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Video Transcript:

Hey, we’re back! We promised in our last blog to do a follow-up on the wonderful good news crews for married couples that we got to experience a few weeks ago. As we mentioned, one of the wonderful things we have done for our marriage was an annual directed retreat, a seminar, a course, or something that would challenge us to grow and something that we could really help our relationship with.

I love the “Discover Memory” part, but it’s just something that maybe sometimes it’s just reassuring and sometimes it’s brand new. But these experiences really happen, the lifeblood of keeping us fresh, vibrant, and filled, so that we really have something to give to others. However, cruising, yeah, cruising. You hear me, you know it’s like you said, it’s a double whammy, but sort of “whammy” is kind of a negative thing, like you’re getting bombarded, which in some ways you are because there’s so much to do. But we had the beautiful experience of having Mass every day. We had wonderful speakers every day to challenge and encourage us, and we got to enjoy the ship. Yeah, we got to eat, have our room made every day, morning, day, yes, even turned down at night with little decorated towels.

We got the most magnificent entertainment. The performers were just amazing. They are so great, and the aquatic show was especially mind-blowing. I don’t know how you could do that even on a stage that’s not moving. Well, it did remind us of the show we saw from Circus Soleil, so true, wonderful, wonderful.

But what did we learn? Okay, what did we learn? Well, at least one speaker, um, well, it’s hard. I mean, there were so many great speakers, and I can’t hone it down to one, but so many of the messages are things that maybe we knew before, but we really needed to be reminded of. Yeah, the first one was on gratitude. That was a great refresher. I know we heard that before because we always thought about having an attitude of gratitude, but it comes and goes. It’s something that we just didn’t make conscious in our life. I mean, we think about it every once in a while, but what we really got turned on by was that scientific studies, especially since COVID, have now shown the health benefits of having gratitude in your life and how it, you know, staves off depression and all those horrible things. And so, you know, we were challenged to say, “Well, before we even get out of bed, what are we grateful for?” And now, we are trying to point out to each other things we’re grateful for, things that just crop up.

For me, with you, it’s your unselfishness, how you so often come up to me and tell me I am beautiful and that you love my hair or my eyes or so many things that make you happy that you’re my husband. Exactly. And you know, I mentioned to you this morning how patient you were when I was trying to explain something, and I just was fumbling all over myself because you know that I speak to think, and you think to speak, and it frustrates you when I’m trying to get it out, but thank you for your patience. Yes, exactly. So, yes, this is a fun game, and I’m so happy that we’ve got this attitude so we can laugh about it.

And lastly is what we actually touched on in our blog on our website, and that is the challenge to live with joy. I know so many people right now that are going through tough times and we’re praying for all of them. And, yet, they have that sparkle in their eye that they have peace in their heart that only comes from God and that’s what keeps  joy with them. Absolutely, I mean, I think many people confuse joy with happiness and happiness is something that just comes and goes. It’s fleeting so you just can’t be happy all the time but whether it’s good or bad you can be joyful and it’s it’s not a connection that we made.

I think we were mostly looking to be happy all the time right and that’s probably why we didn’t experience the same kind of joy that we’ve seen some of the others do so I think that was like the biggest challenge that we took from the cruise to really make joy to an integral part of our life not just happiness. Yeah. So, we’re gonna do our next blog coming up shortly in the middle of February on prioritizing our relationship. Especially for those of you that have children. How do you prioritize each other and so look forward to that. Yeah, how do you make it so that you have lots and lots to give your kids because your
couple relationship is so strong.

We thank you for listening.  God bless all of you.

Bye bye!

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