weekend to remember

This past weekend, Nathan and I enjoyed a weekend away with NO KIDS! (This was our first time away from both kids and only our second time away from Ivy over the past four years!) For our weekend away (some may call it our "babymoon"), we planned to go to a marriage enrichment conference put on by Family Life called Weekend to Remember in Nashua, New Hampshire. If anybody has ever been like us and has never attended an event to enrich their marriage, I would highly recommend attending a conference like this. Whether you are engaged, newly married, married with little kids, married with teenage kids, married with no kids, or married for 50 years with your kids being grown and married themselves, I guarantee that wherever your marriage is in your stage of life, you will gain some encouragement and/or challenge for improvement from a conference like this. In the almost 8 years we have been married, we have never attended a conference like this. As the days were approaching our weekend away, we found that we were needing and craving this time for ourselves.

I won't forget our daughter Ivy's prayer a few days before we were to leave..."Dear Lord, ......... and help my Mommy and Daddy share their love. Amen." When I asked her what she meant by her prayer, she basically told me that she didn't know that her Mommy and Daddy loved each other. Wow! Break my heart, but what a challenge to us from our sweet little girl! Clearly, Nathan and I need to do some work!

The Weekend to Remember conference was a great but challenging time - it provided us with areas that we knew we needed to work on but had no clue where to even begin and get started talking and working on them. This weekend got us PRAYING together and TALKING again and SHARING our thoughts and feelings again. It got us to the point of BEING VULNERABLE with one another again. Among many things, one of the greatest lessons that touched my heart and really spoke to me through this weekend was that God didn't just happen to join a man and a woman together in marriage...He always has a plan and always works things together for His glory. This is so powerful - God brings two very different people together with very different strengths and weaknesses to show our need for one another and our need for Him to keep us humble and submissive to one another. Our Lord has given Nathan certain strengths to make up for my weaknesses showing my need for Nathan in my life, AND our Lord has given me certain strengths to make up for Nathan's weaknesses to show Nathan his need for me!

We are so thankful that we were able to get away and be challenged to better our marriage and ultimately our family's life, BUT we were also encouraged that we aren't doing everything wrong in our marriage either! We hope to take more time like this to ourselves as a couple as we have found the need and the new perspective we gained by taking time for us!