Book Excerpt

Since my book comes out in less than a month on July 1st, I'm going to start including some excerpts. Here's one.


Last year we decided to put a pool in our backyard, and it’s been such a great addition! My sons swam several times a day, and we had plenty of friends over to share in the fun. The ideal pool scenario for me includes floating around on a raft with my ice-cold diet coke. My sons loved it when I would I get in the pool with them. However, they would have nothing to do with creating my ideal pool scenario.

Every time I swam with them I had to actually, well, swim. No floating allowed. In fact each time they were in the pool they wanted to play some type of game—sharks and minnows; marco polo, and all sorts of competitions they invented. I accommodated at first, but finally I’d had enough. I explained to them that when I was growing up in Florida with a pool in my backyard, my girl friends and I did not play games every time we got in the pool. We floated, sunbathed, talked and the only game we played was pretending we were mermaids. So that’s what I as their mother, a former girl, wanted to do in the pool. Needless to say they were quite disappointed in my girlyness.

Even at a young age males and females differ from one another, as my summer pool experience reminded me. In addition to differences from the way you were raised, in your marriage you’ll experience countless situations where the differences between a female wife and a male husband are glaringly evident.

It helps to remember that God planned this difference: “… male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27). If God planned us and fashioned us to be different, we can count on God to have done this for our good and for our advantage. But it doesn’t always feel that way, does it? Many times the differences in my husband have made me think, What is wrong with this man?!

There are two approaches we can take about the gender differences. First, we can magnify the differences into a negative. Focusing on the differences leads to trying to change or fix or husbands. We’ve probably all heard that a man goes into a marriage expecting nothing to change. On the other hand, a woman enters marriage expecting to change her man. If we take this negative approach, the differences will divide us rather than complete us.