THE MARRIAGE RETREAT

WE arrived at the Solomon Episcopal Retreat Center in Robert, Louisiana about as early as we could possibly arrive. The central building – where large group meetings and hangout normally take place – contained the reception area where you pick up

your room keys, sign a waiver that you won’t trash your room, and get the short list of attractions around the multi-acre wooded campus.

While my wife Jessica talked to the hostess, I scanned the room noticing a small con­tingency of married couples who made nervous small talk around couches and tables that marked off a common area.  My attention was regained when I heard the hostess mention there was free wine and cheese over in the corner of the room.  “Now that’s the perk of doing a marriage retreat at an Episcopal facility,” I whispered to my wife. My whispers are notoriously loud, and Jessica’s eyelids and facial muscles did a slight grip on her eyeball momentarily signifying that I was being a little rude.

We got our keys and started walking toward the exit.  A couple that we were pretty good friends with from the church nearly got mashed as I swung the door open.  De­spite the near miss, both were overjoyed to see us there and greeted us really warmly.

“We’re going over to the table over there to play board games.  Do you two want to join us?”

My wife and I – putting our oneness on display – said in conjunction: “Uh…No…” in a slightly exaggerated tone.

We took a brisk walk, putting it mildly, toward our room.  I asked Jessica if she wanted me to run in and lift one of those bottles of wine.  She said, “Maybe later, when not so many people are standing around.”

We missed dinner and made it to the first session that night with just enough time to spare to fix a cup of coffee and walk in. A few people noticed us walking into the main meeting area and a woman said: “There you two are.  You missed dinner.  Did you have a difficult time finding the place?”

Jessica said, “What are you talking about we’ve been here all day.  We’ve just been in our room the whole time.”  The woman responded with a less than pleasant “that’s too much information for me” look on her face.

Like two school brats, we giggled as we found our seats.

The retreat leadership couple set up the entire weekend at the opening of the first session: “We don’t want you guys to stay locked up in sessions with us all weekend.  You’re here to be with each other.  We’re going to discuss some things that maybe you’ve never talked about or that you haven’t talked about in a long time.  You’ll spend some time with us in a large group format, but then I want you to go to a quiet place or back to your rooms (Jessica I looked at each other and high-fived) and spend some time together.  We’ll give you a couple of exercises to guide you, but they are only meant to help you connect.”

The first session passed, we got our homework and went back to our rooms, talked, eliminated misconceptions we had about each other, laughed, wrestled out issues we’d never mentioned, made some commitments, made some future plans, and leaned in and savored our moment.

A couple of hours later, our stomachs reminded us that we’d forfeited our meal ticket blessing for a bowl of pottage, and that we needed to stop everything and scavenge for food.  We trekked up to the common area to see if there was any cheese left and were shocked to find couples dotting the whole area.

Jessica looked at me and said, “What are all these people doing over here?  Don’t they know they have a room where they can hang out with each other….alone!”

On our way back to our room, we ran in to a couple on their first marriage retreat ever.  They’d managed to leave a houseful of kids behind for the first time in 15 years. They hadn’t been at our church long enough to meet most of the people who were at­tending the retreat, so we felt a little obligated to hang out with them as we were walking back to our room.  We finally arrived at that geographical crossroads where if you keep walking you’ll be going a different direction than where your room is. I made that transition of “Our room is right down here.”  I watched the faces of this couple – particularly the man – morph to this “You’re not going to leave us by our­selves are you?” look.  He tried to tempt us with a game of Yahtzee – couple vs. couple no less!  I, the consummate competitor, actually contemplated the challenge before my wife chimed in: “No, we’re going to go hang out together tonight.  We never get to be alone.”

The rest of the weekend flowed in a similar vein.  Every session presented some chal­lenges that weren’t designed to provide answers, but to point us in the direction where we’d discover them together, and, in the process, we’d discover each other. There weren’t always simple fixes, but we walked out of there with the commitment to live, and breathe together as we determined to move toward each other after we left.

I wish I could say the same for every couple that was there that weekend.  I painfully watched couples whose body language spoke anything but openness.  In one session, we were all asked to take the next 15 minutes and lay hands upon and pray for our wives – aloud so that our wives could hear us.  A few men refused.  Others prayed in silence. Most couldn’t pray for more than a minute or two.

It was in that moment that I saw marriages and home lives in context.  I understood the board game people; I understood the people who didn’t comprehend missing din­ner; I understood competitive Yahtzee couple – they were all avoiding the same thing ­namely intimacy.  What would they do if they were just left by themselves?  What would they talk about? What would come up?

