our four year anniversary retreat

Chris has been wanting to do a marriage retreat since we were engaged, and we finally did one this year. In the break between summer classes and the semester starting, we have two weeks to spend with Chris’s parents at their beach house in Rhode Island. Our anniversary falls in this break, so last year we spent the day buying a car in NJ (lol) and went out to sushi. This year we booked ourselves a private retreat on Ender’s Island in Mystic, CT and took two nights away from the girls. We wanted some structured time to reflect on our marriage and pray together, and initially looked into seeing if any Marriage Encounter retreats would work location and date-wise. But the closest one was in Baltimore, so Chris’s dad suggested this little island, and we decided it’d be fun to plan our own time. I’m so glad it worked out this way.

Ender’s Island is a tiny island off the coast of Connecticut that was owned by Thomas and Alys Enders, and sold to the Society of St. Edmund in 1954. It now functions as a retreat space, with a sacred art institute and a small recovery program. We didn’t really know anything about the island before we arrived, but quickly discovered it was a little piece of heaven. I felt God’s love for us in so many details of the place. We had unknowingly booked “the Bishop’s suite,” which was two tiled rooms with views of the ocean and the island gardens from every window.

I was so glad we came in August, when the dahlias and roses were in full bloom. 🙂

Something I hadn’t thought about beforehand was how luxurious it would feel to be served all our meals, and not have to feed babies while we ate. And the food was so good. We ate with men in the recovery program and the priests who were there on retreat. It felt like a special gift to eat with those men, and reminded me of our summer at CityTeam in Oakland … where it all began. There was a group of Korean Catholics on retreat on the island, too, though they ate in the larger dining hall. I loved seeing two Korean grandmas holding hands to support each other as they walked down to the water’s edge.

To honor Chris’s love for structure, we spent time creating a schedule, which was much more enjoyable than I expected. We took a date night in South Bend to get started, and finished it up on the car drive from NJ to RI. During our engagement, we had done an Engaged Encounter retreat, and really liked the format of writing letters to each other about different topics and then talking. So we incorporated letter writing, and used our Engaged Encounter journals for some ideas of topics to discuss. I wanted to do morning runs, Chris wanted to do morning prayer and go to Mass, and we gave ourselves a big chunk of free time. There were some things that changed once we got there – we decided to attend a meditation in the chapel on Wednesday evening and learned that they do morning prayer right before Mass, and forgot the old letters we’d written while dating and engaged that we were going to read back through. Oh well.

The chapel had a huge relic – the arm of St. Edmund. A bit weird, but cool.

And, we got to go sailing! We saw little boats sail past the island and thought, let’s see if we can find a place to go this afternoon. So I happily abandoned my nap plans and we went to the Mystic Seaport Museum. It was an anniversary splurge, because we had to buy tickets to the museum to get to the sailboats, but we ended up seeing some of the ships because they made us wait an hour for the gusts to die down a bit.

Chris was grumpy about that. I thought going on the whaling boat from 1841 was neat. But sailing was definitely a highlight! It was a time of working as a team and enjoying being friends and really embracing our whiteness. Lol.

I wanted to include our schedule in case it might help anyone get started on planning their own private retreat! Individual or for a couple, it’s so worth the time and money. I usually love silent retreats by myself – this was special in that it was prayerful and also fun quality time with Chris.

Happy four years, Chris!

Wednesday

2:00-3:30 Check in, Settle into retreat space

3:30-4:00 Silent Prayer in Chapel

4:00-5:00 Session 1 – Reading Letters

5:00-5:30 Rosary

5:30-6:15 Dinner

6:15-7:15 Session 2 – Marriage Timeline

7:15-8:15 Session 3 – Sex/ NFP/ Intimacy

8:15-9:30 Free Time

9:30-9:45 Night Prayer

9:45 Bedtime

Thursday

6:45-7:00 Wake up, get ready

7:00-7:45 Run

7:45-8:15 Breakfast

8:15-8:30 Shower

8:30-9:00 Morning Prayer

9:00 – 9:45 Mass

9:45-10:00 Silent Prayer

10:00-11:00 Session 4– Conflict/ Communication

11:00-12:00 Session 5 – Relationships with Others

12:00-1:00 Lunch

1:00-3:00 Free Time

3:00-4:00 Session 6 – Finances

4:00-5:00 Session 7 – Budget

5:00-5:30 Rosary

5:30-6:15 Dinner

6:15-7:15 Session 8 – Designing Our Marriage

7:15-8:15 Session 9 – Vision Statement

8:15-9:30 Free Time

9:30-9:45 Night Prayer

9:45 Bedtime

Friday

6:45-7:00 Wake up, get ready

7:00-7:45 Run

7:45-8:15 Breakfast

8:15-8:30 Shower

8:30-9:00 Morning Prayer

9:00 – 9:45 Mass

9:45-10:00 Silent Prayer

10:00-11:00 Pack, Checkout

11:00-12:00 Session 10 – Goal Setting

12:00-1:00 Lunch

1:00 Depart

Designing Our Marriage

Marriage Timeline