We recently went on our 4th marriage retreat! As always, it was the perfect time to reconnect and reevaluate our marriage, our family life, and our prayer life together. By now, we’ve realized that the enemy likes to attack us in the days and weeks after we return from a marriage retreat. Last year, when we got in a huge fight on the way home! Thankfully, God made sure to remind us early on in this retreat that the enemy can be sneaky…

Throughout the weekend, there are several periods of “couple reflection time” – we spend about an hour or so with just the two of us, praying together, answering reflection questions, and talking about how life is going and what we can do to improve.

During the very first couple reflection time of the weekend, we were sitting on a bench in front of a pond, filled with fish and turtles. The weather was beautiful, so we were enjoying the outdoors while having a great conversation – bringing up struggles in our marriage and how to grow together. That short time together was so fruitful, and we were feeling pretty good about it while excited about the rest of the weekend. We knew God was with us and could feel the Holy Spirit moving!

As we closed that time together in prayer, we both opened our eyes at the same time and realized there was a snake in the water, swimming across right in front of us. From then on, we were both distracted in our prayer and couldn’t take our eyes off the snake. (With good reason – snakes are the worst!)

Afterwards, we couldn’t help but think of what a great metaphor that was in married life (and life in general). There are times where we are doing really well in our relationship with God and with each other, and that’s exactly when the enemy is going to try to distract us. A lot of times we won’t even realize our focus is being drawn away from what’s important.

We all know that the enemy is going to attack us when we’re weak, but we tend to forget that he can be sneaky and distract us when we’re strong too.

That’s why it’s important to come together on a regular basis, to share our hearts with each other. We need to make sure we’re keeping our focus on God and not being drawn away by the enemy.

A marriage retreat is a great time for us to do that – and why we try to go on one every year – but sometimes life circumstances don’t allow for us to go away for a weekend. That’s okay, though! We can still set aside time together – whether it’s a few hours one day, or an overnight date, or any other scenario – where we reevaluate all areas of life and where we have intentional conversation together.

“To heal the wounds of sin, man and woman need the help of the grace that God in his infinite mercy never refuses them. Without his help man and woman cannot achieve the union of their lives for which God created them ‘in the beginning.’”  -The Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1608

Here’s our video after our last marriage retreat, where we share our takeaway and why we go on retreats often:

And here’s the video we did after our retreat last year, when we got in a fight on the way home: