2 1/2 hours full of patience

Tuesday is my late night with clients. My coworker and I meet with a family at 5:30 for marriage counseling. When we first started, we met with them for about 1 1/2 hours. Then the norm became 2 hours (for the last 4 months). But tonight we had a record breaking 2 1/2 hour session! Sometimes I leave the sessions feeling like we are getting somewhere and I am making a real difference. Sometimes I leave feeling like I never want to get married. Sometimes I leave feeling like I want to quit my job. Sometimes I leave feeling discouraged because the couple appears to make progress for a while and then all of a sudden they are back to where they started. All in all, the sessions move through a natural progession, which requires patience (because otherwise you would just want to yell at both of them to GROW UP!). Overall, I enjoy the couple and like working with them. I am thankful that I have a coworker there to help keep things on task and who can se things that I cannot see. 2 1/2 hours makes for a really long evening. I didn't get home until 8:30. But now I am relaxing, and it feels really good! I actually wish I could tell you some of the funny things that come out of these sessions, but there is something called confidentiality in my job...