Time to be honest: I was DREADING this weekend. I have been working with another gal on a couples retreat at our church for Valentine's weekend. The past week has been rough. Our books weren't going to get delivered on time so we had to hunt around for extra copies. It was crazy!! Now that it has happened, I can honestly say that all of the stressed and fiasco was worth it. We started Friday night with a fun game. We had placed bits of ribbon around the Youth Building at our church. Couples had to go around and find the bits and tie them together. The couple with the longest ribbon won. It was hilarious!! Our minister's wife is very competitive. She about knocked over one lady to get a ribbon!! The material we used for the retreat was "Fireproof Your Marriage" which is based on the new Fireproof movie. It is fantastic material!! There are six sessions and each one is set up the same way. We'd watch a video clip from the movie and discuss. Then we would read parts of scripture and discuss as a group. Then everyone would answer some questions on their own. The last thing was that the couples would go somewhere private and share their answers to the questions. There were some easy answers and there were hard ones. I personally found that this last part was my favorite since it was a chance for Chris and I to talk about us without any interruptions. I realized that we are not active in working on our marriage. We kinda just let things go their usual way and that's not fair to either of us. One of the sessions had the scripture that talked about how God knew me when he was knitting me in the womb. One lady said that it just hit her that as God was knitting her, he was making her for her husband and vice versa. What a thought!! It took my breath away to realize that the same way true for me and C!!
We played games during the breaks and my co-chair did a great job of finding fun games. We did a Valentine's Mad Lib. We played the Not-so-Newlywed Game. Our last game was Family Feud with gals against guys. The guys won but they gave their prize, a chocolate bar, to their wives - smart guys!!
Saturday night was our date night. All of the couples returned to the church for dinner and a movie. We had an unbelievable dinner catered by Mirepoix catering. There wasn't a lot of talking while we were eating since the food was that good!! Each couple had their own little table that we had decorated with confetti and their goody bag. We also asked each couple what their song was and complied all of the songs onto a cd. Each couple also received a cd with their goody bag. After dinner, each couple had couch to cozy up in with their partner. We watched the movie "Fireproof". If you haven't seen it, see it!! It is done by the guys who did "Facing the Giants". This movie was one that gave you such a powerful message without overpowering His word. That's a hard thing to accomplish!!
I feel that this was the best Valentine's ever for C and I. We were able to not worry about how K was doing since we had some great babysitters taking care of him. We were able to talk about some things that we just don't have time to give serious discussion and thought.
Being the GT kid that I am, I was constantly worried if people liked it or not. I mean I want people to feel like it was worth the time and money. After Friday night, I didn't worry about it anymore because I was having a great time! People are going to get out of it what they need to and I can't do a thing about that.
I think another thing I enjoyed is the great mix of couples we had. There were ten couples. Some had been married for under ten years and some were nearing the century mark. One couple was just dating!! Everyone felt comfortable speaking their mind which added to the great discussion. I feel like we were an intimate group since it was so small. I wouldn't have changed that for anything! We only had enough seating and couches for 10 couples!!
I also found a scripture to add to my favs list: John 4:19. So true!!
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