In these pages, journalist Marg Stark breaks the newlywed code of silence and exposes the profound adjustments brides often experience. Stark and 50 married women tell their stories--showing others how to handle turbulence on cloud nine--and reveal marital truths, such as:You don't feel like a "Mrs." Sometimes you even dream about old boyfriends.You write all the wedding gift thank-you notes. So you are doomed to your mother's life--60 years of doing more than your share?Making love is the last thing on your mind when you have the flu and haven't showered for days. But he still wants to.You tell him you got these incredible bargains and quietly resent having to justify your spending.You have shining moments when marriage feels absolutely right, but nevertheless you pine for something more.Humorous and compassionate--with advice from marriage counselors, ministers, financial advisors, and sex therapists--What No One Tells the Bride is not only a practical guide for every newly married woman, it also makes the perfect wedding shower gifts.

    We cannot heal ourselves. We cannot become ourselves by ourselves. But we are not by ourselves. The King of love wants to help us become. God desires to restore us—the real us. As he heals our inner life, he calls us to rise to the occasion of our lives. The most important journey any woman can take is the journey into becoming her true self through the love of God. It's a beautiful paradox. The more of God’s you become, the more yourself you become—the “self” he had in mind when he thought of you before the creation of the world. Discover your truest self—the woman God created you to be—in Becoming Myself.

    And every little girl holds in her heart her most precious dreams. She longs to be swept up into a romance, to play an irreplaceable role in a great adventure, to" be" the Beauty of the story. And yet―how many women do you know who ever find that life?Most women think they have to settle for a life of efficiency and duty, striving to be the women they "ought" to be but often feeling they have failed. Sadly, too many messages for Christian women add to the pressure. "Do these ten things, and you will be a godly woman." The effect has not been good on the feminine soul.The message of "Captivating" is this: Your heart matters more than anything else in all creation. The desires you had as a little girl and the longings you still feel are telling you of the life God created you to live. He offers to rescue your heart and release you to live as a fully alive and feminine woman. A woman who is truly captivating.

    Roped into chauffeuring his grandma and dying grandfather on weekly adventures, he realized that, sixty-three years later, they were still madly in love."Now, that's the marriage I want!" he said to himself. Fired up to find more success stories, Mat talked his best friend, Jason Miller, a clueless commitmentphobe, into joining him on a cross-country search for America's greatest marriages, which they called "Project Everlasting." The two bumbling bachelors jumped in an RV and embarked on a 12,000-mile adventure, encompassing the beaches of Los Angeles, the skyscrapers of Manhattan, the bayous of Louisiana, and the mountains of Montana, to discover what it takes to make love last -- not from Ph.D.s or therapists but from more than 200 real couples who had walked the walk to more than forty years of marriage. In Project Everlasting, they share their wisdom. Each chapter is dedicated to one of the pressing quest ions the bachelors asked the couples, such as: •"How do you know you've found The One?" •"What's missing from today's marriages?" •"How do you keep the romance alive?" •"What's the most important ingredient for a solid marriage?" The couples opened their hearts and homes to Mat and Jason to reveal intimate and authentic portraits of fulfilling marriage. Couples like the Byrds, in New Orleans, who lost nearly everything they owned in the devastation of Katrina -- except their love and commitment to each other. Or ninety-somethings Ruth and Eddie Elcott in Los Angeles, who spent the first two years of their marriage separated by World War II and the later years of their marriage reading their wartime love letters to each other at bedtime.

    This expansive, like-hearted community transcends race, orientation, gender, religious tradition, political affiliation, and nation of origin--and finds its affinity in the deeper place of our shared humanity, which is the True North of his writing. This collection lovingly pulls together some of John's most widely-read and most beloved essays on faith, politics, grief, and the elemental parts of being human. It is an encouraging, inspiring, challenging storehouse of "stuff that needs to be said."

    Two women fall to pieces at the news: his wife, Claire, and his co-worker Tish. Reeling from her loss, Claire must comfort her grieving son as well as contend with funeral arrangements, well-meaning family members, and the arrival of Jeff’s estranged brother, who was her ex-boyfriend. Tish volunteers to attend the funeral on her company’s behalf, but only she knows the true risk of inserting herself into the wreckage of Jeff’s life.Told through the three voices of Jeff, Tish, and Claire, Hidden explores the complexity of relationships, the repercussions of our personal choices, and the responsibilities we have to the ones we love.

    Cindi McMenamin, author of Heart Hunger, offers personal encouragement and practical, biblical steps for gaining strength in times of isolation and becoming resilient to, not resentful toward, loneliness.Cindi's audience for Women Who Walk Alone is a broad one--single women, women parenting alone, women alone as the spiritual head of their household, women facing challenging life situations, women without close friendships. And her message is timely--every woman feels alone at some point in her life, yet every woman needs someone to grow alongside her and to encourage her in her walk with the Lord.When Women Walk Alone encourages readers to see alone times as unique opportunities for personal and spiritual growth. Women will discover practical ways to...find support from other women who feel alone in their lives celebrate their own uniqueness and grow through the lonely times gain strength for the challenges of parenting alone funnel "loneliness in prayer" into "a new power in prayer alone with God" rely on the Lord and others to overcome personal trialsUsing examples of biblical and contemporary women who emerged from a time of loneliness stronger and more complete, Cindi also looks at the example of Jesus and the many times He was alone or sought out some "alone time" to draw strength from His Father.

