What do I mean by “doing it right this time”?
I am so glad you asked!
I have shared this idea many times down through the years, and some thought it would be great while others possibly thought I was nuts.
This week I would like to explore the idea of “What if we could do one or more of the roles we’ve played in life all over again?” I want you to think with me about marriage, in particular. What if we could figure out what to do differently in the future that would give us a shot at making the next decades much better than the ones we’ve done already. Willing to walk with me and dream again and pray for more than we’ve ever asked or imagined?
The idea I had (still have) is going to be called “Doing It Right…This Time!”. I want to engage some of our experienced marriage mentors in a half-day workshop and invite divorced folks to attend IF they and their ex-spouse are not currently married to someone else. If they ever wondered if they made a mistake and would like to discover the probable cause of the marriage failure and have considered trying to build a better relationship with their former spouse and with their kids, these would be the candidates I would target with invitations and advertisement.
Our venue would be discreet and neutral. The environment we’d create would include relevant information, encouraging music, and a light meal. There would be no cost to the attendees. There would be groups formed to follow up for individuals or even couples who want to look into doing something effective about restoring their relationship or at least their friendship; even those individuals who don’t want to make the same mistakes would be invited to a mentoring relationship with a coach or mentor. In other words, those who want to “do it right this time” would have a place to find out how.
What do you think? Exciting or am I nuts? Regardless of the opinions of others, I am praying about how to pull this off. There are plenty of divorced or divorcing couples around. Who knows? We may even be able to stop some divorces in their tracks. We have seen this happen in the past while doing marriage ministry in conjunction with divorce recovery. Some have left divorce recovery to get into marriage help and healing.
So, this 52 Week Plan article is not about your doing something except praying for me and Carol and those couples who would join us to create this environment. When? Where? Who? How? I don’t know the answers to any of these questions except I do know this. Our Lord Jesus would be thrilled in His heart and our Father God would get great glory by snatching more couples out of their pain and brokenness to “do it right this time”!
What do you think? Know any people who’d be candidates for such an environment? I would love to see or actually launch something like this, but it may be someone younger who’ll catch the vision and by God’s help pull this off. It is thrilling to watch couples come back from divorce (or a path leading to it) to find a loving, committed relationship.