Category: Marriage

Almost twenty years ago Nancy and I were planning the landscaping around our new house. A landscape architect had recommended a cluster of three fruit trees at the corner of our property. We wondered if that was too many trees … Read more

Mom says I was a pleasant baby. As I grew, I must have become less pleasant. I remember spending a lot of my growing-up years annoying and battling my siblings. I suppose that struggles with life and siblings teach all … Read more

by H. Wallace Goddard

Perhaps the most pernicious sins are those that make us feel virtuous.

Perhaps the most pernicious sins are those that make us feel virtuous while we devastate our fundamental Christian professions. For instance, the Pharisees were … Read more

Conflict Resolution and the Creation of Peace
by H. Wallace Goddard

“You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.”

Nancy and I have some friends who have been married for a few years longer than … Read more

Mom says I was a pleasant baby. As I grew, I must have become less pleasant. I remember spending a lot of my growing-up years annoying and battling my siblings. I suppose that struggles with life and siblings teach all … Read more

Often, we think we are acting nobly when we are actually being destructive.

Some examples:

Hoping to strengthen their marriage, a wife approaches her husband: “We need to talk.”

Hoping to state the problem, she describes the husband’s faults. “You … Read more

Yesterday I asked Nancy a question. She gave an answer that seemed quite unrelated to my question. I was baffled and annoyed. I blinked a few times to try to clear my mind. Had she heard and understood my question? … Read more

Two amazing people were struggling in their marriage. In desperation, they went to see a therapist. He told them to go home and each spend the week until their next visit creating a list of frustrations with their partner. He … Read more

Dave Barry ironically observed that “Americans who travel abroad for the first time are often shocked to discover that, despite all the progress that has been made in the past 30 years, many foreign people still speak in foreign languages.” … Read more

Imagine that my wife Nancy has been in hard labor for hour after long hour through an entire night and most of the next day. I am by her side trying to comfort her. She is exhausted from relentless and … Read more