Counsel

If you travel to Greensburg, Kansas, you can pay a visit to what is billed as the “World’s Largest Hand-Dug Well.” Construction on the well began in the 1880s. As the railroads made their way across Kansas, a reliable source of water for the steam engines was essential. The work was done by teams of men using hand tools—shovels, picks, half barrels, pulleys, and rope. As they made their way downward, they lined the well shaft with limestone rock. The finished well is more than one hundred feet deep and more than thirty feet in diameter.

When a couple asked a pastor if he would perform their marriage ceremony, he proceeded to tell them that he likes to give several sessions of premarital counseling before performing weddings. To which they replied, “We don’t need counseling. We’ve both been married several times before.”

Source: Reader’s Digest, May, 2009

The pastor and his wife knew they had made a mistake by agreeing to counsel with Mrs. Smith when she opened their first session by saying, “I want to thank you for seeing me, especially since my husband said he’d kill anybody that I talked to about our problems.”

Source: Unknown

George Washington’s father died when he was just eleven, and for a time the young Washington had his heart set on joining the British navy. However, his mother had some serious reservations about that path and eventually strongly urged him to reconsider. He listened to his mother, and rather than becoming the captain of a ship, he became Commander in Chief of the entire military forces of the United States of America.

Much of the course of our lives is determined by the input we get when making decisions and whether we heed wise counsel when we receive it.

A counseling center hotline used the following voice mail message: “Thank you for calling. If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press 1 repeatedly. If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2 for you. If you have multiple personalities, please press 3, 4, 5 and 6. If you are paranoid-delusional, remember that we know who you are. Even while you have been holding, we have been tracing this call. If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a little voice will tell you which number to press. If you are manic-depressive, it really doesn’t matter which number you press.