Emily and I have a tradition of celebrating our July wedding anniversary with a vacation. We’ve been married for 11 years, and we have gone on a variety of trips, from a tropical cruise, to exploring the Australian Outback, to driving along the coast of California, to spending the night in a historic castle.

It has been increasingly difficult to get away just the two of us since having kids. We still take a special family trip each summer, separate from visiting extended family. It is wonderful to explore a new location with the girls, but it doesn’t give us much restful time to reflect and talk about life, family, hopes, and dreams.

This year, when my parents offered to watch the girls for a few days so that we could take an anniversary trip, we knew exactly what kind of vacation we needed.

For our 11th anniversary, we gifted one another a couples retreat in the mountains of rural Virginia.

We define “retreat” as a getaway that focuses on rest, recreation, and reflection. It is a time to disconnect from our normal routines, spend time together, and make space to have honest and intentional conversations about relationship and family topics.

For three days, we lived in a tiny cabin tucked deep in the Virginia mountains, complete with a cute little outhouse.

Our second couples retreat exercise was to build a mandala together. A mandala is a geometric design, with an inner and outer circle. It can be used to visually represent thoughts around a central topic. We were instructed to choose a theme, and place a stone in the middle of the plate to represent our idea. We chose to focus on our hopes for our family.

We then took turns picking up stones, stating a word out loud, and then placing the stones on the plate to form two circles around our central theme. It was helpful to take turns choosing the words and share them without judgement. We created a beautiful design that represents our family.

This is an activity that we intend to use in the future when we need to brainstorm ideas together, or share hopes, dream, or goals around a central idea. We are also inspired to think about how we could use this activity as part of a family meeting structure, so that each person has the opportunity to share their ideas, and we create something beautiful together in the process.

Our third couples retreat exercise was to use a list of 20 questions to deepen our communication. Emily and I dated long-distance for several years, and we enjoyed using creative question lists. For this exercise, we were encouraged to ask the same question multiple times in order to deepen the answers. The process revealed there is always something new we can learn about one another when we take the time to ask new questions and listen attentively to the answers.

Our fourth couples retreat exercise was one that I created myself. We may not have had cell phone service or WiFi, but I thoughtfully downloaded 10 episodes of The Office onto our iPad before we retreated to the woods.

When we got spooked in our rustic cabin at night, we could laugh at the folks who worked at Dunder Mifflin, and forget about spiders and snakes. We would watch an episode, muster up the courage to run to the outhouse, and then settle in for a night of rest in complete darkness.

This couples retreat was different from any vacation we’ve ever taken together before. This trip wasn’t about sightseeing, fancy restaurants, or exciting entertainment. This year, we were in need of rest, relaxation, and reflection. Retreating to the woods for 3 days was an enlightening experience.

We removed ourselves from the demands of our normal daily life, and spent time talking and laughing. We are inspired to intentionally incorporate aspects of this couples retreat into our regular rhythms of life.

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