Jerod and I have been trying to get all our preparation to be married done fast. Since we are in Missouri and the church we are getting married in is located in Dallas it is a little difficult. Jerod is not Catholic and I am, but I am a very liberal Catholic so some people question my Catholic-ness, but I am, believe me. Anyway, we joined a new church in Raymore to help us with preparation and after attending Mass there I liked it and Jerod enjoyed it , but will not be converting anytime soon. We love that priest, he was pretty awesome, and since we haven’t been having the most positive experience preparing with my church we were really excited to have such a positive experience with him. Some of you may not know that Marriage is one of the Sacraments in the Catholic Church, which means lots of paper work. So we have a contract to fill out and then in this same meeting we took this 156 questionnaire called the FOCCUS. Which is a great idea and can be very helpful for many couples.
The thing is I just graduated with my Counseling degree, with an emphasis on couples and families. Therefore the last two years Jerod has had to read every book, do every questionnaire, went to pre-marital counseling before we were engaged, and for those who don’t know I have even designed a 14 page goal sheet for couples to fill out every six months , (which Jerod and I do) that goes over everything from finances, personal goals, relationship goals, self-care, future goals, and the list goes on. There is nothing in terms of relationship that at least has not been touched, we have even come up with Plan A, B, and C for disciplining our unborn children. Poor Jerod I know (he’s super supportive), but because of this we have hammered out a lot of things in our relationship that many people do not even think about or talk about before they get married. We have developed a strategy for the future and how to handle future problems and arguments, because we know life changes you and no matter how much you prepare for life, it will always throw you something that is unexpected.
FRIDAY – SATURDAY
We had our Engaged Encounter weekend retreat. We spent the night at a church in Moberly Missouri, which is a dot on the map in the middle of no-where. I am sure we are the first interracial couple to ever be there! Haha! It was a good weekend, it was the first time in a while that Jerod and I have just been alone, and that was nice. However, of course this is a Catholic retreat so the girls slept in one house and the boys sleep on the gym FLOOR! Again, Jerod suffering for me, which is why I love him! The weekend brings up a lot of issues that couples need to talk about, and majority of them have talked about these issues, which was noticeable by some of the fights and also the very last session is on forgiveness (nice planning). The only thing Jerod and I had not discussed before was Natural Family Planning…For those who don’t know I have been a sexual health educator for the last four years of College and the last year I ran the Outreach program. Enough on that… Anyway, some of the comments others made about making their partner convert to Catholicism, or stating that their husband or wife should or should not do something scared me. I was thinking making someone do anything is not a good idea for so many reasons. However most of the weekend I did not make any comments aloud, because once you tell everyone you’re a counselor they start asking all the questions like you know stuff. I don’t know anything, all counselors do is reflect what you say to them so that you can answer your own question! Haha…Just kidding…well…Anyway I wish more couple could go through something like this, even though it has been empirically proven that these one shot methods do not work it at least plants a seed, if nothing else. So overall a good weekend, and good effort by the church to help couples in building a foundation in their relationship. Only in my dreams I wish this was a 3 month course one night a week and was inclusive of everyone…A girl can dream cant she.. :)
We made is through the first night! Tired, but we made it!
Jerod's Floor
My Bunk
No comments:
Post a Comment