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  Family - Weekend Effect

Our Christmas Miracle

Tracy & Joleyn Larson

Happy Holidays dear family, friends
& Marriage Encountered lovers. :)

What a miracle this past year has been for our family. Starting out, I wonder how I would possibly express how blessed we truly are. I wonder if I could even share ‘our’ story with so many of you. Would anyone understand? Would anyone want to hear? As hard as this will be, we want to share ‘our’ story. If it brings hope to one family, it needs to be shared. If it renews passion in one marriage, it needs to be shared. So this year, we won’t be telling you about our super duper fantastic house, car and jobs we have, and no we won’t be bragging about our 4—ever so beautiful, ever so talented—children. Instead we will share our story about our journey towards our Christmas miracle.

I begin by taking you back to our last Christmas. Tracy was in Bismarck, the kids and I were in MC. You see, we had spent the last couple of months apart, and the Christmas holiday was included in that separation. This separation was not due to work, or family related business, but because our marriage had fallen apart. We had mentally and physical drifted apart and we were living a singles-married life. The little things that once attracted us together had become the center of our arguments. We were tired of fighting and questioned why two completely different people could have ever gotten married in the first place. That was our easy out, we thought...we just don’t click anymore. Our new family of 6 was physically separated, and there was little celebration through the holiday seasons. Often times I prayed, wondering “Why do we have to go through this?” “Why is there so much hurt, and pain?” Little did we know God was planting something inside us both. The time apart did us good, and God didn’t let us down, we didn’t drown in the flood. Little by little, forgiveness entered into our hearts, and that was the beginning of a New Year and a ‘new’ road ahead. It was hard to admit, that our marriage was not good, but it was even harder facing the fact that those same tough issues we struggled with before, were still there. Along came the frustration all over again. Things didn’t change, even though we wanted to start over, we didn’t know how to. We thought our ship was finally sinking and we were becoming another statistic. That is when Marriage Encounter entered our life. We thought one last try. We would do it for the kids—we owed them this. So we signed up for the March encounter. That would be the longest three months I know I ever went through. We struggled daily with the little things, and big issues were excruciating, but we swam through the storm and we didn’t sink. Finally—a miracle in itself—our Weekend came and finally we learned how to deal with conflict, not avoid it. We did something that we never really knew how to do together—and that was communicate. We learned to listen with our hearts and not our heads. We learned about our personality styles and how completely opposite we were—no wonder it was hard to click. We stopped trying to change each other and we became more forgiving and accepting of our individual personalities. Our Weekend was beautiful, it was life changing, and it was part of God’s plan. I’m not saying our issues were resolved instantly through our Weekend, but we were given the opportunity to start changing some things and we did, we chose to love again. We renewed our vows that weekend, and made a promise to love each other forever. We had a new anniversary, now.

Even after the Weekend, our journey was hard. Getting back into the real world was not easy and we had burned many bridges between the two of us. The rebuilding has taken time and we still work on things daily, but the trust, the love, the happiness that has been rebuilt is even stronger than before. We are proud of what we have been through, but, more so, prouder of where we are now.

Now here we are, almost a whole year later. God has renewed our sacrament of marriage, he has put forgiveness in our hearts, and has helped us accept each other’s feelings. We hope we sparked some emotions in you. Maybe inspired you to live out your sacrament of marriage, or your personal relationships with family and friends to their fullest possible ability.

This year, we will be celebrating Christmas together,
and that is our story—our Christmas miracle.

With all of God’s peace, love and joy that can possibly fill your hearts
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Tracy & Joleyn Larson
Tracy Jr., Ryan, Alex & Jhacie

"In order to feel the worth of the anchor,
we need to feel the stress of the storm."
God is our "anchor for the soul, firm and secure." Hebrews 6:19

PS...We are so excited about the Marriage Encounter Weekend, so when we invite you to a Weekend, we want to ensure you that it doesn't mean we think your marriage is bad, or you are doing it wrong. We are just so blessed to be a part of this organization, and we feel an urgency to excite other married couples to enhance their marriages. We are helping to change the world one couple at a time.

Republished with permission.

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