With CANA Welcome, Claudia & Knut discovered a new path for their relationship which became the basis of their further journey.

We are Claudia (51) and Knut (52) and live with our children Ole (17) and Grete (14) in Berlin, Pankow.

Our journey together with God began around 2013. Claudia was baptized as a Protestant in her childhood, but faith did not play a role in her family. Knut grew up in a thoroughly atheist family and was deeply critical of the belief in a God.

Through a very close contact, many conversations and the testimony of a friend, Knut agreed to participate in an Alpha course, encountered God during the program, and was baptized in 2014. Claudia accompanied this journey and progressively found her way back to a living faith in our parish.

Through life in the parish, we received an offer from Chemin Neuf to participate in a CANA Welcome course.

At that time, in our couple life we had a hard time to talk together and we were “living side by side”, with a turbulent and work-intensive everyday life. In our personal faith journey and daily life, each of us went our own way and we were less and less talking to each other.

We both got involved with CANA Welcome. With different expectations or even hopes, with different levels of curiosity, but both of us with a fair amount of shyness.

However, this shyness disappeared on the first evening. The welcoming atmosphere and the warmth of the inviting couple made it easy to get involved with the topics presented. The proposal of a time just for us two as a couple and the method proposed for our conversation were especially a great benefit. This simple form of listening without interrupting, giving space to the other person was great to experience and became the basis for our further journey.

In the same year, we participated to the CANA Week and, when looking back, we can say that this common path saved our relationship as a couple. An important highlight of this time is to realize that it is a great gift to listen to the other person, to feel their concerns and moods, to let differences persist, to look at oneself and not to start trying to change the other person by any means.  This does not only apply to both of us, we also feel the benefit of this experience when dealing with our children or in meeting other people in general.

However, it is a path and not always easy. Every day we have to take a new step.