Retrouvaille

Grace and I are involved in Retrouvaille. It’s a group that helps troubled marriages. We attended a few years ago when we were ready to toss in the towel on our marriage. Retrouvaille isn’t a program for happy marriages. It’s a program for marriages that are in crisis. If you seeking a weekend full of light sharing, cappuccino’s and a brow wax, go elsewhere. If your seeking help for a marriage that is about to splinter, go to a Retrouvaille weekend.
Last weekend, after months (years?) of preparation, we attended a weekend as a presenting couple. The bona-fides for weekend presenting couples is that we have a story to share and the willingness to honestly share it. We do have a story and we agreed to present it. To be an effective presenting couple you must be willing to take the scalpel in hand, carve yourself open, and lay your guts out for everyone to see them.

We’ve spent several months writing out our material in preparation for this weekend. All our material was approved after numerous rewrites, and fights, on our part.

I thought preparing our story would be the hard and it was. We dug into the troubled areas of our marriage that we had opted to kick under the rug and not deal with. Grace and I fought like a dog and cat in a gunny sack for the past few months as we wrote our material.

I thought presenting our story would be tough. It was tougher than I dreamed it would be. It was hard to talk about why we first went to Retrouvaille.

What I wasn’t remotely prepared for was the amount of pain the couples attending the weekend would project on us. I wasn’t remotely prepared to cope with the amount of pain in the room overall.

Visit them at: http://www.retrouvaille.org/

Rain rain go away

I can’t believe that fall is here. This year, I find it depressing. There’s been so much rain, so early here in the PNW. I’m mentally conditioned to expect rain from around Halloween on, but not at the beginning of October. Sigh. I find myself wishing for somewhere dry and warm.