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Let me be clear ladies.  Our marriages are under attack by the enemy of our souls.  The good news?  God is bigger, stronger, and has every intention of helping us through any hurdle that the enemy presents.  However, we need God and we need tools.  Why do we need tools?  Because God has given us a base of Biblical wisdom and teachers who have walked this path before us.  We do not need to come to the battle empty handed, but rather equipped by God’s power and with tools that work because they are a part of His plan.

Marriage tools are a part of God’s plan.

While you could gain these tools through years spent hammering the grindstone with your husband figuring out what works and what doesn’t, God’s intention is that you form relationships with other couples who can teach you to be a better wife.  For men, being a part of a relationship with another couple that teaches you to be a better husband.  You are NOT intended to be in marriage alone without support.  If you are hiding your marriage troubles from other couples, you are not experiencing the support that God has for you.  Reach out and get a mentor.

I’ve been in situations where mentors aren’t available.  I’ve even asked couples to mentor me and my husband and the mentorship relationship did not happen.  This is not meant to shame these people, but for us all to realize that this isn’t an ideal world.  We live in a world with busy people who are focused on many different things.  If you cannot find a mentor, you can still find tools for your family.  Beautifully wise people have written books with marriage tools that work.

10 Marriage Tools for a Thriving Relationship

These marriage tools work.  As should you.

Marriage is work.  If you thought differently, then you signed up for the wrong job.  Being a wife is work; being a husband is work.  As a wife, we have signed up to be a help mate to our husband, to follow them through our lives and be a woman of God.  As husband, you’ve signed up to be the leader of a household of two, then later the household sometimes has the opportunity to grow.  Again, these are jobs!!!  This is one of the good works of Christ in our lives for husbands and wives.

My husband and I ended up finding one couple to mentor us for a short time and we have also read many books (and many parts of books) that have completely changed how we do life.  I am including the list of resources that we found below and I hope you will find these to be tools that build your marriage as we have.

Marriage Tools

Love & Respect by Emerson Eggerichs

Early on in our relationship, my husband and I found Love & Respect.  We immediately recognized we needed this book from the first time we spotted the chart called the “Crazy Cycle.”  The Crazy Cycle goes something like this: your husband does something that makes you feel unloved, you feel unloved, so you do something that disrespects him, he feels disrespected, so he does something that makes you feel unloved –> continue indefinitely (and vice versa).  Seriously.  This was pretty much the nature of so many of our arguments.

Want to find a way to stop the Crazy Cycle?  Buy  –> Love & Respect and get the tools you need to build up your marriage.

 

The Love Dare by Alex Kendrick

This one is pretty corny, but essential.  It was only after doing The Love Dare that I finally stopped nagging my husband incessantly.  He really appreciates this book.  I completed the book years ago and blogged about my journey.  You can read about it –> here.  My husband also used the book to come up with ideas for loving me better.  It’s definitely a good book for the marriage tool bookshelf.

Buy –> The Love Dare and do some incredibly corny activities that build your marriage.  Never be above being proactive in your marriage.

 

The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman

I posted a link to the Men’s Edition, because you really can’t expect any self respecting man to pick up a purple book . . . no matter how much he might love you.  Buy both editions and then you can both read these at the same time.  For me, I found The Five Love Languages helpful in that it explained our differences.  We do NOT show or receive love in the same ways.  He’s over here trying to rub my shoulder to make up after a fight and I’m over here saying get your ever-loving hand off my shoulder.  He shows love through touch and I do not receive love through touch . . . normally.  However, now I can recognize his efforts even when they aren’t my language.  I’ve learned to speak “touch-ese.”  I love gifts and there are very few good gift givers out there in the world.  So I’ve also had to learn to operate in grace.  My husband isn’t always going to get it right.  He might buy those silver pair of fortune cookie earrings for our 10th anniversary . . . and I might want to kill him . . . but, ultimately, he tried.

Do you want to know more about love languages?  Buy –> The Five Love Languages and be sure to take their love language quiz –> here.

 

Animal Personality Test

At year seven in our marriage, we just about killed each other.  I stopped talking to him about things going on in my life and he stopped talking to me about things that were going on with him . . . or we stopped listening when each other did share.  We still debate which it was.  Either way, there would be a work event that I did not know was happening or he would have something planned when I wanted to do something with the family.  Collisions.  Tons of relationship collisions.  (No, not like physical collisions, emotional and life collisions.  The ones where your ideas collide.)

We needed a relationship safety class.

During PWOC (Protestant Women of the Chapel) leadership training, I took this personality test called the Gary Smalley Animal Personality test.  First off, it helped me to completely understand the amazing ladies around me in leadership.  Then, I began to wonder what in the world my husband’s personality was on this test.  As it so happens, when he took the test . . . we were the same.  Exactly.

