Читать книгу Staying One - Clinton W. McLemore - Страница 8

Marriage is the most important human relationship many of us will ever have. It’s also like a garden. To get good results, you have to tend it.

When I first heard people talk about working on their marriages, I didn’t like it. Marriage, it seemed to me, ought to be anything but work. It should be light and breezy. I have come to recognize that great marriages don’t happen by accident. They require effort and commitment.

Good marriages are rich. If heaven can be thought of as eternally desiring what you already have, a rich marriage is like that. Such marriages resemble long engaging conversations and are anything but impoverished. Good marriages are also rewarding rather than punishing. They are satisfying, pleasurable, and worthwhile. And, they are resilient as opposed to brittle. Good marriages endure. Emerging from the tunnel of whatever adversity life brings, the couples in them remain standing. Staying One contains what I believe it takes for a marriage to be rich, rewarding, and resilient.

This book contains twenty exercises and activities that are designed to strengthen your marriage. If you are about to attend a workshop built around Staying One, you will be given the opportunity to complete them during the workshop. If you are not scheduled to attend such a workshop, you can easily do them on your own. The publisher offers a Workbook for Staying One, and I recommend using it to write down and save your responses.

There is a brief topical outline for a workshop based on Staying One at the end of the book. A comprehensive Leader’s Guide is available to workshop leaders from the publisher.

Whether you’re reading this book on your own, with your spouse, or in conjunction with a workshop, I pray that what follows will significantly enrich your marriage.