Marriage is a beautiful vocation full of some the greatest joys in life, but let’s face it: it’s easy to get caught up in the monotony of life and let your marriage fall by the wayside sometimes.
The Office of Evangelization and Family Life ministries wants to help married couples take some quality time to enrich their marriages and allow spouses to reconnect with each other. Carrie Keating, NFP and marriage specialist for the Archdiocese of Denver, has organized a series of marriage enrichment retreats dubbed “Love Your Marriage” to do just that.
“There is a real need for marriage enrichment,” Keating told the Denver Catholic. “Couples oftentimes don’t take the time to nurture and strengthen their own relationship until it’s stressed or at a point of crisis. We wanted to give couples an easy way to take time out to enrich and strengthen their relationship so they can better weather the storms of life.”
While organizing the retreats, Keating approached St. Raphael’s Counseling, Sacred Heart Counseling and Marriage Missionaries, run by Matt and Mindy Dalton, to see if they’d like to be partner with the EFLM office and provide content for the retreats. They all jumped at the opportunity.
“Early on in our own journey with marriage, Mindy and I didn’t always follow God’s plan. However, scraping our own ideas to follow God’s way of life and love along with experience God’s great mercy and grace has had a tremendous effect on our married love and family,” Matt Dalton told the Denver Catholic. “Marriage and family life are not always ‘fun,’ but when we strive to live marriage according to God’s plan for life and love, we experience great joy. This is why Marriage Missionaries is so enthusiastic about being a part of the ‘Love Your Marriage’ retreats.”
The retreats will be held at several different parishes around the archdiocese over the next few months, the first of which is Oct. 14 at St Helena Parish in Fort Morgan. If you don’t want to wait that long, St. Joseph Parish in Fort Collins is also hosting a marriage enrichment retreat Sept. 30, separate from the “Love Your Marriage” retreats.
The “Love Your Marriage” retreats are good additions to the Catholic marriage enrichment programs that are already active in Denver and the surrounding areas. These include the Marriage Encounter weekend and Retrouvaille, which is designed more for marriages in crisis.
To learn more about the “Love Your Marriage” retreats and see some of the other marriage retreats offered in the archdiocese, visit archden.org/loveyourmarriage.