Marriage by Design" by Eric Disney

Marriage by Design serves as a healing salve to wounded marriages--as well as a warning to those beginning their matrimonial journey, and couples anywhere in the spectrum--offering hope and encouragement to those who want to revitalize, refine, or completely restore their relationships. Marriage by Design is loaded with practical tools and exercises designed to shed light on unhealthy modes of behavior and their motivations; it also challenges some of the beliefs we carry from childhood that can impact our current relationships.

Marriage by Design begins by establishing God's foundation in marriage and moving through a systematic building process, enabling couples to apply scriptural-based techniques and concepts to their own marriages. If you're looking to change a relationship based on inconsistent emotions and experience the freedom produced by intentional living--to move your marriage from stuck to stupendous--Marriage by Design is the tool you've been missing!

Author Info: 

Eric A. Disney is a Recovery and Personal Growth pastor at a local church in Norco, California, where he has served for two decades. He is a counseling psychology graduate from California Baptist University in Riverside, California. His ministry covers a wide variety of healing issues including addiction recovery, postabortion healing, sexual healing, and many others, and he offers a broad range of marriage, family, and relationship counseling classes and seminars. Eric conducts premarital counseling and has developed marriage classes for couples experiencing severe marital difficulties as well as those looking for marriage enrichment, both with a great deal of success. His passion for seeing people healed and marriages flourish has led to the development and implementation of several classes offered to the community. Eric has been an active member of the American Association of Christian Counselors since 1999. He is happily married to his wonderful wife, Jennifer, an author and teacher who is also very active in recovery ministry. Together they are the proud parents of two boys.

Aside from his family and his relationship with God, his passion is seeing people made whole. His passion for healing marriages stretches beyond the immediate family, it affects generations to come!

My Review:This is a fantastic book about marriage. It doesn't just tell you want to do and what not to do but gives you homework to work through the issues that I have listed at the end of this review, along with others that I didn't mention.                                                                                  This book has many quotes that left this reader thinking have I done this to my spouse and how true this is, this Eric Disney is so right. I read the book and haven't done the homework as I was reading the book for review purposes but I will be doing the homework in the next few days, going to take my time and get the full benefit from them!                                                                                       This is a great book to anyone wanting a better marriage or someone getting married. This would be a great wedding present, to help solve problems before they start.                                                                    I am going to come right out and say that the author makes it plain that you are responsible for your own actions and it is not your spouse's responsibility to make you  happy. So you can see this isn't a book about how to change your spouse to fit your plans or dreams or to make you happy but to change you and your spouse into the team that God designed you to be!   This book is written to be used as a couple but if your spouse won't it can sure be used alone! If you follow the concepts in this book, your marriage has to improve.                                                                                                     This is two actual paragraphs from the book, (page 223) and it sums up the book, "A key component in revitalizing your marriage is the understanding that your marriage is not about you.  Realize that God has created uniqueness in both of you. The more you come to accept and love the differences between the two of you, the sooner you can learn to let go of the little stuff that the enemy loves to use to distract you from the goal. The goal of every couple should be to live for the other, to live for God. That doesn't mean you sacrifice your individuality" it means that consideration for what is most beneficial to your relationship will outweigh what is solely beneficial to you individually. From that you will begin to reap increasing dividends.  Creating a richer, fuller marriage begins with a decision: the decision to die to oneself. This is not only in relationship to God,but also in our relationship to one another. Whether our dysfunction stems from attitudes, behaviors, past experiences, or simply choosing to believe the lies of the enemy, it is essential that we step out of ourselves and move into alignment with our creator.                                                                                                                       

This book has personal testimony from actual couples and I wish I could say they all lived happily ever after but not so, the couple that the book started out with has divorced. I still believed this book can help a couple if they applied it.                                                                                                       I was given a copy by the author for an honest review!                                                                                                                                                                                     Issues covered throughout this comprehensive and insightful book include:                                               • handling your emotions                                                                                                                                                       • moving from selfishness to selflessness                                                                                                                               • mastering forgiveness                                                                                                                                    • raising healthy children                                                                                                                                           • conquering the residue from past trauma                                                                                                      • understanding the difference between communication and conflict,

.and understanding how addictions can impact your marriage.

I am giving this book a 5 star rating!