Over the weekend, Funnel and I went to FamilyLife’s “Weekend to Remember” marriage conference, downtown at The Columbus. His parents had gone a couple of times and really enjoyed it and they recommended it to us.

I was looking forward to it, but when I looked at the schedule for the weekend, it looked exhausting and daunting – seminars most of the day on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. But it ended up being one of the best weekends I’ve had all year … I told Funnel, “I wish it could have been ‘A Week to Remember’ so we could stay longer!”

It’s been kind of rough for me to go from the warm, happy little bubble of the conference, where we had been learning more about God and His plan for marriage, to going back to work and the real world on Monday. But I feel like I have learned so much and I really have the tools to be a better wife and better person.  We talked about things that might not have come up otherwise and we both learned a lot about each other.  I am excited about the future and I feel so lucky to be going through life with my buddy.

There were a lot of people there – I think they said 700 – and they all were from different stages in life – unmarried couples, engaged couples, newlyweds, parents, empty-nesters. One couple had been married 40 years, and another couple got engaged while we were at the conference.

The conference started Friday night, went into late afternoon Saturday, leaving the evening open for a “date night,” and then ended Sunday afternoon. The seminars were taught by a couple of married couples who were really engaging and open and honest in sharing their stories and struggles. For a couple of sessions the men and women broke off and had their own time together. You had a book that you followed along in and filled in the blanks and in between the sessions, there were little “projects” you completed together – like writing each other a love letter, or talking about the things that your spouse could do to make things easier for you. It was really neat.

Here are some of the things from my notes that I thought I would share with you:

• Most people enter into a marriage without a job description, and there is little in our culture today that encourages two people to make the difficult adjustments needed to require marital “oneness”
• Romance is “other”-centered and the “forsaking all others” in your marriage vows includes forsaking yourself.
• We should adhere to each other in an envelope way (meant to be sealed once), not a post-it-note kind of way.
• We should have an attitude of “I get to” not “I have to” when it comes to our spouse.
• Marriages that stay together and marriages that break up usually face the same difficulties.
• Conflict is common to all marriages. Therefore, the goal is not to be conflict-free, but to handle conflict correctly when it occurs. The goal is not to “win” but to resolve.
• We should “bend” our blessing from God: God treats us better than we deserve (by bearing the burden of our sins, on the cross), so we should treat our spouse better than they deserve.
• Pride is the root of all vices and humility is the root of all virtues.
• Intimacy is not a thermostat (controlling the relationship) but a thermometer (measuring the relationship).
• A study showed that 75% of couples who described their marriage as “unhappy” or “extremely unhappy” said that their marriage was “happy” or “extremely happy” when asked five years later.
• Eve was made from Adam’s rib – out of his side (to be next to him), near his heart, (to be loved by him) and under his arm (to be protected by him).
• A good marriage isn’t a gift - it’s a victory.

This spring there are some Weekend to Remember conferences scheduled for Ohio (and there will most likely be another one in Columbus, sometime later in 2008):
Akron – February 15-17
Cleveland – February 22-24
Dayton – February 29 – March 2
Cincinnati – March 7-9

If anyone is interested in gowing, we have a group code that saves you $80 a couple, making it $150 per couple for the weekend. If we can get two more couples to go with our code, we’ll will have a free one to give away!

You can find more information here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 3:40 pm and is filed under amazing grace, love + some verses, the two shall become one. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.