It's taken me a to week fully process our experience at
Family Life's "A Weekend To Remember" marriage conference. My husband and I stumbled upon this conference via a google search which now seems so strange because Family Life is HUGE and the conferences are too. We had a long heart to heart one night and realized we had made a lot of withdraws and not enough deposits in our marriage. We were more best friends and parents than a married couple. I think one of the things that I did
not plan on with parenthood was how easy it was to be in survival mode and forget each other.
Last weekend we had the irreplaceable opportunity to re-accept each other as God's gift. We were knocked upside the head and reminded that, second to our relationships with God, our spouse is our main priority. Gasp! Not Declan, not work, not chores, nothing. Mark is my priority. The greatest gift we could give Declan is a thriving marriage relationship displayed before him. The other thing that was made clear (and moreso to us than ever before) was that it's impossible to have a perfect marriage.
A good marriage is swimming upstream against the world's current. A good marriage takes effort to continually re-connect, re-hash, re-commit.
On Sunday we had the opportunity to renew our vows. [I had always previously thought vow renewal was a bit cheesy, not for us. I respect other's reasons for doing so, but it was our style]. Little did I know just what those vows would mean once re-spoken nearly 7 years later. I bawled my way through each word.
In sickness and in health.
In rich and in poorer.
In good times and in bad.
I will love, honor and cherish you. All the days of my life.
I'm thankful for fresh breath in our already blessed lives. And I pray to never be too proud to admit a tune up is nothing to be ashamed of.
