The theme for this weekend's WWME Section 6 and 7 Convention was We Are Called. The Saturday presentations were all on different phrases from the liturgical song that we know so well, and the band did a really nice, driving 4/4 arrangement of the song that we used throughout the weekend. But the entire tone for the weekend was set by Friday night's keynote address.
The one thing we haven't brought in from the car yet is our bag with our conference materials in it, so I can't consult with my notes at the moment, so I will wait until later to share about the couple that presented and some of their supporting points. But there were a few ideas that really stood out.
The theme of their talk was Called to Adventure. Most of us, they reminded us, when we were first married, had a sense of embarking on a great adventure with the person we married. We had no idea what life would bring us, but knew we wanted to face whatever it might be together. We often had a "bring it on" attitude; we knew that we'd be okay no matter what happened as long as with we were with this special person for the rest of our lives.
"But what makes for an adventure?" they asked us. The unexpected, the challenges, the people we're spending it with, the out-of-the-ordinary, we responded. Yet as these things arrive in the course of our day-to-day living, we often fail to recognize them as elements of our adventure together. Instead, we view them as drudgery, as (my words) a pain in the ass. But there are ways for us to approach these same circumstances that allow us to embrace them as part of the adventure we're on, and they're not simply a matter of having a better attitude about them - though that is a part of it, as well. More on those details later after I've consulted with my notes.
The Saturday talks reminded us of our call:
to serve one another, giving ourselves to each other in what we do each day.
to act with justice in our marriage, but justice according to God's plan rather than the world's. We have learned that God's justice toward us is actually something we have learned to call "mercy," and doesn't involve keeping score against each other as we frequently tend to do, even if we don't intend to.
to love tenderly, choosing to express our love for each other even in ways that are counter to our nature, and especially in those moments when our spouse is acting in a way that makes loving them a challenge.More on these later, too . . .
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