7 Books to Help Strengthen Your Marriage

Marriage is hard and takes a lot of work. Lots of forgiveness, grace, selflessness, sacrifice, and love. These are some books that I have found extremely encouraging along the way! Add them to your reading list and ask your spouse to join you in reading some of them. 

1. Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas - What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?

2. Sacred Influence by Gary Thomas -How God uses wives to shape the souls of their Husbands

3. Real Marriage by Mark and Grace Driscoll - The truth about sex, friendship, and life together

4. From Anger to Intimacy by Dr. Gary Smalley and Mr. Ted Cunningham - How forgiveness can transform your marriage

5. The Meaning of Marriage by Timothy Keller - Facing the complexities of commitment with the wisdom of God.

6. The Five Love Languages by Gary D. Chapman -How to express heartfelt commitment to your mate

7. Just How Married do You Want to Be? by Jim and Sarah Sumner - Practicing oneness in marriage

Bittersweet

"The idea of bittersweet is changing the way I live, unraveling and re-weaving the way I understand life. Bittersweet is the idea that in all things there is both something broken and something beautiful, that there is a sliver of lightness on even the darkest of nights, a shadow of hope in every heartbreak, and that rejoicing is no less rich when it contains a splinter of sadness. Bittersweet is the practice of believing that we really do need both the bitter and the sweet, and that a life of nothing but sweetness rots both your teeth and your soul. Bitter is what makes us strong, what forces us to push through, what helps us earn the lines on our faces and the calluses on our hands. Sweet is nice enough, but bittersweet is beautiful, nuanced, full of depth and complexity. Bittersweet is courageous, gutsy, earthy."

Shauna Niequist


I love this excerpt from the book Bittersweet, but the rest of the book is amazing as well! Shauna also has another book that is a great read; Cold Tangerines.