Monday, August 09, 2004
Celebrate Love
"Peace begins with a smile." - Mother Teresa of Calcutta
My wife and I had the most wonderful thought provoking time on the weekend. We Went to a Couples retreat called Celebrate Love. It is was advertised by the local parish and my wife suggested that it was a good idea to check it out, so we went.
I must confess that initially I was skeptical of such retreat. Heh I am a guy and like most guys we don't really want to express our inner most feelings, let alone spending the whole weekend expressing our feelings about love and relationship and family. I guess fortunately for me, my wife convinced me that if was a good idea and so we went.
The 2 days went by very quickly, the format of the retreat consist of, 2 couples who are the presenters for the weekend. The couples would present to us various topics on Marriage and relationship, they will share with us about their experience and then each of us will be ask to answer some questions relating to the topic. Once that is done, we (as a couple) are asked to find a quite place away from everyone and discuss the answers we wrote.
We talked about:
Our Family and how they still control our behaviour with each other
What faults do we think we have and how do we react to that
Sexuality as Husband and Wife
Sexuality as define by the Church and Bible
and much much more.
Although the topic is very interesting, it is nothing new. It is the fact that we as a couple decided to set aside 2 full days to investigate and help grow our relationship, which was important. Think about it, when was your last time you and your love one went away and just talk about your relationship and how you both think about your relationship. I know we go for holidays and enjoy the occasional small talk, but we would never intentionally sit down and write down out ups and downs and discuss about it. Where we can't hide behind work or TV, we can't hide behind anything, where we have to sit down and really talk.
How many times have we tell ourselves that all the problem we have only happen to us?
Well I don't know about you, but we are not unique!
As we listen to the talks and sharing, we realise that we are experiencing the same thing, we are not alone. We realise that if they are standing talking about it, there is hope for us. We are OK.
So next time you want to buy something for your partner, think of this retreat. It will be the greatest gift for you and your partner.
My wife and I had the most wonderful thought provoking time on the weekend. We Went to a Couples retreat called Celebrate Love. It is was advertised by the local parish and my wife suggested that it was a good idea to check it out, so we went.
I must confess that initially I was skeptical of such retreat. Heh I am a guy and like most guys we don't really want to express our inner most feelings, let alone spending the whole weekend expressing our feelings about love and relationship and family. I guess fortunately for me, my wife convinced me that if was a good idea and so we went.
The 2 days went by very quickly, the format of the retreat consist of, 2 couples who are the presenters for the weekend. The couples would present to us various topics on Marriage and relationship, they will share with us about their experience and then each of us will be ask to answer some questions relating to the topic. Once that is done, we (as a couple) are asked to find a quite place away from everyone and discuss the answers we wrote.
We talked about:
Our Family and how they still control our behaviour with each other
What faults do we think we have and how do we react to that
Sexuality as Husband and Wife
Sexuality as define by the Church and Bible
and much much more.
Although the topic is very interesting, it is nothing new. It is the fact that we as a couple decided to set aside 2 full days to investigate and help grow our relationship, which was important. Think about it, when was your last time you and your love one went away and just talk about your relationship and how you both think about your relationship. I know we go for holidays and enjoy the occasional small talk, but we would never intentionally sit down and write down out ups and downs and discuss about it. Where we can't hide behind work or TV, we can't hide behind anything, where we have to sit down and really talk.
How many times have we tell ourselves that all the problem we have only happen to us?
Well I don't know about you, but we are not unique!
As we listen to the talks and sharing, we realise that we are experiencing the same thing, we are not alone. We realise that if they are standing talking about it, there is hope for us. We are OK.
So next time you want to buy something for your partner, think of this retreat. It will be the greatest gift for you and your partner.
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