Neal and I are a part of a married couples group at St. Martha called “Teams of Our Lady”. TEAMS for short has been in the parish for awhile and there are several ‘teams’ within the group. You don’t pick which team you want to be in, rather you are prayerfully placed.
Our team has been together for I believe 8 years. We typically have about 5-6 couples on the team but lately we’ve lost a few due to relocations. We meet once a month for dinner, prayer and we discuss a book that we’ve been reading on spirituality and marriage. Once a year we commit to going on a couples retreat as well and this weekend was our retreat.
One of our members owns a boat that he keeps in the South Shore Harbor so we thought it would be a great get away to have the retreat during the day and then have some time to relax and unwind on the boat. Thankfully the weather held out for us and we were able to get everything in. We did have one couple that had to leave toward the end of the day because of a family emergency.
“A Growing Marriage” with Dr. Gary Chapman is the DVD series we watched and participated in for the retreat portion of the day and I have to say we were all pleased by Dr. Chapman’s humor and direct approach to the realities of married life. Here are just a few key points that I’ll share:
1) It’s all about the attitude we have whether or not our marriage will succeed.
2) Couple’s don’t talk anymore… about five years into a marriage and their answer is ‘fine’ when asked how their day went. Make a point to take turns talking about 3 things that happened in the day and how they made you feel.
3) It’s important to know which love language fills your partner’s ‘love tank’. A few years back our TEAM read “The Five Love Languages” by Dr Gary Chapman and it is one of the main books we recommend to all couples AND parents. It is important to know anyone’s love language that is important to you.
The Five Love Languages are: Words of Affirmation (me 🙂 ), Gifts, Acts of Service, Quality Time and Physical Touch.
The retreat was packed with helpful insights and information, too much to try to recount within this simple blog, however I will finish with one final point that was like an arrow hitting its mark. It was made by Dr. Chapman within the “Make Sex a Mutual Joy” segment. He was acknowledging those of us that have been abused and how hard it is to mentally accept sex as a ‘gift’ from God. He went on to say, “You can admit your feelings but you don’t have to serve them. You do not have to be a slave to your past.”
I know this. I ‘preach’ this myself! But it is the one area that I still struggle with and work on within my marriage and sexuality – not to be a slave to the feelings my past left behind. In our discussion after that segment Neal said, “I guess that is one thing I don’t understand. You know God, you believe Him and you are the one person I know that knows God’s miraculous powers so why don’t you believe He can help with this one area?”
I didn’t know how to answer Neal until this morning when we visited a local parish for Mass and I heard a Jesuit priest give his homily. He is there for their parish mission and within the homily he was talking about God’s great love. In every point he made I could accept and appreciate that God loves me but what dawned on me was that though God loves me and though I know I can do all things through him, I still harbor a lack of love for myself which is what keeps me from receiving the greatest gift of love from my husband.
So, there it is, what I’ll be working on this year. Loving myself. 😉 I picked up Fr. Tom Allender, S.J.’s book “God Loves an Unmade Bed – Spirituality for the Imperfect.” No better time to start working on me now than the present.
Blessings
Shannon