The Dude's Guide to Marriage: Ten Skills Every Husband Must Develop to Love His Wife Well by Darrin Patrick & Amie Patrick

Author:Darrin Patrick & Amie Patrick [Patrick, Darrin & Patrick, Amie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion, Christian Life, Love & Marriage, General, ebook
ISBN: 9781400205509
Google: QdGxCAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00XPV61AE
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2015-11-03T07:00:00+00:00

Five Good Questions

1. Do you think that I rest well? Why or why not?

2. How am I different when I’m rested and when I’m not?

3. How can we cultivate a healthy view of rest and refreshment in our family?

4. Do you see me habitually engaging in any mindless activities that I could replace with a more refreshing activity?

5. Are there ways that you see me trying to avoid rest?

SERVE

To love is bliss; to serve is divine.

—Unknown

I GREW UP IN THE 1970S WHEN THE PROTOTYPE FOR fatherhood was Archie Bunker, the protagonist in the sitcom All in the Family. A product of the Great Depression, Archie was raised in poverty, and his childhood was marked by the taunts of other children who always seemed to have more. He was a gifted baseball player with a dream to play for the Yankees, but he had to give it up to support his family. He worked the docks after serving in World War II and seemed to embody the phrase “blue collar.” With his broken dreams and long-winded diatribes, Archie tapped into the nation’s consciousness like few other characters from that or any other era. He most frequently appeared resting in a brown tweed chair in his living room, a beer in hand, his wife scurrying about to satisfy his every whim after a hard day’s work. Today, that wingback chair, with its stained armrests and frayed upholstery, sits in the National Museum of American History.

I don’t know whether life imitates art or art imitates life. But my home was a lot like Archie’s. So were my friends’ homes. We received the message that inside the home a wife’s job was to serve her husband, not the other way around. Husbands worked, and wives served. No idea could be more damaging to a marriage.

My college hero was the anti–Archie Bunker. Recently, I built a friendship with this hero, an author who deeply influenced my life when I was in college. My college years were a time of deep learning for me, not just about my major but about myself. The words from this man helped me work through deep pain in my life and helped set the trajectory for all that I am doing in my career.

I met my hero because his son started attending our church. I was able to have lunch with him and ask him all kinds of questions. This happened once every couple of years, culminating with a three-hour Q&A he did for some of our staff. It was an amazing night. From there, my hero left with his wife to lead a retreat in another state. Shortly after they arrived, his wife collapsed from a stroke and fell into a multi-month coma.

My hero became my hero again as he faithfully wrote about his new life with his ailing wife every day as she recovered. I eagerly read these updates to see how she was doing and how he was coping.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.