By the grace of God, I have been blessed to have an amazing marriage. Perfect? No. But, amazing still the same. But it hasn’t always been peachy. There have been rocky times just like every marriage. And we continue to have our disagreements. After 12 1/2 years of marriage, I can truly say that I am married to my best friend and love our time together. But, I realize that this is not the norm.
Michael and Amy Smalley have just published a book The Surprising Way to a Stronger Marriage: How the Power of One Changes Everything to help every couple have an amazing marriage.
In this book, the Smalley’s teach that the power is in your hands. There is no “innocent” person in a marriage and both people have caused issues to make the marriage suffer. This is very opposite of the world’s view. With the blame game so strong in our culture, this book helps you look at yourself instead of focusing on the wrongs of your spouse. This is based upon the scripture:
Matthew 7:3-5 (New International Version)
3″Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
Once you stop blaming, then you can work on handling those valleys in a healthy manner. The book teaches you to validate your spouse’s feeling, use time-out correctly, and use the trillion dollar question. This is just a few of the helpful suggestions explained.
Momma C’s Thoughts: If you are at a rocky point in your marriage and truly want change, God will use this book will heal your marriage. If you have a good marriage but want to make it great, God will teach you things to help strengthen your marriage. The book is easy to read (minus the convicting parts) and is practical enough to implement immediately. There are points in that book that I am praying God will remind me of during those disagreeable times. This is a book that I believe would be a wonderful wedding present as well as could be used in premarital counseling.
Momma C’s Rating:
Thank you to Tyndale Publishing for allowing me to review this book.
