Germaine & Bruno talk about their CANA Week
We have transcribed verbatim the oral testimony of Bruno & Germaine who share what they discovered during CANA Week.
HIM. I am Bruno, husband of Germaine and this is Germaine, my wife. We have just spent a week in Melong as part of the CANA Week. This week was enriching on a personal level and on the level of our couple. On a personal level, the CANA week allowed me to implement the lesson I received during CANA Welcome program and to strengthen my Christian faith, I became a little more a believer than before! On a personal level, this week allowed me to strengthen the love I have for my wife with gestures of tenderness and other aspects of our life together. This week has allowed me to finally understand what forgiveness is, to know how to grant forgiveness and to know how to ask for forgiveness. For the first time in over 30 years, I relearned how to write a love letter. So, I wrote a love letter to my wife. On a collective level, CANA Week has made the love between my wife and I much stronger; we are now a stronger, more solid couple and this week has finally given us a better understanding of the meaning of our lives.
HER. Thank you. I am Germaine, the wife of Bruno. Everything Bruno said, I validate. For me especially, it allowed me to restore proper relationships in our house, allowed me to rearrange how we serve each other and our children, to have self-control and to try to sweep away my dark corridor, my tunnel. For our couple, it is really a consolidation. And thank you CANA for the love letter I received, after 30 years and a gift that was the umbrella, thank you!
Pierre & Isabelle* are going through a difficult situation
Eight months ago, our couple started to go through a difficult situation.
My wife Isabelle admitted to me, Pierre, that she had contacted a very important debt that represented more than 12 times our monthly savings! In other words, we had to decide to devote the savings of our income for one year to pay off this debt, hoping that we would not have a serious illness in the family to deal with, a bereavement or other extraordinary event.
We entered a very difficult phase. Fortunately, the Lord helped us: He put many opportunities in our path and we were able to pay off a significant part of the debt. However, during this period which lasted more than 8 months, we had to tighten our belts and we were mostly in financial difficulties.
And whenever we were in financial trouble, I would tell Isabelle that it was her fault. But I didn’t realize that these words affected her deeply. Two months before the CANA Fraternal Life Week, she had challenged me on this topic, I tried hard to be better … but I didn’t stop!
During this week of CANA Fraternal Life, we had many opportunities to talk together and during a long time as a couple, Isabelle expressed to me the depth of her pain when listening to my harsh words and I then understood and felt this pain in myself.
This episode gave me the grace to welcome this as a challenge for our couple. And above all, this in-depth dialogue brought joy back into our relationship.
*First names have been changed.