The Road to Zero Divorce Happens 1 Marriage At A Time
This week in the Dispatch:
Quick Hits: Special July Dates and a Movie Trivia Quiz to challenge you
My “Top 5” Books for the first six months of 2021
This Week’s YouVersion Plan: “Getting Ready For Marriage 1: The Tough Questions
On the Awesome Marriage Podcast we talk about “Communication Breakdowns”
This week’s Vlog looks at “The Problem with Distance”
Insights: Join me on “A Look Back”
Next Steps and a Challenge for our Awesome Marriage tribe
READ, WATCH, LISTEN
My Top Five Books
Most of you know that I read and listen to a lot of books. My goal each year is a book a week. I just finished number 35 for the year. Here are my Top 5 Books for the first half of 2021!
#1 Sooley by John Grisham
#2 Keep Sharp by Sanjay Gupta, MD
#3 Excellence Wins by Horst Schulze
#4 The Bomber Mafia by Malcolm Gladwell
#5 Multipliers Revised Edition by Liz Wiseman
YouVersion Plan:
Getting Ready For Marriage 1: The Tough Questions
In this five day devotional, we look at the things in life that can distract from a marriage. The devotional will help you see different ways to protect your marriage from these distractions and how to nurture your marriage one day at a time.
Listen:
Awesome Marriage Podcast: Achieving Awesome Communication: Communication Breakdowns
Thanks for all the great responses to this podcast series on communication! In this week’s episode, Christina and I look at the communication breakdowns we can have in our marriages. We will identify these and talk about how to overcome them and build good healthy communication in your marriage.
Watch:
This week on the Awesome Marriage YouTube Channel, I will look at “Getting an Advanced Degree.” Whether you are apart for a night, a week, a month, or a year, there are great ways to grow your marriage while apart. Join us for this week’s vlog.
Insights:
A Look Back
Awesome Marriage launched in October of 2010 as a Facebook page. This week I looked back at some content from our early days as the dream God placed on my heart became a reality. Here is an excerpt I wrote two weeks into our first year and my thoughts on it today.
Then: Do you know what my dream is for marriages? My dream is to have a zero divorce rate. That's right - no divorces anywhere. Plus, I want every marriage to be awesome. Here is my plan.
Step one is helping couples that are at high risk for divorce not to marry in the first place. Too many couples “fall in love” and get married without ever seriously looking at their relationship. I want every couple considering marriage to be challenged to look hard and deep into their relationship before they say “I do.” The pain of breaking up before marriage is not near as painful as a divorce later on in marriage.
Now: Through many of our resources and our online Preparing for an Awesome Marriage course, we have made some positive steps to accomplish this goal, but we still have a long way to go.
Then: Step two is helping married couples improve their marriages. Marriage is not something we “do” and then coast for 50 years. Ask any couple that has a long, healthy marriage and they will tell you that it took work and a lot of it.
Now: On day one of Awesome Marriage our one and only platform was Facebook. Over time, we have added almost every other form of social media. Now we have the One Thing daily emails and texts that are transforming marriages. We have so many great resources to help couples grow their marriages. We have great videos, YouVersion plans and podcasts, and we have so much more planned.
Then: Step three is providing a “911” service for those in a marriage crisis.
Now: We have many resources to help couples in crisis, including our Online Affair Recovery Course. And we have just unveiled a whole new platform that we think will save hundreds of marriages from moving toward divorce and help them build the marriage God has designed especially for them. I can’t wait to see how God uses this.
Then: OK. That is my dream. I cannot do it alone. I need the Awesome Marriage community to help. I want your ideas and dreams. I want us to join together and make this happen. Can you imagine a world full of awesome marriages?
Now: God has put together the most incredible team at Awesome Marriage that I am honored to work with every day. Yet, we still need you just like we did at the beginning. Some of your messages were the catalyst for the new “90 Days to Save Your Marriage” platform. So many of our resources are designed to help meet the needs you tell us that you are dealing with. We need your continued input. We need your prayers. We need your comments, ratings and reviews and if we have helped your marriage, we would love for you to consider giving back so we can reach even more couples.
Will we ever hit a “zero” divorce rate? Probably not, but we are not going to change the goal. We have seen God transform so many marriages over these 11 years and the road to zero divorces happens one marriage at a time.
Next Steps:
Help us continue to spread the word about Awesome Marriage. Share our posts. Leave reviews and comments.
Pray for Awesome Marriage and our incredible team.
Movie Trivia:
1. Maggie Gyllenhaal; 2) Joker; 3) Pulp Fiction; 4) La La Land; 5) Moonraker; 6) Gladiator; 7) Alec Guinness; 8) 1994; 9) Red Apple Cigarettes; 10) William Defoe. Bonus Question: It Happened One Night, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Silence of the Lambs.
The Tough One: “Adventures of Luke Starkiller, As Taken From the Journal of the Whills, Saga 1: The Star Wars”
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