Welcome to Family Policy Matters, a weekly podcast and radio show produced by the North Carolina Family Policy Council. Hi, I'm John Rust and president of NC Family, and each week on Family Policy Matters, we welcome experts and policy leaders to discuss topics that impact faith and family here in North Carolina. Our prayer is that this program will help encourage and equip you to be a voice of persuasion for family values in your community, state, and nation. And now here's the host of Family Policy Matters, Tracy DeVett Griggs. Welcome to Family Policy Matters.
From the beginning, Christian marriage has been something worth defending, nurturing, and even sacrificing for. As a matter of fact, Valentine's Day honors a minister who was martyred for defying the Roman Emperor's ban on marriage. Here at NC Family, we believe strong marriages are essential to strong families. Families, strong churches, and even a healthy society, which is why we're grateful for ministries that come alongside couples, not because marriage is easy, but because it is sacred and worth investing in.
Well, today we're joined by Fred and Anita von Cannon, longtime leaders with such a ministry. Weekend to remember marriage conferences or a project of family life ministries. Fred and Anita von Cannon, welcome to Family Policy Matters. Thank you. Good morning.
Good morning. All right, well, tell us about Weekends to Remember. What happens there and what is the goal for the weekend? Weekend to Remember is a marriage conference getaway. It starts on Friday evenings and it goes until Sunday at lunchtime, about noon.
And it's a time for couples to get away and invest in their marriages at a speaker-led conference. The goal of the conference is really oneness. The design that God has for marriage starts, you know, in Genesis with Adam and Eve, right? And so bringing two to become one. And so oneness is a natural destination for a godly marriage and it's very unnatural.
And just if you don't do anything about it, then the normal then would be to drift apart. And so trying to bring a marriage back to oneness is really the focus of the weekends to remember.
Okay. Anything distinct or different about the way you do marriage conferences?
Something that makes them very impactful. Is that they are led by two speaker couples each weekend, and they're different couples. And there's a whole team of people who speak around the country at the events. There's about 80 different weekend to remember events around the country. And there's two couples speaking at each conference.
And so the fact that you get their personal stories and testimonies woven in to the truths about marriage is what makes it unique every time.
So there are people who go every year or every couple years, and it's the same material, but each time it's presented a little differently because the speakers weave their own stories and testimonies in to help highlight different points. And just a quick little thought there that a lot of people, and I'll speak for the guys, are like, I don't want to do one of these. I don't want to be in some big, you know, self-help kind of thing with a bunch of other people. There is no, you're not sharing any of your, you know, dirty laundry or anything. Like that.
This is, but really, even though you're in a conference with hundreds of people, our Raleigh event will have seven or eight hundred people, but you're still there with your spouse, and that's the only person that's really there that's answering, that's looking at things, that's talking through things with you.
So it's not a group therapy. Yeah.
Okay. Anita, you mentioned that the couples who lead these conferences often share their story with the conference. Do you want to share a little bit of that story with our listeners today? Oh, our story. Sure.
So we are about to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary, which is really hard for me to believe, but it's true. And we are a blended family.
So when we got married, Fred had three children from a previous marriage. And then we brought that all together. And now we added two children to the mix. And so I always say three plus two is five.
So 25 years and five kids and 10 grandchildren. But we came from very different backgrounds. And my parents were married. For 56 years, and Fred's parents were not. There's 11 marriages between my mom and dad.
So, brokenness and just unbelievable the way we grew up and completely 180 degrees out of phase of the way she grew up.
So, that's why sometimes, and that was, you know, the first time we met family life was in an event that changed our life because it changed my life because it showed me a lot of things that I had just had no idea of just growing up the way that we did. And so, we have family life to thank for our marriage, that's for sure. Right. I think too, the kind of how we got here was because that event was so impactful to our marriage. The takeaway at the end, kind of like what you were asking before about what's the goal, besides choosing oneness, the last kind of highlight or focus for the weekend to remember materials is to think about your legacy and the idea of what is the legacy you're leaving.
We're all leaving one, and so to do it consciously was very impactful for us. And so, that's how. we got involved was we realized how helpful this was to our marriage and part of the legacy we wanted to leave not only for our own children and grandchildren, but was for a legacy of helping equip other people's marriages to have help and hope. Talk a little bit about how important faith is to the way that you teach the marriage conference. Do people need to be Christians necessarily to come?
Can anyone benefit from what you teach? The conference is available and open to anyone. The truth of the gospel and Christian faith is presented during the conference because that is the foundation for the hope we have, is the hope we have in Christ. But it's not required that you're a Christian to come. There's a lot of truth that comes from the Bible that is true, even if you don't believe the whole thing.
And so there's pieces and takeaways that people can get that would be a blessing to their marriage. And I think that's one of the reasons why the Weekend to Remember is such a successful event is that whether people are Christians or not, people, if you ask them, they would Let's say they want a good marriage, and so people are looking for what's the secret, how do you do that? And so, there's things to take away. And no matter where you come into the weekend, like one of the first things is rate your marriage on a scale of one to ten. And no matter where you come in, people will leave moving forward.
So, whether you come in at an eight and you leave at a nine or a ten, or you come in at a one and you leave at a four or a five, there's progress made and there's hope. That's probably the most frequent comment: I have hope to go forward. You're listening to Family Policy Matters, a weekly radio show and podcast produced by the North Carolina Family Policy Council. This is just one of the many ways NC Family works to educate and inform citizens about issues that impact faith and family here in North Carolina. Our vision is to create a state and nation where God is honored, religious freedom flourishes, families thrive, and life is cherished.
