Last week, Jerad & I wrapped up our last meeting with the priest that has been helping us with our marriage prep work. I'm really glad that it worked out for us to finish all of our sessions during Jerad's "downtime" between his California and Nebraska harvesting seasons. He'll be back in the field within a couple of weeks, so we're working to get a lot of wedding items taken care of now.
The first marriage prep task that Jerad & I took on was attending an Engaged Encounter weekend before he left for California. It was an intense weekend (started on Friday evening & went through Sunday afternoon), focused on our relationship and what we want for the future, both as inidividuals & as a couple. After that weekend, we met with a priest in Kearney 4 times, for at least an hour each session. During our first meeting, we took a "test" - individually (the FOCCUS pre-marriage inventory), which shows patterns of strengths and areas where a couple may need to devote more attention. During the other sessions, we went through the questions that we were asked and discussed what we thought about the questions and our responses. Jerad & I talked A LOT early on in our relationship, so we really didn't have any big surprises that came out during our sessions. Even though we'd talked about almost everything already, this was a good reminder of how important communication is to a relationship through all stages. The priest advised us that there will be 3 things that we'll probably fight over during the course of our marriage - money, children, and sex.
We have one more class to take, and a few paperwork items to take care of, then we can be "officially" ready to be married! Pretty exciting if you ask me!
122 days to go! (Can't believe we're almost down to the 100 mark already!!!)
~Katie
