a cradle catholic, been married to my wonderful husband Jeff for 25 years and I have two boys, one in high school and one in college. I’m also a licensed marriage and family therapist specializing in marriage counseling, most specifically Catholic Marriage Counseling and Imago Relationship Therapy.
Being a cradle Catholic, years of working with hurting married couples and also being married myself for over 26 years gives me a unique perspective on Catholic Marriages and a variety of ways that couples struggle.
Many marriages go through difficult times, ups and downs, hills and valleys. And so when our marriage is in conflict we tend to feel like it’s the end of the world and sometimes lose hope. For some of us that happens on a daily basis and with some of us it happens every once in a while.
Some people have their marriage on what I call “Life Support”. It’s that roommate experience where you’re living life together but not really living life together. Kind of like running alongside a railroad track but on opposite sides. Maybe going the same direction, but not connected.
So… How do revive this thing called Marriage? Not only in individual marriages but also in our culture. Marriage is really taking a big hit right now. Marriage is being redefined, at least there are strong efforts by some to try to redefine it. And Marriage is probably one of the most difficult type of relationships and the most mysterious.
In the following segments to come we will be looking at Marriage and why it’s so difficult and how to work through those difficulties.
Our beautiful Catholic faith, the catechism and the bible tells us a lot about marriage, most specifically the WHAT and the WHY of marriage. What I find to be difficult though is the HOW. How do we make that a reality? How do we love our enemies? Sometimes our spouse feels like our enemy. How do we love through that?
We often have good intentions to be loving but we often fail. We go to mass and say ok I’m going to be loving. I’m going to be patient. I’m going to be kind. I’m going to bear all things in Christ. And we start off good but then something happens, we get triggered and whoops there it goes and we don’t show up as our best self and then things come out hurtful and sometimes even hateful.
Why does that happen? And how do we master that? How do we master our impulses? How do we master ourselves when were triggered?
So those are the kinds of questions we will be exploring and answering in the following segments. God gives us so much in His word and in His Sacraments and we will begin to apply it along with practical tools that will help you to obtain the type of Marriage that not only you desire but God also desires for you.
So don’t lose hope. Don’t give up. Together we can do this. Together we can –LOVE LIKE GOD.