Drawing Heaven Into Your Marriage

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I don’t often review books.  I make exceptions only when the book is exceptional.  Drawing Heaven Into Your Marriage  by H. Wallace Goddard, PhD, is exceptional!

Casting off conventional “wisdom,” Dr. Wally gets right to the root of successful, happy marriages and for that matter, successful, happy lives.  His approach is based entirely on the Atonement, Merits, and Mercy of Jesus Christ.  No more tricks and techniques, no more fooling around with each other’s behavior or feelings, Wally teaches us the true nature of love and change.  The book is refreshing, motivating, readable and hits close to home.  Without being preachy, Wally teaches fundamental principles that are full of warmth, compassion and believability.  I wish every married couple had and studied this wonderful, bright work of love and testimony.

So pleased, am I with Drawing Heaven Into Your Marriage that I’m going to give away a copy on the 15th of March.  If you’d like to have your name entered into the drawing please indicate in the comments of this article.

 Booklogged and I enjoy and warm and joyful marriage.  We’ve learned many of the things Dr. Wally teaches, in the marriage school of hard knocks.  We affirm that the principles are true.  Oh, how I wish I’d had this book in the earlier moments of our marriage, where I could possibly have avoided inflicting so much pain on her.  I did have Wally in those days, though, (he’s a personal and very dear friend) and he was, even then, catalyst for much of the progress I was able to make.  Why?  Because even 20 years ago, Wally understood better than I, the goodness, kindness and love of Jesus Christ and the impact my Savior could have on every facet of my enormously imperfect life.

Dr. Wally

Before Stephen E. Robinson and Believing Christ, before James L. Ferrell’s, The Peacegiver, before serving at the county jail and later, at the juvenile detention center, before learning to engage, rather than merely reading, The Book of Mormon, before addiciton recovery and my connection with LDS ARP, all of which have taught me about the love and atonement and mercy of Jesus Christ; before all of that, was Wally Goddard.  I had grown up with lots of mistaken, mythical and nonsensical notions about God and my relationship with him.  Wally was the first to help remove the scales from my eyes.  This was long before he was famous.  He had not published; he had no PhD.  In those days the only thing I ever placed before his name was brother.

It is interesting though, that as I read his writings today, there is little that doesn’t echo from the days we pondered life together in our youth.  I rue that I wasn’t prepared to better understand what he was trying to teach me back then.  While it is clear I didn’t get much of what Wally had for me; it is also clear that he busted the first cracks in the crust of false notions that had me encased in fear, frustration and darkness.  Back then, Wally was to me, a  solitary voice in a culture of tradition, self sufficiency, anxiety and threat.  I, for example, subconsciously thought that God was holding me by the scruff of the neck, out over hell, just waiting for an excuse to drop me.  Had I ever articulated those words, I hope I would have recognized how foolish they are.  I never actually put it in those terms, though.  Instead, it was more like script silently written into the software of my thought processes.  Script, which I may have and often did disagree with, but script which still controlled my response to the circumstances of my life.  Wally initiated for me, the long laborious process of rewriting that script.

Wally is now more renown and has written several wonderful volumes that are as fresh and cutting edge as things get in Mormondom.  There is no heretical fringe type thinking, just honest, faithfilled truth that so many of us have missed in our lives.  You can read his Myth of the Month columns at Meridian Magazine or explore a collection of wonderful articles at his blog, Dr. Wally.

Approaching Heaven

“I don’t want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully, tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails. I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp. I want to be there with grass stains on my shoes from mowing Sister Schenk’s lawn. I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbor’s children. I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone’s garden. I want to be there with children’s sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder. I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived.”   Marjorie Peay Hinckley

Read more about why this matters in Dr. Wally’s article on Personality and Perfection.

Mrs. Hughes Is Soooo Funny!

Warning! This material is for MATURE Audiences only. If you are under 50, move on.

William Tell Overture for Moms