 |
|
Worldwide Marriage Encounter Columbus, Ohio
|
|
|
Recapturing Joy and Intimacy in Marriage
|
| The following article
originally appeared in the Catholic Times:
Recapturing Joy and Intimacy in Marriage By Dave and Kim Lauzau The pace of today’s world is extremely hectic. We rush from one thing to the next, then to the next after that. For married couples, one of the all too frequent losses that result from this hectic pace is the joy and intimacy that God intends for them to share in their Sacrament of Matrimony. It’s a sad fact of life that with all of the “urgent” demands in our lives, our relationships with our spouses often end up on the back burner. Dinner’s at 5 so we can get to soccer practice by 6. Oh, and we need to mow the lawn today because it’s going to rain tomorrow. Urgent demands like these can’t wait, but important things like having an unrushed discussions with our spouse to talk about how we think and feel about things often do wait. The consequences of being late to or missing a soccer practice are simply more acute than the consequences of not having an intimate conversation with our spouse on a daily basis. After years of such urgent conditionings and innumerable lost opportunities for intimacy, our marriages can get to seem more like business arrangements than Sacraments. You pay the bills, I’ll mow the lawn. You cook the meals, I’ll get the kids to practice. Conversations can evolve to impersonal exchanges centered on “managing” the family and the household. Warm laughter between spouses can become infrequent. Needless to say, I don’t think this is what Jesus had in mind when He instituted the Sacrament of Matrimony at the wedding feast at Cana. As couples joined in The Sacrament of Matrimony, the love, joy and intimacy we share is meant to be an outward sign of God’s love. So how are our Sacraments doing? Here’s a quick self test. If you think about the time in your relationship that you felt the closest to your spouse and said that was a 10 on a scale from 1 to 10, where are you now? I fully believe that it is God’s intention that we frequently reach 10s on this scale—that we frequently get a small taste of the magnificence of His Love for us by experiencing the depth of love, joy and intimacy we can share with our spouses. Does this seem like a bit of a pipe dream? I would have thought so a couple of years ago. Then at a Mass about two and a half years ago, we heard a couple talk about World Wide Marriage Encounter. They talked about a new method of communication to help married couples recapture the intimacy and excitement that they once knew. We both knew we wanted more out of our marriage, but we didn’t really know where to start or what to do. Marriage Encounter seemed like it might have some of the answers we were looking for, so we decided to go on a Marriage Encounter weekend. The weekend was nothing short of life changing for us. On the weekend, we learned about a method of communication that works really well for us and that we still practice today. Using this method, we are able to share with each other in a much more intimate way than we had in years. After having been married for 17 years, we started to get to know each other all over again. We recaptured the light heartedness, the playfulness and the tenderness that we knew when we were dating. This growth as a married couple has also brought us closer to our children, our family and to God. We would like to invite you to renew and enrich your marriage by making a Marriage Encounter Weekend. It is something we truly believe all marriages can benefit from! May God bless you in your Sacrament!
For more information about Marriage Encounter in the Central Ohio area, Call or write Paul and Marilou Clouse, 740-746-9003 Rt. 1 Box 616, Sugar Grove, OH 43155 or see WWMEColumbus.org |
