Back when I used to do a lot more sewing, I enjoyed looking through pattern books. It was fun to select the style I wanted and then cut out the small pieces of tissue paper that indicated what went where and how everything fit together.((READMORE))

When you think about the great humanitarian efforts achieved by the advance of Christianity over the years, you possibly think of hospitals and rescue missions and hunger relief. But perhaps the power of Christianity is proven best every day in homes and families and marriages like yours—when people who are self-centered by nature put their spouse’s needs before their own.((READMORE))

Not long after I was born in 1948, someone gave my mother a little blue ceramic vase shaped in the form of baby booties. And in that vase was a small philodendron plant. Not that special.

I brought that vase home from my mother’s house a few years ago.((READMORE))

Whether you know it or not, your marriage is susceptible to the American Dream Syndrome—the notion that you can have it all, that you deserve it all. The more stuff you have, the better off you are.((READMORE))

The Great Wall of China is one of the great wonders of the world, a true masterpiece of engineering. It’s the only man-made structure that can be seen from outer space. Five to six horses could trot side by side on top of it.((READMORE))

If you were asked to name three things that pose the gravest general threats to the health of today’s marriages—and to your marriage in particular—what would be on your list? When Barbara and I were asked the same question recently, here are the three we gravitated toward:
Threat number one is not really knowing who God is.((READMORE))

We all come into marriage with a full yardstick of expectations—what love looks like, what our roles will be, what we’ll do on weekends, where we’ll go for Christmas. But over the years, that yardstick starts getting snapped off an inch or two at a time, until we’re left holding something a whole lot shorter than what we brought with us.((READMORE))

Kids today take “keyboarding” rather than typing, but when I was young, we learned to type on actual typewriters. In high school I struggled in my typing class, but I made a great discovery: If I could type 60 words a minute, even with 15 errors, I would get an A in speed and an F in accuracy.((READMORE))

A group of carpenters building an icehouse in the north country of Canada was taking a lunch break when a boy came upon them and heard their conversation. One was bemoaning a watch he had lost at some point in the morning’s work.((READMORE))

It can lie. It can gossip. It can slander. It can also murmur and complain. It can manipulate and flatter. It can tear down. It can paint itself in nice words, even while cutting someone to ribbons.((READMORE))

I shared with you yesterday about three little words that aren’t always so easy to say: “I need you.” But sometimes, all it takes to get those words flowing again is just a reminder of how many ways you truly do depend upon each other.((READMORE))

I still remember the first time I told my mom and dad, “I love you.” Being a typically ungrateful, unexpressive teenager, I found looking my parents in the eye and saying those three little words excruciating.((READMORE))

I believe there is nothing more powerful on Earth than family. It is the single most influential force for good (or for evil) in all human existence.

From birth, it marks you. Your family crafts your conscience and shapes your soul.((READMORE))