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Hope
For a Troubled Marriage |
When All You Need Are The Right Words…
HOPE for a Troubled Marriage
Testimony for Retrouvaille
By Dennis and Karen Hango
Nearly every married couple at one point or another faces deep disappointment. Where does the happiness disappear to? What is the real meaning of joy in marriage? Is contentment found in the commitment to pursue oneness in marriage? We believed our marriage would produce great joy. It didn’t. What did this mean about our commitment? We knew our marriage was not what we both expected it to be, but we believed commitment wasn’t just about avoiding divorce.
When we married, we had dreams of traveling together –especially to Australia, long intimate walks, our own character home, and living our vows of Holy Matrimony as the Designer of Marriage so inspired us to do. We were drawn to each other by our common backgrounds, thought that we were basically good people, and could work out the little differences between us.
We had such high hope that we could be each other’s dream partner until death-do-us-part, but our disagreements, which stemmed from what had been little differences that had turned into huge obstacles, lead us down a path of hurt, fear, and misery. Baggage from the past, the inability to draw from each other’s strengths, seven years and three marriage counselors later, we separated.
We were lost as a couple, each of us trying to avoid the other and lead our own lives. We retreated into helpless voids, seeking spiritual help, but not knowing how to follow God’s plan for us. We did not want to be another divorce statistic…but were very afraid of reconciling when our marriage was in this mess.
When searching for alternatives, we found a weekend experience called Retrouvaille (ret-ro-vi with a long i, a French word meaning “rediscovery”). In Retrouvaille we committed to spend a full weekend identifying our needs as individuals and as a couple. We rediscovered one another. We discovered that our marriage was worth saving and to our surprise, we were beginning to achieve a level of emotional and spiritual intimacy we had not believed could have existed.
Three married couples share from their own experiences of the stages of marriage. They have been through the Retrouvaille program themselves (thus named a Peer Ministry), and along with a Catholic Priest, gave us the confidence to be open with each other, and the hope that if we were committed to making our marriage work, it could be done. We would not be merely surviving the crisis in our relationship, but, our willingness to change would make this happen. Through respectful communication and our commitment to break our patterns of disunity, especially in how we dealt with conflict, we could achieve happiness with each other.
Just as our marriage did not become troubled in a single weekend, the Retrouvaille Weekend is not a “one-weekend” cure… To reinforce our journey, there were twelve post-weekend sessions that have been designed to continue the renewal that we began on our first weekend. This time we knew we were on the right path towards healing and forgiveness.
We were so grateful for Retrouvaille that we decided to “pay forward” into this ministry. Besides becoming presenters, we worked with the Archdiocese of Regina and the Marriage Task Force at the Diocese of Saskatoon to set up a Retrouvaille community in Saskatchewan and are excited to be a part of Retrouvaille Saskatchewan Inc.
For confidential inquiries, contact Ken and Rita Wolfe in Saskatoon at
306-652-7155 or
e-mail.
Retrouvaille Brochure
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