Blessed 2005, 3 Kids, matched by True Parents
I have been matched and blessed by True Parents in 2005 and I have been happily blessed for more than 14 years but happily does not mean that our lives and our relationship are happy and jolly all the time.
When in 2005, while I was in my 1st year of STF I suddenly felt the urge to go to True Parent’s matching and blessing a fight started between my heart and my mind. My heart was telling that I was ready and that it was the right time while my mind was telling that I was not ready, that had too many shortcomings and that I am not ready to be a good husband. The only way I could finally reconcile my thoughts and feelings is by admitting that I was not ready to be a good husband but that I was ready to commit to become a good one and to make the relationship work no matter what. Right after getting matched and blessed I felt very happy because I immediately felt accepted and appreciated by my wife. But I felt that I really needed to work on myself in order to be ready not only to be a good husband, but the great husband she truly deserved. So I decided to do a 2nd and then 3rd year of STF to keep working on my faith, character and relationships. This is really something that helped so much in really being ready to create a harmonious relationship with my wife.
We actually only started living together 2 years and half after the blessing while doing public mission. Even though we had a great relationship it was definitely not easy but it was a great way to start by truly living as a couple for a higher purpose. When you start living together and you don’t focus on a higher purpose than your couple, the danger to focus only on your problems if things are difficult or to only focus on your own happiness if things are going well. Having a higher purpose to focus on can be a motivation to resolve problems in the couple or can be a way to make others benefit of the love and happiness you share as a couple. I really believe that living the blessing is combining the best aspects of a traditional marriage which are commitment and higher purpose and the best aspect of a modern marriage which is a deep, harmonious and fulfilling love relationship.
After STF we started living together and had more time for romance and developing our relationship as a couple and we had beautiful romantic wedding 5 years after the Blessing. I also went back to my studies, started working, got involved in CARP and we had our first two children. After a while all these different responsibilities and activities were too much for me and I stopped being actively involved in CARP and the movement. Also in this very busy day to day life I completely stopped taking time for myself to reflect, receive inspirations, pray, set internal goals and keep improving my character like I was doing on STF. This started to affect my priorities and I started to focus a lot more on career success and income than family and community. Luckily our faith and relationship as a couple was solid and truly committed to go through this challenging period of time.
I was struggling with addictions and at one moment I experienced a burn out because of working too much and it is my wife who helped to go through this difficult time by sharing deeply and honestly with her on a daily basis. After a while I got better, I started working less but we kept our daily personal sharing as a tradition and it deepened our relationship as a couple tremendously even though we had been blessed for 10 years already. We started to take more time together as a couple by asking our parents to take care of our young children and this was very important to keep a romantic and loving relationship once you have children. We always had a good relationship despite disagreements and tensions that come on the way and one of our most important practices was to always resolve our conflicts quickly. I never thought that our relationship could improve so much and we could so much in love even after many years as a couple.
When our 3rd child was born I even reduced more my working hours in order to spend more time with family and the church community. I started to take time again to deeply reflect and work my personal development and since then our relationship went to a whole other level and I realized how much I had forgotten about the importance of working on yourself and focusing on a higher purpose in order to improve your relationship. When you feel more at peace on a individual level it is just so much easier to be emotionally grounded and stable for your spouse and children. And when you focus on a higher purpose you don’t focus too much on you own problems, you have a higher motivation to overcome them and especially you experience the fulfillment of helping others.
Blessed Family Department 