WHAT A WEEKEND TO REMEMBER

Wow!  My wife and I experienced a wonderful weekend on May 1-3, in Reston, Va., at a Family Life Today marriage conference called, “A Weekend To Remember”.  We enjoyed listening to different speakers, meeting new couples, working on projects together, writing our love letters to each other, going on a date night, and just talking and expressing ourselves to one another.  We have attended several Family Life Today marriage conferences before in our 30 years of marriage.  If you haven’t heard of Family Life Today, it is an organization that is committed to helping people have strong marriages and families.  Family Life Today has been around for more than three decades, helping couples build healthier marriages and raising thriving kids.  I believe whether you are a couple that is struggling in your marriage, or is having a successful marriage, this organization has resources and tools to help your marriage and family grow.      

In this blog let me dispel a myth center around why married couples attend marriage conferences.  There are some people who believe couples only attend marriage conferences because, they are experiencing problems and conflicts in their marriage, or they must be on the brink of getting a divorce.  Some people don’t think that couples attend marriage conferences to have a better marital relationship.  A person can take their car to a mechanic to get it serviced regularly, or go to their doctor for an annual physical, and nobody thinks anything of it.  Let a couple go to a marriage conference, and the first thing some people assume is they must be having problems.  Don’t get me wrong, there are some married couples who come to a conference like “A Weekend To Remember”, whose marriage is hanging on by a tread.  They are coming to save their marriage, and I applaud them for having the mindset to fight and try to save their marriage.  We live in a culture that has a view point, if you are not happy in your marriage, you should get out of it.  This kind of thinking totally disregards the marriage vows taken by couples, which say “For better or for worse.”  

I believe it takes much more effort to fight to keep a strong, healthy, and thriving marriage.  The reason why I say this is when our marriage is going strong we tend to relax, and begin to take our spouse for grant it.  We stop doing the things that caused us to have a close relationship with our spouse, and we slowly drift apart in isolations from them.  As a result we start to throw ourselves into our job, children, hobbies, and other people besides our spouse to help meet our emotional needs.   The danger of being isolated from our husband or wife is, it can lead to an extramarital affair which can destroy our marriage.  It is important that we continue to work on our marriage, by consciously spending time connecting spiritually, emotionally, and relationally with our mate.  This will draw us closer together with our spouse causing us to be one with them.   

Attending marriage conferences help us to continue to fight for our marriage.  In the conference the material that we covered dealt with such topics such as: Why marriages fail, Can we talk? - Communication, Unlocking the mystery of marriage, From how to wow, and What every marriage needs.   My wife and I were inspired to keep on working on our marriage together, and doing the things to make our relationship even better.  We talked about how we can get caught up in our work, and become isolated from each other.  We determined that we would guard against this from happening, by balancing our time with work and spending time with one another.  Also I realized how I’ve unconsciously stopped doing certain things, I used to do in our marriage that caused us to connect with each other.  Things such as squeezing my wife’s hand three times indicating to her, that “I love you” while holding it.  Couples, I encourage you whether you have a great marriage or a struggling one, I recommend attending A Weekend To Remember marriage conference.  Your great marriage can become greater, and your struggling marriage can get on the road of recovery.  I believe the conference will help you get the assistance you need to rekindle the passion in your marriage.  Let’s have a thriving marriage together.   

Would love to hear your thoughts, questions, or feedback.