Collisions explained.

We were both a Beaver and a Lion.  A planner and a leader.  So I made plans and tried to lead and he would make plans and try to lead.  That went stellar, right?  After learning about our similar personalities, we could recognize when the other was trying to make a plan and choose to follow it or make a suggestion of a change.  For me, when I realized my husband was trying to lead, I backed down immediately.  I would have suggestions, but I recognized that it was God’s plan for him to lead even if I’m a lion too.

You can find the Animal Personality Test –> here.

 

Keep Your Love On by Danny Silk

“If he’d only do this one thing, then my life would be better.”  “Why doesn’t he just do this?”  As wives, we often have these ideas that our troubles center around our husband’s choice to do something or not to do something.  Keep Your Love On gave me a very different perspective.  Instead of manipulating through powerlessness, I began to take a hold the fact that I was a powerful person.  I could make changes in my life.  For our home, I began to make our house into the home I wanted without waiting on my husband to initiate.  Rather than taking the position of leadership that isn’t really my own, I began to take hold of the role of being a powerful wife.  I moved the extra items out of our living room to give me the living space that I desired.  I cleaned up my side of the bedroom to make it the bedroom I desired.  Guess what?  My husband ended up liking the changes . . . and joined me in my goals.

I did not have to manipulate him . . . instead I inspired him.

Check out –> Keep Your Love On to find out many other amazing tool for your marriage.

 

 

Love Bank Printable by Designing Life Etsy Shop (my Etsy shop)

In the midst of arguments, sometimes you need a tool to help you realize what is going on.  I designed the Love Bank Printable to help my husband and I to write down on paper (plastic actually), where we were emotionally.  So many times, we would experience huge disagreements, because we were empty.  Neither person had been showing love or respect and our “love banks” were on empty.  When you have this printable (that can be laminated or placed in a sleeve), you can use it over and over to let the other person visibly see that you or let them show you that they are low in a certain area.  Spend time with each other to talk about how to bring your love bank to a higher place.

Buy this resource –> here.

 

Life Action Ministries

Another pivotal step in our relationship was attending a Life Action Ministry revival at our church.  Our hearts were changed.  Our lives were renewed.  Why?  Because of a dose of real Christianity.  Go to Life Action’s site and search for a revival in your area.  Don’t see one?  Find out about inviting them to your church.

 

Let Me Be a Woman by Elisabeth Elliot

I read this book shortly after I was married.  I probably would have benefited from this book before I married, since it was written from Elisabeth Elliot to her daughter who was getting married.  The chapter that changed everything was “You Married a Sinner.”  The list of impossible standards that I carried into marriage was hefty.  No man (or woman) could live up to such a list of expectations.  This book reminded me that I did not marry the perfect man (though I did marry the perfect man for me), I married a sinner.  Also, that inconvenient fact that I, too, was a sinner.

Buy –> Let Me Be a Woman for you or any Christian woman you know who is getting married.

 

Sally Clarkson

While I was growing as a wife, I was also growing as a mother.  Sally Clarkson’s book “Educating the Whole Hearted Child” helped me become more of the mother that God wanted me to be and, in the process, made me into more of the wife that God wanted me to be.  I love how those two things are very combined for wives who are mothers.  If God has made you a mother, as you embody that role, He makes you into a better spouse.  My husband changed the way he viewed me as I grew to be a mother of God.  Beautiful blessing.

Thank you Sally Clarkson.

 

Sacred Marriage by Gary L. Thomas

While I have not personally read this book, I was changed just by my friends sharing with me the concept of the book.  Guess what chicka??!!!  Your marriage is not about you.  You heard that right.  It’s not about your satisfaction, your feelings, your getting the love you need, or about making the perfect little family.  It’s about God using your marriage to bring you closer to Him.

Caveat:  I am not suggesting that painful, sin-filled marriages are God’s plan.  The gist is a healthy marriage should be a sacred marriage.

This book is a great tool for understanding that God has a bigger plan than our small idea of marriage.  Buy this book –> here.

 

In Conclusion

As you might have noticed from the list above, you have an arsenal of Christian marriage tools at your disposal.  It is not too late or too hard to pick one of these resources and utilize a tool to build your marriage.  Your marriage is worth the effort.

Follow Boholistic Mom on –> Facebook or on –> Instagram.

 

Brooke Shambley

THE Boholistic Mom

Affiliate Disclosure

I am an Amazon Affiliate and the links included in this post will take you to Amazon.  As an affiliate, I get paid when my readers shop from those links.  Feel free to shop from the links if you’d like to support my blog, but feel free to shop elsewhere especially locally!

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