Love & Respect

Dr. Emerson Eggerich’s Love and Respect

This is a great book with a lot of truth.  If focuses on Ephesians 5:33, "However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband."  Eggerich points out the differences between the command to “Love” a wife, and to “Respect” the husband.  I think Eggerich is on target, and delivers a very helpful look at how to love and how to give respect. 

Only one problem.  I have seen this book backfire.  When a man reads the “respect” section of the book, or a woman reads the “love” section they will often put the book down with a sour taste in their mouth.   They recognize that their spouse is not meeting this goal, and then the feel a hole.  A hole that is now abundantly clear.   My suggestion is for couples to ONLY read the section geared to the opposite gender.  Men only read the Love sections; women only read the Respect sections.  Then focus on the truths found in these pages and how you can apply them to your spouse.   Read in this way I highly recommend this great resource!

Jeff Shaara's WWII Series:

The Rising Tide, The Steel Wave, No Less Than Victory, by Jeff Shaara

As a fan of US military history I have enjoyed many of Jeff Shaara’s books.  I believe his three part series on World War II is simply fantastic.  For those of us who were raised by the WWII generation or in my case the children of the WWII generation we often experienced a vacuum of information about this very important part of history. Our parents and grandparents often would not talk about their experiences or only gave romanticized accounts and public school history class only offered the slightest overview of the entire WWII period!   In this vacuum we know about the names, the battles, the themes, but we often do not know the decisions or the personalities behind them.  Jeff Shaara makes all of it come alive!  His retelling of the events from the first days to after the final shot was fired closely follows the historical account but gives readers an inside view to the conversations, thoughts and decisions the solders, from the Generals to the privates, were having.  In addition I appreciated that these books do not over simplify the German’s role in the war.  They do not deny the evil that occurred but also seek to look behind this vale to show the personalities of the German people.  For anyone who enjoys history or wants to know more about WWII history I highly recommend this series.

The 5 Love Languages

I know that many of you have read this wonderful book already, it is one of my all time favorite marriage books so I simply had to list it here!   This is my first recommendation to any couple!  It is so good that I think it should be mandatory reading for all husbands and wives!  Why do I love it so much?  Simply because Gary Chapman has explained a truth about how God has designed each of us differently in an easy to read and easy to apply format

The 5 Love Languages presents 5 different ways that we speak and hear love. Words of affirmation, Acts of service, Gifts, Physical touch, and Quality time. Since there are 5, most couples will find that their primary language is different then the language their spouse is speaking.  This book helps couples to identify their spouses language, and learn how to speak it! 

I highly recommend that husbands should read the "men's edition".  Why?  Because Gary Chapman is nice to us husbands, after each language is explained he has written a whole section titled "if your wife is this then you should do ___".  It can't get any easier then that!  

If you have not read this great book with your spouse in the past 5 years I would encourage you to pick it up again!  Kate and I recently did and we both discovered that our primary languages had changed !  Check it out, maybe your spouses have changed too!