What does marriage breakdown look like? Is it loud fights and slamming doors? Or is it more subtle? Constant busyness to avoid the pain of life’s challenges. Silence that feels more and more like a heavy yoke. Walls that have been built so tall and so thick that two people are more like distant roommates than husband and wife.
What does marriage breakdown feel like? Lonely. Overwhelming. Hopeless.
Too many couples are struggling, unable to work through their pain, so they continue feeling hurt, frustrated and alone.
THE PROBLEM
The divorce rate among Christians is estimated at 1 in 3 and over 50 per cent for couples who remarry.
This breakdown in marriage is fundamentally affecting children, spouses, communities and our nation – leaving a legacy of generational consequence, especially for children, that includes emotional scars, financial hardship, crisis in faith, a breakdown in family relations, and so on.
This crisis is compounded by the absence of Christ-centred programs that provide an effective response to couples who feel their only option is divorce. Couples often have access to marriage education and traditional counselling but lack access to intensive clinical counselling programs designed to deal with crisis situations.
Canadian couples need to know there is an alternative to divorce that works and that can save their marriage.
THE SOLUTION
The Saving Marriages | Restoring Hope initiative is an urgent response to the need to save and restore marriages that are in crisis. Part of this initiative is bringing the proven Hope Restored marriage intensive program from the U.S. to Canada.
Hope Restored is a personalized, multi-day intensive counselling program specifically designed for couples on the brink of divorce. It has been running successfully for 17 years in the United States and has provided real help and hope to over 4,500 couples. Its uniquely holistic counselling approach combines the heart, the mind and a couple’s faith to help them bridge significant marital divides and experience true restoration.
And it works!
The couples who come to these retreats are facing a significant amount of distress and many have even started the divorce process. They are often facing complex issues such as communication breakdown, infidelity, intimacy and sexual issues, financial strain, blended families, crises with children, and career conflicts. The counselling they receive at the intensives is so focused that they are able to achieve something in days that would otherwise take months.
And of those surveyed two years after attending, over 84% reported that they were still together! This is unparalleled and it is considered to be the most successful program of its kind in the world.
Your gift today will ensure that couples across the country have access to proven marriage-saving principles through our new Saving Marriages | Restoring Hope initiative that provides Canadian couples with the Hope Restored intensive retreat program, new online marriage articles and resources based on these principles, and more.
You can bring this program and its proven principles to Canadians.
A friend of the ministry who is passionate about saving and strengthening marriages in Canada has generously offered to double any gift given to this campaign – up to $300,000! While this matching opportunity has now been fulfilled, your crucial support is still needed to save Canadian marriages.
You can save an at-risk marriage!
