Approximately three years ago when I started testing the water for a possible marriage book, I frequently heard something along the lines of, “There’s a glut of marriage books out there and not many are successful. Why don’t you work on something else?”
This caused some cognitive dissonance for two reasons:
1. According to the US Census Bureau, in 2014, approximately 2,000,000 couples exchanged vows. That’s a lot of marriages.
2. My husband and I have counseled other couples for twenty of the twenty-five years we’ve been married. I’ll share a trade secret: Marriage is hard work and many couples struggle to stay together. Though the divorce rate has been slowly dropping, it still speaks of the intense challenges of staying together.
So why aren’t marriage books flying off the shelves at the same rate as celebrity memoirs (almost always written by someone else, BTW) or gruesome zombie apocalypses? Who knows.
But, perhaps the reason some marriage books don’t do well is that they rely on formulas and clichés. We’ve all rolled our eyes at titles such as. . .
or gagged at the ridiculous suggestions that some authors offer. My all-time favorite? The genius idea for wives to wrap themselves in Saran and then greet their husbands at the door. (I have so many problems with this. First of all, how would one walk to said door while wrapped in Saran? And, what if one’s spouse was late, as mine often is? Additionally, I’m quite certain that my husband’s guffaws upon seeing me in such a state would be somewhat hurtful and not result in a quick trip to the bedroom.)
We’re smart people. We intuitively know that formulas will fail us because no two couples are the same. I am by no means implying that there aren’t basic truths that if incorporated, would help most couples. There are. (FYI: our short list of non-negotiables includes honesty, repentance, fidelity, and forgiveness.)
If our decades of walking with and supporting couples has taught us anything, it’s that there’s a dearth of hopeful, non-cliched, Jesus centered resources out there. Making Marriage Beautiful will encourage and inspire you. It won’t solve all your problems but, as one endorser wrote, it’s
“A remarkably honest and profoundly wise roadmap for real marriage.”
Stay tuned for more details and the chance to win an autographed copy.
To read one of my recent articles on marriage, click here.
You can pre-order my book now from Amazon.
(Apologies to H. Norman Wright and Dr. Oliver. I’m sure they are lovely people.)