Each month Abington Library will feature a favorite book from a faculty, staff member, or student. They will give a brief synopsis of their chosen book.
Michele Mailhiot is the VA Representative in the Student Success Center at ASU-Beebe
Sacred Marriage
Review by Michele Mailhiot
After raising four children over the last 20+ years and finding ourselves “empty nesters”, we decided to work on some marriage building. It was time to grow and finally focus on “us” rather than on the responsibilities that come with raising children.
Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas has been one of our favorite building blocks, and we would recommend it to even those that aren’t empty nesters, if they can find the time around parenting. Thomas refers a lot to marriage being an effort, and an unselfish contribution is constantly needed for a marriage to be strong.
Thomas also discusses that marriage is a way for God to strengthen you spiritually. Testing your “fruits” so to speak; patience, kindness, goodness, faith... No one knows you better than your spouse and sometimes when your spouse says something that pricks you just right, maybe it’s a way to search yourself for improvement in your walk with God.
We enjoyed this book so much that we went back and purchased the devotional that compliments it: Devotions for a Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas. This weekly devotional brings up thought provoking and needful discussion topics to help strengthen your marriage. We found that communication has been one of the biggest keys to building our marriage. Our communication before being empty nester was always about the children’s needs, problems, concerns, etc. We rarely talked about us, and this devotional has some of the best topics to talk about – things we really should have known 20 years ago.
