Marriage Conference

Gail and I attended a 5-hour marriage conference at Asbury United Methodist Church yesterday. It was called "Marriage, A Great Adventure" and subtitled "For anyone who is interested in applying biblical principles to help strengthen every marriage covenant to reveal the glory of God." It was created by Asbury and was just wonderful.

Few of us do enough things like this. A friend of ours (thanks Tish!) emailed me the info a few weeks ago - she & Tom were going and wondered if we'd be interested. My first thoughts were: I don't have time for that. Hey, I'm busy. Gail's busy. Where would Will stay? I've got work to do you know!

I forwarded the email to Gail who responded in like manner: "It being on a Saturday is the pits...however, if you want to go, sign us up." We both thought that if Tom & Tish were going, we'd at least be able to sit by someone we knew.

So we decided to go...and had a wonderful time. We sat with some old friends we hadn't seen in years (hi Jeff & Mary!), learned a ton of what the Bible has to say about marriage, and got closer as a couple. We are going to go back through our notes together, read the scriptures, and make sure we're following God's word in our marriage.

Two things come to mind:

1) Much of what we learned we already knew but weren't applying as well as we'd like - as Dr. Johnson said (quoted by C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity): "People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed."

2) We will resist almost any form self-improvement at first. You don't have time to read that book. You'd rather listen to music in your car than the audio book. You've got things to do the day of that seminar. You know you've got a great marriage and don't need anyone's advice. You have to find a way to occasionally break through the excuses and just get started. It turns out that Tom had asked Tish to see if we were interested, and then he'd go - so we had both used each other to justify going - that's OK - whatever gets you there.