Thursday, February 10, 2011

Pre-Cana Session 4


Romance
Monday night was our 4th Pre-Cana session. Last week's meeting was canceled due to crazy weather, so we still have one more session next week when we will receive our "Pre-Cana Diploma". This week the Church's Deacon led the session, and he touched upon a variety of things. First he started off by talking about romance, a fitting lesson as Valentine's day approaches us. He told us a story about a friend who came to him for help after his marriage of 17 years failed. When he asked this friend "What happened?" The man replied "The romance was just...gone". The Deacon responded with: "Then shame on you."

Romance isn't something that just happens. In the beginning, sure...romance is there. It's new and exciting and wonderful. But after awhile romance is something YOU BOTH have to completely work at to make sure it's present in your relationship. It doesn't matter what it is: an elaborate dinner date at a nice restaurant, or Friday night take-out while you watch a movie. He suggested we go out, or have dinner just the two of us at least once a week, (easy to do now, but he means especially when we have children) in order to keep the romance alive. Romance can be rekindled simply by calling your significant other in the middle of the day to let them know you're thinking about them. It can rekindle by sending a cute text, buying a card, sending an email, holding hands, getting flowers and a whole host of other things.

True adorable story: My dad brings home flowers for my mom at least once every other week, sometimes once a week. On more than one occasion, the clerk at the store has asked him "What did you do now?!" Haha! While that's pretty funny, it's a little sad that the clerk assumes something must be wrong for this married man to be buying flowers. Why can't he just be buying them because he loves her!?
Source
Sacraments
We then talked about the 7 Sacraments which are:
Baptism
Confirmation
Eucharist (Communion)
Reconciliation
Anointing of the sick
Matrimony
Holy Orders

A Sacrament is a religious symbol, or as wikipedia defines it: "A visible sign of an invisible reality." The water in baptism, the holy oil in anointing of the sick....or the rings in matrimony. He explained that matrimony is one of the two service sacraments (the other being Holy orders), because we are agreeing to serve each other in love, and committing to a new and different life together in marriage. The Deacon then talked a lot about each sacrament. This was definitely the most "religious" session we've had so far, but being that this is all new to me, I didn't mind it.

Tonight we are going to a Bride & Groom event at our venue: The Sandcastle!!

6 comments:

Irene said...

OMG! I am so choked up because you wrote about dad buying flowers for me every week. Little things do matter and they are the first to go.Now, I must bring dad his morning cup of coffee.<3!

The Vintage Modern Bride said...

that's so sweet that your dad still does that for your mom. luckily, mathew is really sweet like your dad too. he loves buying flowers or just calling me and telling me something sweet just because...i definitely agree with your bishop...it keeps the romance alive.

glad yall had an interesting topic this week!

Heather said...

I completely agree that romance is something that takes work and committment. I think many marriages fail because people don't want to put in the effort and expect it to just happen. My husband shows his love in ways that are not "traditionally" romantic, such as cooking dinner each night. To me, that's the most romantic thing possible!

steph c said...

That's so sweet about your dad getting your mom flowers so often! My fiancé is a fan of doing things when you least expect them.. so he won't get me flowers on say, Valentine's Day, but a few weeks later I'll get this huuuge bouquet delivered at work... just because. Everyone always asks "what'd he do?" and I agree, it's silly that just because I got flowers, that means he's apologizing! He just loves me, and I'm so thankful and lucky for that :)

Dad said...

In the interest of full disclosure, I don't get mom flowers every week or two, to do so would become routine, and the element of surprise has more of an impact than something routine. And I have on occasion bought flowers because of "what I did", or more often, "what I didn't do".

Kelly said...

Your Dad sounds awesome. Even more awesome to comment and clarify :) I love that my Dad reads my silly blog. Aren't they the best?