Monday, December 4, 2017

Wonderful Counselor

We live in a time, at least here in North America, where counseling and the need of a counselor is widely accepted. It is easy to find a counselor, life coach, mentor or a spiritual director when one senses the need for some one-on-one help. These named professions carry some distinctive aspects from one another, but they offer some form of counsel. While I am not writing here to tout my training and work as a spiritual director, I will write my work with people is to help them find and work alongside the Spirit of God that I believe inhabits those who profess to be Jesus followers. A good counselor will probably offer a more clinical approach to life issues offering more concrete suggestions and guidance than I would. My approach is more relational, God alongside the people I sit with knowing He will offer guidance. Ah, but I digress a little from what I want to write here.

It really wasn't that long ago when counselling was more under the radar, less accepted than it currently is. It really was just a generation ago. My own family is a good example of that. The three children that grew up in my family of origin needed some help. Frankly, our family was not a very healthy family emotionally speaking. We all three grew up forming self images that were not helpful or healthy for moving well into life.

There was just one experience one of the three of us had with professional counseling, my older sister Carla was taken to the only counselor in the little town we grew up in. As I was told a few years ago, Carla went to some consultations alone with the counselor. When it was time for the counselor to speak to my parents about their findings, my mother was told that much of the difficulty with Carla stemmed from her very combative relationship with Mom. It was the last meeting they had with the counselor.

A few years later I experienced a suicide attempt. I really needed some help but nothing was sought out for me; I was left alone to deal with the fallout. My attempt was never spoken of again after mother asked me a week later if I was going to be okay just before my parents left for a planned vacation leaving me alone at home to care for my youngest sister. The implication was I needed to be okay for them to leave as planned.

I share these experiences to exemplify how shameful it once was thought to need counselling. The needs were often never met with any professional help. Issues were simply swept under the carpet and hopefully forgotten. I don't believe my experience with needing help was not unique nor was the lack of finding help unique. It simply was not done one short generation ago. Thankfully, this is no longer the case.

I believe a good counselor will take the time to gradually listen, offering insights into whatever is the presenting issue with an eye to letting the person coming to them to gradually see themselves with the issue. It takes time to come to that point where one can bravely look at themselves in the mirror the counselor has gradually offered them. It takes courage to look in the mirror but there can be a great deal of healing that takes place if that courage can be found. Mirror holding is a large part of a what a good counselor will do.

They will also offer help, suggestions for what is needed once we are able to gaze into the mirror and see ourselves. It can be difficult to actually see where we've contributed to issues that confound our personal emotional growth. It is also hard work to start to re-think issues that often enslave us to old paradigms that no longer work.

This brings me to one of the titles given to Jesus in Isaiah, Wonderful Counselor. Please note, there is no comma, this is one title in two words. This title goes along with Emmanuel, His "with us" in the flesh, knowing what we are as humans, spiritual beings in human form. Without His "with us" His ability to be the Wonderful Counselor would be hindered. The Wonderful Counselor flows out of Him being Emmanuel, God with us.

Now, what a counselor we truly have. He is kind, slow to anger and patient with us and He has a view of who we are, right now at this moment, broken and flawed as we are. He gently wants us to see something though. He not only sees who we are at this moment but He also sees with absolute clarity who we truly are in Him. He sees a completeness and a beauty in us that only He can see yet wants us, no, He longs and desires as only He can desire that we become courageous enough to glimpse at what He sees in us. I am not sure we can handle more than a glimpse most of the time, but once we do, I believe we will fall down and worship this One who is so kind and patient with us in our unwillingness to believe.

He desires for us to believe not only who He is but who we are in Him. Remember, we are told we are one with Him who is One with the Father. It is an astounding fact that should shake us to the core in such a way that we give up our illusion of not needing Him. He truly is the Wonderful Counselor who has known me at my worst far more deeply than I can know my worst. And yet, He does not back away, He does not blink, He simply loves me deeply into seeing a bit of what I truly am in Him.

In this Advent season, may we ponder what a Wonderful Counselor we have in the One who came to redeem us into His kingdom and to shake us at the core so that we will see and know Emmanual, God with us, our Wonderful Counselor.

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