    Tobias is obsessed with two things: God and girls. Mostly girls, of course. But being a Baptist preacher's son, he can't escape God. When his father is blinded in a bizarre accident (involving hard cider and bird droppings), Tobias must ride the rails to Texas to recover a long-hidden stash of money. Along the way, he's initiated into the hobo brotherhood by Craw, a ribald vagabond-philosopher. Obstacles arise in the form of a saucy prostitute, a flaming boxcar, and a man-eating catfish. But when he meets Sarah, a tough farm girl under a dark curse, he finds out that the greatest challenge of all is love.

    The Art of Being a Woman is designed to infuse women's lives with the one thing that they have been missing: unabashed joie de vivre.

    The key to introvert/extrovert bliss lies in understanding what makes the other person tick and using your differences to help balance and enrich the relationship.This book offers advice for making it happen:Learn how innies and outies process information and communicate differently Discover ways to create a fulfilling social life for yourself and your partner Find creative ways to blend decision-making and future-planning styles Get past the dangerous question, why can't you be more like me? Turn up the heat in the introvert/extrovert bedroomThe book is based on current scientific research and innie/outie interviews. It is also based upon the authors' personal experiences as a mixed couple—introvert Marti Olsen Laney and extrovert Michael Laney have been happily married for more than forty-two years. They must be doing something right!

    Emerson Eggerichs and his wife, Sarah, have already taken the Love & Respect message across America and are changing the way couples talk to, think about, and treat each other. What do you want for your marriage? Want some peace? Want to feel close? Want to feel valued? Want to experience marriage the way God intended? Then why not try some Love and Respect.A wife has one driving need?to feel loved. When that need is met, she is happy. A husband has one driving need?to feel respected. When that need is met, he is happy. When either of these needs isn’t met, things get crazy. Love & Respect reveals why spouses react negatively to each other, and how they can deal with such conflict quickly, easily, and biblically.What readers say about Love & Respect“I’ve been married 35 years and have not heard this taught.”“This is the key that I have been missing.”“You connected all the dots for me.”“As a counselor, I have never been so excited about any material.”“You’re on to something huge here.”Partner Love & Respect with the Love & Respect Workbook for Couples, Individuals, and Groups for an added experience. Love & Respect is also available in Spanish, Amor y Respeto.

    Written in a warm, feminine tone, this book masterfully interlaces authoritative voices with personal stories from the author’s 35 year marriage and her motivational speaking and mentoring career. Nearly divorced two years after her own wedding, the author has become an advocate and exemplar of marital success for women who want to believe. Her compassion and know-how, uniquely presented in three parts: “Why You Both Want a Grand, Lifelong Marriage”, “How to Avoid Becoming a Dream Breaker”, and “What to Do to Make Dreams Come True”, is proving transformative. Inspired by new perspective, women from every stage of life and marital status are gaining the skills, confidence, and long-range vision needed to affect their own happiness as well as the ultimate outcome of their marriage. Wife for Life has helped women turn troubled marriages around, transform good marriages into great ones, and grow great marriages into “grand empires of love” that can last forever.

    And yet, this extremely common human experience is so poorly understood. What are we to make of this time-honored taboo—universally forbidden yet universally practiced? Why do people cheat—even those in happy marriages? Why does an affair hurt so much? When we say infidelity, what exactly do we mean? Do our romantic expectations of marriage set us up for betrayal? Is there such a thing as an affair-proof marriage? Is it possible to love more than one person at once? Can an affair ever help a marriage? Perel weaves real-life case stories with incisive psychological and cultural analysis in this fast-paced and compelling book.For the past ten years, Perel has traveled the globe and worked with hundreds of couples who have grappled with infidelity. Betrayal hurts, she writes, but it can be healed. An affair can even be the doorway to a new marriage—with the same person. With the right approach, couples can grow and learn from these tumultuous experiences, together or apart.Affairs, she argues, have a lot to teach us about modern relationships—what we expect, what we think we want, and what we feel entitled to. They offer a unique window into our personal and cultural attitudes about love, lust, and commitment. Through examining illicit love from multiple angles, Perel invites readers into an honest, enlightened, and entertaining exploration of modern marriage in its many variations.Fiercely intelligent, The State of Affairs provides a daring framework for understanding the intricacies of love and desire. As Perel observes, “Love is messy; infidelity more so. But it is also a window, like no other, into the crevices of the human heart.”

    Imagine a marriage rooted in faith, friendship and mutual fulfillment. Imagine a marriage with amazing sex, but where great sex is only the icing on the cake. This might all sound too good to be true, but it's actually what God designed marriage to be, and He doesn't want you settling for anything less. Having a "Naked Marriage' is about much more than just nakedness in the bedroom (although that's part of the fun). It means being naked emotionally and spiritually as well as physically. It also means undressing all the misconceptions our culture has used to cover God's original, beautiful design for marriage and rediscovering all marriage can be. You and your spouse can have a thriving, Naked Marriage with a lifetime of love and laughter together. This book will show you how. About the Authors: Dave and Ashley Willis have become some of America's most trusted teachers on marriage. Their books, blogs, videos and speaking events reach millions of couples worldwide. They are part of the team at XO Marriage and MarriageToday, which is the largest marriage-focused ministry in the USA. Dave and Ashley have four young sons and live near Dallas, TX.

    Whether she’s responding to cheaters or loners, lovers or haters, the depressed or the down-and-out, Havrilesky writes with equal parts grace, humor, and compassion to remind you that even in your darkest moments you’re not alone.