Love and War (Part 1)

I know this blog is entitled “Reflections of a Christian Daddy”, but I believe there are two key components to being a good Christian Daddy.  First is to be a solid believer (the whole Christian part), ensuring my walk with the Lord is where it needs to be.  It’s the same idea as when you fly on an airplane and they tell you that if the oxygen masks fall from the ceiling you need to put your own mask on before helping someone else (how can you help someone else if you’re passed out?)

The second key component is nurturing the marriage relationship, because I believe strongly (and have seen it reinforced over and over) that the best gift Melissa and I can give our girls is to have a strong relationship between the two of us.  About two months ago we started reading through a book together entitled Love and War by John and Stasi Eldredge (you can visit the Love and War website by clicking here).  They were actually running a promo earlier this year that if you were willing to blog about the book they’d give you a free copy.  Well, we already had the book and had started reading it, so we didn’t get a copy for ourselves but we did order a free copy to give to a friend of Melissa’s who was going through some struggles in her marriage.

Anyway, I am going to be doing some blogging about the book specifically, but today I just wanted to introduce the book to you.  We have also started a small group for married couples at our church that is following Sacred Marriage, a curriculum based on the book of the same name by Gary Thomas (you can visit his site by clicking here).  The whole thesis of his book (and this study) is to look at marriage as something which God uses to make us more like Jesus.  We have had our first two sessions and, while attendance hasn’t been what we had hoped for, we have had a great time learning together with others.

One final note.  This past week I was out of town at a church conference, so Melissa and the girls went to Melissa’s sister’s house to spend the week instead of spending it alone.  She drove me up to the conference on Monday and dropped me off, and then had to pick me up on Friday when it was over.  We decided that she would actually come up late Thursday afternoon so we could spend an evening together just the two of us, and we had a great time.  We got to just hang out, talk, and even went for a nice hike in the mountains (where the conference was); hike was a little over 3.5 miles and we went up to the ridge to watch the Sunset.  One of the really fun things was the top of the trail (perhaps the last 50 feet or so) was a short rock scramble, and it’s always fun getting to do something like that together.  It has been over a year since we got to spend a night by ourselves without the girls, and it was very refreshing to do so.

Tagged: Gary Thomas, Husband, John and Stasi Eldredge, Love & War, Marriage, Melissa, Sacred Marriage

Posted in: Marriage, Summer 2010