...what you'll learn at a marriage conference

Kev and I went to a marriage conference this weekend and it was beyond great for us. :) We had gone on one before and learned about the typical 'I" statements, love languages, how to fight fair, etc.. All those things are good to know and will help to resolve the conflicts that will inevitably come up in a marriage. But this conference took it a step further and covered forgiveness, bitterness, judgments - the deeper root issues that NEED to be resolved if you want to stop fighting about the same kind of things over and over. But the main 'ingredient' to getting healed in these area is: JESUS. He is the one that will expose the areas we need to work on and completely heal us up. After being married for 4 years, we already know that we cannot do this ourselves. In short, these are some of the things we learned this weekend:

1. Negative emotions are not bad - they simply tell you that you feel something is not right and/or you have a deeper issue that needs healing. And it's ok to be angry, if you deal with it in the right way.
2. Many times, 'sinning' is misbehaving out of your past hurts or woundedness - not simply reacting to the current situation. And, man, do we do this way too often. ;)
3. Many times, negative experiences in our lives that were never dealt with causes those wounds that impact us down the line. Sometimes, we don't even have a clear memory of it but it still happened.
4. Because I believe that God is omnipresent and chose my family for me, when they hurt me, it might skew my view of God & cause me to believe lies about Him. (I never even thought about this!)
5. We need to forgive & bless, instead - impossible things to do on my own.
5. In short, we all need Jesus in a bad way!

There was so much packed into the 3 short sessions that we are still processing through. Feel free to ask us about it, though! :) This weekend just made me appreciate God's grace more and revel in the fact that he still loves me despite how messed up I am on the inside. I am so humbled by my 'messed-upness' and I love Him so much more! Thank you, Jesus for this weekend!