For more information about NC Family and how you can partner with us in pursuit of this vision, visit our website at ncfamily.org and be sure to sign up to receive our email updates, action alerts, and Family North Carolina magazine. You can also follow us on social media at NC Family Policy. That's at NC Family Policy. What about stories? Are you at liberty to share a couple of examples of how people benefit from these weekends?
Every one of these that we do, there are stories that we could, you know, recount. And one I'll never forget is, and I'll just be general with it, is when you come in on Friday afternoon for the registration, you come in at like five o'clock or so, five to six or seven is registration, and then it starts. And couples come in, and some of them are just bounding in and so happy and everything because they might do this every year and they're just so excited to get away and do this. And some, let's just say, maybe aren't as excited, at least both of them aren't. And there was one where the wife came in and about, and you're thinking, where's your husband?
About 20 feet behind, he came walking like he was. You know, getting dragged to prison or something. And we obviously, you know, we kind of kept an eye on that couple and they didn't even sit next to each other on Friday night. And then Saturday, they sat with like maybe one chair in between them instead of three or four. And then Saturday night they were together.
And then by Sunday, they did the vow renewal. And, you know, they were just, they had found that oneness. That's a really fun story to tell for these people because it was literally a physical visualization of that thing of coming in, having drifted apart, and then choosing oneness one step at a time, drawing closer. There's also literally every year the testimony of people who have said, I have divorce papers in my purse and this is it. If this doesn't do something this weekend, we're going forward with divorce.
And every time there are people who comments or testimonies back is we tore up the divorce papers. And so it's very exciting to see. Tangible evidence of this making a difference, that having hope and then having help, there's lots of resources that are shared at the conference, like actual books and Audios and Bible studies that you can purchase. They, you know, have those things all available there. And so it's really exciting to see people catch that vision too.
For then, just like we did, I would say, not just, oh, our marriage is better, but then having the idea of like, oh, wow, this can help me. And there's other people I'm thinking of that it can help, and I want to share it with them. And so that's the exciting part, too, is to see people moving from isolation to oneness to impact, to impact the people around them, whether it's in their family, their friends, their neighbors, their church, or just their broader community. People understand that their own marriage is being watched and seen and can have an impact on the people around them. We said at the beginning that good marriages aren't just about those two people and, of course, their family, but also about making a healthier culture, community.
Why is that the case? Why is marriage so important even to our culture? It's very clear that God designed marriage, that God created all of us. His image and likeness, and male and female, and that the two shall become one. That whole design, when we go away from that, when we go toward the culture, when we go toward how the world wants to do it and how Satan wants to do it, there's nothing but destruction.
There's nothing but destruction. And so, the whole premise of family life generally in these conferences, these weekends to remember, is that God's plan of creation and then the fall and then restoration and redemption, you know, that plan is really kind of how the weekend to remember is laid out and how it follows. And again, when you see these stories, you can see people that came in and that they are still kind of in that creation mode, you know, they're newlyweds or whatever. And then you see people in the middle of the fall. And then, you know, hopefully we're doing some restoration there during the weekend.
We're about out of time, but as we mark Valentine's Day, what would you say to couples? or single folks who are contemplating the importance of marriage in their own lives, especially at this time of the year?
Well, I would say that marriage is not easy.
Some might even say it's hard, but it's worth it. And that marriage is worth investing in and working on. Nothing, like you can't expect your car to just continuously work and run in a proper way if you don't take it for checkups. And so your marriage is the same. It is the coming together of two people.
And so this idea of taking kind of checkups every once in a while, whether you go once a year or once every couple years to a weekend to remember event, it's going to be a time to just push the pause button on the whole real life part of it and just have some time away. I think that's probably the most important part of it for us is busy people and always things going on, but just intentionally taking that time to get away to pause and think about where we are, where we're going, how are we doing, and to invest in our marriages. It's really important. And you can go to a local one. We have one here in Raleigh.
It's usually October, November timeframe. I think this year it's November, and there'll be seven or eight hundred people there. And it's a great event. And we're the city directors for that event.
So we're kind of partial to it. But there's 80 to 100 of these across the country. And there's one in Charlotte in May. Yeah, there are ones in North Carolina, but there's ones within a few hour drive. But then you could, if you want to go to Sonoma, California, you can do that and do a real getaway.
And so they're all over, but they, you know, Valentine's Day is a good time to kind of think about this and reorient. But this is an effort. Marriage is work. It's hard work, but it is absolutely worth it. And if people want to find one of these weekends to attend, they would just Google Weekend to Remember?
Yep, you can Google it. It'll show up pretty quick. Or it's at familylife.com/slash weekend to remember. And it has a map of all the locations around the country. They're usually from like February to To June, and then they take a break for the summer, and then it's from September to December.
So you can find a weekend to remember near you or take a destination getaway.
Okay, well, thank you very much. Fred and Anita Von Cannon with Weekend to Remember Marriage Conferences. Thank you so much for being with us today on Family Policy Matters. Thank you. Thank you, Tracy.
Thank you for listening to Family Policy Matters. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave us a review. To learn more about NC Family and the work we do to promote and preserve faith and family in North Carolina, visit our website at ncfamily.org. That's ncfamily.org. And check us out on social media at NC Family Policy.
Thanks and may God bless you and your family.
