Mo-Ranch Couples’ Weekend Retreat

Every married couple has been there. Life goes from the exciting questions like,”What great new restaurant should we try?” to “What’s for dinner?”  and “Did you figure out where you’d like to go on vacation this weekend?” to “Did you pick up the dry cleaning this week?”

Probably not exactly what you were thinking life would be like during those first moments of your relationship. So now, a few years or a few decades into your marriage, as you stare down the day-to-day, or even if you are wanting to get your marriage off on the right tempo, it’s time. It’s time for a weekend to dream, plan, and reconnect.  It’s time to get back to those fun questions, belly laughs, and simple pleasures (if you call zip lining a simple pleasure!) with your loved one.

Any of this resonate with you and your partner? I am about to make your life easy:  how about spending a weekend away in the beautiful Hill Country west of Austin to discover or rediscover the DNA of your relationship at the Mo-Ranch Couples Retreat. I am honored to be serving as the retreat’s facilitator and am looking so forward to getting to know each couple that attends and helping them craft the story of their marriage.

Wait – what?  What is the DNA of my relationship? Good question and thanks for asking! I cannot tell you what that is, but after years of marrying couples, and living in the world of marriage, I can help you discover that DNA.  Simply stated, though, I think of the DNA of a relationship as that core element, watch word, experience, or agreement that will help you get through all of the good and the tough times in life.  It’s the bones of your relationship.  It is, perhaps, the very spark that lit between the two of you.

For my husband and me, it’s connection.  Given our personalities and backgrounds, we could easily lean into being highly independent people, but long ago – in the beginning as they might say – we found a comfortable connection that honored who we were as individuals, where we came from, and what we visualized for our family unit in the future.  So, this watch word – connection – guides our decisions and lives.  We vacation together, we are often up in each other’s business and faces.  We have inside jokes, play board games together, value brutal honesty, and show up for each other.  We already anticipate big shifts in our family connections as we anticipate our oldest flying from the nest next year. So, we are already explicitly talking about about connection and reconnection next year.

Are you already thinking, “Hmmmm, maybe our DNA is about [insert some words]?”  Good.  I hope so!  That means I am doing my job. As a long-time wedding officiant in the Central Texas area, I help couples marry every weekend, and use the concept of Marriage DNA to craft beautiful and authentic wedding ceremonies. Through pre-marital coaching and pastoral work, I help couples that are just getting started or are decades into their couplehood figure out their marriage’s DNA, or redefine it, or even bury it and start again as a way to live into this strange and beautiful story of marriage.

I hope you will join me for this adventure at Mo-Ranch! We will be zip-lining, hiking, canoeing, having a nice dinner, painting wine glasses, sleeping in, bird-watching, and reading books at MoRanch’s Couples’ Weekend.  We will be discovering and rediscovering your couple-hood along the way, too.  Come kick back, have some fun, and raise a toast to you. The cleaning can be picked up another day, after all!  Cheers!