Ah it's been a while since I've blogged. So here's the update recently.
June - engagement party
July - engaged encounter and 1 year anniversary.
August - FOCCUS inventory.
So far we've discovered that we're okay and we can still get married. Phew!!
Engaged encounter was pretty good. The format was basically:
- hear a talk from a married couple on some issue like Unity in Marriage, or Finances in Marriage, or Children etc.
- Then journal on a bunch of questions relating to the talk separate from your "potential spousal unit" as they call them
- get back together and read your P.S.U.'s response and then talk about it.
It was a neat process. All in all, Jon and I had talked about.... oh 95% of the stuff brought up. It wasn't all new. But I did discover a lot about myself. It was also a good examination of the way I show love and go about loving in a self-sacrificial way. I think that was more of the spin Jon and I took on it anyways, becuase most of the material wasn't incredibly Catholic.
It wasn't anti-Catholic, I'd just say it was a little vague. The whole weekend was kind of a strange attempt at ecumenism at a Catholic Engaged Encounter, yet still fruitful for us and definitely worth going to. Especially after the bethrothal pledge part! So cool, but I won't ruin the surprise for those of you who don't know what it is. It's just darned cool. At least Jon's pledge to me was amazing. For those of you who have had the pleasure of reading his poetry/writing you can probably imagine what this would be like.
Hmm....as for the other stuff. The engagement party was hilarious. If you have "friended" me on facebook you may have seen some strange pictures from the games we played at the party. It was also really cool to have western people, friends from home, my family, and Jon's family all there having fun and eating, as Jess put it,
enough food to feed a small African nation, as is Filipino custom.
We took the
FOCCUS test this weekend.
If you're wondering what that is you can google it.
I was a little apprehensive about taking it at first because it sounded like a compatibility test.
(
It gave me the feeling that if we passed this test we should get married, and if we didn't then we shouldn't, black and white, tough beans, try again later. Ick!)And while it sort of is a test like that, it's really just an inventory to make sure that you've talked about various things that a couple should talk about before getting married. It shows you how much your agreement as a couple on certain issues agrees with the ideal Christian marriage.
For instance one of the questions might be "I am concerned that abusive relationships in the past will affect my role as a husband/wife" and then you check agree, disagree, or undecided.
There are certain topics like financial issues, family of origin, personality, communication, views on sex etc. So you take the inventory. Someone scores it, it was the PAFF at MQP that did ours, and then you get back together with the scorer and discuss the places where you disagreed with each other, and the places where you disagreed with the test's preferred answers (basically the preferred answer is the answer that you'd want if you were in a well functioning Catholic relationship) .
Well we scored very well. I think the test scorer even seemed a little surprized at how well we did, so things are cool. No more test anxiety. And again, even though I doubted and was a little anxious it was fruitful and well worth it. As it turns out, there are also a few things we discovered that we haven't discussed in detail. So, yeah, cool.
I think it would be great if all couples discerning marriage had to take that inventory to make sure that they've talked about all that stuff. Though, I wonder if that's what happens during regular marriage prep anyways. It's interesting how this stuff works.
Anyways, today is the
Feast of the Transfiguration of our Lord. I hope you are having a wonderful summer and for those of you who take "vacay" during this time I hope you are being renewed and transformed so you're up and raring to go spread some more good news once the fall hits. I feel like it's Advent or Lent with all this preparation and anticipation. God is so cool.
UIOGD
