Marriage and Family Blog

The Silent Killers of Marriage

December 14, 2017

  “Acting for the first time in 14 years, the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology redefined high blood pressure as a reading of 130 over 80, down from 140 over 90. The change means that 46 percent of US adults, many of them under the age of 45, now will be […]

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Are You A Good Lover?

November 30, 2017

How am I suppose to find the answer to the question, “Are you a good lover?” If I ask myself that question, my pride and ego would give a resounding “YES!” But if I’m honest, after thirty-seven years of marriage, I still feel awkward and clueless at times. If I ask my wife that question, […]

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Gratitude is a Great Attitude for Marriage

November 23, 2017

  On Thanksgiving Day, it’s good to look at the role gratitude plays in marriage. Many marriages are unhappy, not because of big things like abuse or affairs, but because of a little thing like a lack of gratitude. Around 2008, Neil Pasricha was having a difficult time in life. His marriage was failing, his […]

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How to Fight the Good Fight

October 26, 2017

Some of my favorite movies (much to my wife’s dismay) are “The Matrix” trilogy of movies. They never get old to me. I can watch them over and over and still find new thing in them that I didn’t see before. This happened a while back when I was watching “The Matrix Reloaded (2003). In […]

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Looking for Buried Treasure

October 18, 2017

  One day, I was out walking and noticed a man with a metal detector methodically covering a patch of ground. Slowly and diligently, he combed first one patch of ground and then another, occasionally stooping to dig up a coin or small trinket. After an hour, he finally packed up his gear and left. […]

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Is Your Spouse Hurtful?

September 21, 2017

  How would you complete the following sentence: “I never thought my spouse would be so ____________.” ? There are probably as many different answers to this question as there are couples. Some of the possible answers would be, “I never thought my spouse would be so…

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This is Not What I Expected

September 7, 2017

Expectations. We all have expectations before we get married. We have expectations about what marriage will be like. We have expectations about how our spouse will act. We have expectations that tend to become the standard by which we measure and evaluate the quality of our marriage. We expect things like…

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What A Two-Year Old Taught Me About Listening

August 31, 2017

  I’ve been spending a lot of time with my two-year old granddaughter, and boy does this little girl loves to talk! She starts when she wakes up and doesn’t stop until she’s asleep. This morning, as I was taking her to school (Mothers Day Out), she was talking non-stop. So to give my ears […]

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It’s Not How I Pictured it.

August 3, 2017

Many years ago, I was in Paris as part of a mission trip. While there, we had some free time and a group of us went to the Louvre.  The Louvre houses some of the most famous art work in the world. Pieces like the Venus de Milo and and the statue of the winged, […]

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When You’re Not Getting What You Want in Marriage

July 23, 2017

As a pastoral counselor, I’m expected to draw on Scripture and good clinical practices in order to help couples improve their marriage. But the truth is, you can find great nuggets of marital wisdom in a variety of places. The other day, I found one of those nuggets of marital wisdom on my iTunes playlist.

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