These couples had never really known intimacy before this weekend.  They were given the tools to make it happen.  Some were unwilling.  Some were apathetic.  After all, intimacy is dangerous, reckless, and risky. If you peel back the layers of who you are, then it’s possible for that person to say: “I don’t like what I see, and I’m done with you.” It’s possible that if you’re real and speak the truth the other may not be able to handle it.  It’s difficult to be weak and needy.  It’s so much easier to put up a front and act like you’ve got it together. It’s humbling to say “You’re right, and I’m wrong.” It’s not even human to prefer someone above yourself – even in the moment.

But what is marriage without intimacy?  It’s shallow.  It’s going through the motions. It’s unfulfilling.  It’s not the dream that you pictured on wedding day.  And it’s more and more difficult to keep committing to that stinkin’ ring every day.

Half of marriages fail – they end in divorce.  The other half of marriages – they are failing. How many couples do you know that are in brutal, unhealthy marriages?  How many couples are “committed to the marriage?”  They will hold on to the com­mitment that they made to the marriage because it’s just wrong to get a divorce. How many couples are “committed to the kids?”

I’m sorry but that’s just not good enough.  In fact, it sucks.

God doesn’t want you to be committed to the relationship with Him. He doesn’t want you to stay in this thing with Him because of a few good things that you’ve produced together.  God won’t settle for anything else but your whole heart.  And the truth is, you’re not willing to settle for anything else either!

INTIMACY IS NOT AN OPTION

I know if I ever get to a place where I’m just in a marriage with Jessica because of a document on paper, because of the tan line on my ring finger, or the commitment I made to her back in 2000 that my marriage is as good as dead.

Whenever Jessica and I have issues, things seem to get shaky, cross words are said, actions are misunderstood, the devil feeds us lies, or we are just not communicating, I can always trace it back to the loss of intimacy.  Whenever things have precluded or taken the place of intimacy, dysfunction always ensues.  We quickly become Yahtzee players – just being active – but hearts not connected.  I struggle to put my hand on her forehead and scarcely know the words to pray.

Intimacy has to be fought for, battled for, and won.  It is simply not an optional part of our marriage.

I find it’s easy for Christians to get caught up in the things that take the place of in­timacy with God: doing good, taking care of family, church activities, even spiritual disciplines.  They all can give people the impression that everything is okay with our­selves and God.  When inside, we know we couldn’t be more distant than we are from Him.

I think we’re well aware that things are missing. You can’t fool your heart. We sense, we know “something is missing.”  We don’t know “when we lost it,” and we don’t know how to get back there. In many cases, we can’t find a thing that we’ve done to lose it, but we can open a file folder full of all the things that we’ve done to try to get it back. Most of these are religious duties sprinkled with empty spiritual hoops that haven’t done a thing to bring us into an encounter with the living God.

We may not be able to put our finger on it enough to verbalize it, but our hearts defi­nitely know something that our minds can’t comprehend.

What is it? Our hearts are crying for intimacy with God.  Our hearts are dying for a Person who will allow us to sincerely pull the layers back and love us for actually do­ing it. Our hearts want to be able to recklessly leap and be captured by Love. Is this a surprise for us? I mean our hearts were handcrafted this way by God.

Do you realize that what you truly desire is intimacy?  I once tried to tell a teenager that and was met with the infamous “deer in headlights” look.  No matter how true it is, the desire to know and experience and invisible God seems a little out there and far-fetched.

In the event that we take the suggestion of intimacy at face value, we take a wild shot in the dark at it, and it usually looks something like the guy struggling to pray for his wife – it’s foreign, embarrassing, and ineffective. And like him, we ask the question: “Where do you even begin to do this thing?”

So since we’re unable to make the intimacy with God thing happen, we go back to what we know – playing Yahtzee.  “Let’s get even busier and do things for God.  Let’s get involved in every church activity that we can.  Let’s join a ministry team.”  Shake the cup: read the Bible. It’s activity – at least we’re doing something – but it’s far from intimacy.

If we never experience the depth of knowing God, if we never experience ongoing inti­macy with Him, if we never get to pull the layers back and LIVE to tell about it, if we never risk and get to be loved by God, then our hearts will redirect toward other things – places where our heart is numbed – where at least the void of emptiness is filled.

So, how’s your intimacy with God right now?  Is it happening?

Your heart is in desperate need of repair.  You need to be able to pull the layers back. You will never be fully alive until the layers are pulled back, your brokenness is re­vealed, and you find yourself still fully embraced by the Father.

Has it been a long time since you’ve been there, and now you’re afraid of what might come up? Maybe you’ve never gone there.  And there’s a really good reason for that.

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