Weightlifting

My girlfriend Melanie just posed the following question to her Facebook community: if you're in therapy/counseling, what do you think makes a good therapist?

My answer (assuming quality is a given): shared values/a shared belief system and someone who doesn't put his or her own labels on what you're processing.

I was in counseling a few years ago when I thought my life was falling apart. In retrospect, I believe this woman contributed directly to my rapid decline. On my first visit, I made a comment about how I wasn't sure if I really wanted to engage in counseling. In response, she said "Believe me when I tell you that you need it. If I ran into you as a stranger at Wegman's, I would be able to tell by your body language how depressed you are."

I should have been appalled at her direct hit but instead I was shocked at myself. Really? I must be way worse off than I thought! So I went back.

A few months later, I was describing a watershed moment in my marriage that was a quantum, positive shift in my perspective. Instead of allowing me to claim my breakthrough as my own, she said, "Don't misread that emotion. You're not feeling love; you're feeling guilt." And down I went. Again.

This woman was divorced, "never been happier," and spent session after session extolling the virtues of freedom from baggage. She also weighed at least 250 pounds. Can happiness and freedom co-exist with excessive weight? Isn't that the proverbial cover that people hide beneath? Perhaps I'm reading too much into that.

The final straw came one day when I was sharing with her another turning point in my life. I had read Mark 4:35-40 when Jesus calms the storm and it hit me like a ton of bricks. The disciples were professional fishermen who were on rough seas all the time -- yet this storm was so huge that they were freaking out. They thought they were going to die. Somehow, through all of that, Jesus was sound asleep at the stern. How is that possible? Worse yet, doesn't he care?? When they finally woke him up, he said "Peace, be still" and the water became completely calm.

That rapid shift must have been even more shocking to them because then, as the verses say, they were even more terrified. Dead calm after life-threatening seas. What the . . . ?

For me, it was just the antidote I needed. Yeah, my life was out of control. My work, at the time, was on major overload. But more importantly, if I claim to be a believer, isn't Jesus on my boat? I may feel like he's asleep but I'm not going to capsize. I am not going to capsize.

I felt a huge weight lifting.

When I recounted this life-altering insight with my then-therapist (on what was to be our last session), she responded slowly in a serious tone, "The difference between you and that parable is that you're on your boat alone and no one is helping."

What? Wait . . . what?? So I have no God? And no family that supports me? No friends who love me?

Man, have I been a patsy or what?