help your marriage: read this not that

Mark Driscoll publishes “Real Marriage” in a couple of days and Ed Young publishes “Sexperiment” today. My friend Mike takes issue with the authors here for multiple reasons and I don’t plan on reading these two books. I have the feeling I can get the content of these books from reviews and twitter posts. After all, I don’t understand how Ed Young can write an entire book based on the idea of having sex with your spouse for 7 days in a row, and frankly, I don’t care to find out. It seems odd to me.I’m slightly more inclined to read Driscoll’s book because I have benefitted from some other things he has written and I appreciate many things he has to say. I enjoyed his ebook Pastor Dad.  If you are looking for good books to read to benefit your marriage, I recommend these:

Paul Tripp – What did you Expect? (or on DVD) You can read my post outlining and summarizing this book here.

Doug Wilson – Reforming Marriage

Lou Priolo – The Complete Husband

Kent Hughes has a chapter on marriage in his book “Disciplines of a Godly Man“, you can read my review of it here.

Don’t waste your time with Driscoll or Young, there are too many good books to read. What books have your read that you have found helpful?

this will ruin your holloween

The problem with reading is sometimes it changes the way you think and then the way you live. We have already purchased our Halloween candy and are making plans for trick-or-treating. Then I read this article. Now I’m a little disturbed about Halloween.

The tasty treats we enjoy on Halloween are a product of child slavery. You can read more about child and forced labor here. Much of this child labor is reinforced by over-consumption of products like coffee and chocolate. Personally, I pay attention to the coffee I drink. Ever since I saw Blood Diamond I have told my wife I will never buy here any more diamonds (and not just for financial reasons because I can be cheap). But, didn’t consider whether or not the chocolate I eat was harvested by little kids like mine. This is heartbreaking to a dad of three boys. I am learning to make more responsible choices with my purchases, but it is difficult. Sometimes it means paying a lot more. Sometimes it means doing without. But I cannot ignore the FACT that what I buy with my money either helps or hurts. I’m taking steps, even if they are baby steps. It doesn’t have to mean we do without, but consume responsibly, let Fair-Trade influence your purchases.

My friend Mike offers some more insight on the same article I read here. He includes a disturbing picture.

Here is a solution to possibly salvage your Halloween? “Halloween candy that doesn’t suck.”

going extinct

Our family spent the afternoon at N. Division Street in Ocean City yesterday. As the tide was coming in, I moved someone’s bags, towels, and shoes so that the tide wouldn’t soak them.  A little while later, this guy came with his two kids and thanked me for moving his things. We had a few brief conversations over the next couple of hours in between playing with our kids in the water and the sand. As were packing up to leave, we spoke for a few more minutes.  At one point in the conversation he said, “I didn’t think guys like you existed anymore.” I’m not entirely sure what he meant by that, but I hope it was a complement!

Dad Life

floundering around

My buddy Ricky obliged me yesterday when I invited myself to go fishing with him. So my son Zak and I spent the afternoon hanging out on a sweet pontoon boat with Ricky and his family. We were fishing just north of Hooper’s Crab House in the Sinepuxent Bay. Now, I have quite the reputation in my wife’s family of not being able to actually catch anything when I fish. So, when I caught a 21″ flounder we were all surprised. Ricky’s mom was even laughing at me after I caught it. She was laughing mostly because I caught the fish on this pole.  It was set up with a Carolina rig and a blue lizard from bass fishing a couple of weeks ago. I just ripped the lizard off, put a live minnow on, and chucked it in the water for Zak. I wanted to quickly get my pole set up with the “correct” flounder hook. Ricky’s daughter began to feed Zak crackers with cheese from a can, GoGurt, and all sorts of delights. So, Zak became distracted and I was standing there holding his little dinky pole before mine was ready. A few minutes later, the fish was on and on the second try, Ricky netted it. I caught another fish awhile later with my pole, but it was only around 16 inches so we had to release it. Unfortunately those were the only two fish we caught. I hope Ricky lets me come again sometime! Zak had a blast, but think it was mainly due to being fed constantly. He fell asleep on the ride home. 

It took me forever to filet the fish due to the fact that I have no sharp knife in my kitchen and , as I mentioned before, I never catch anything big enough to keep so I am out of practice. But, I managed to get a complete top filet and the two bottom filets. I seasoned them and threw them on the grill and that’s what we ate for dinner last night. I forgot to take pictures of that though. I sure do feel manly about catching, cleaning, grilling, and eating my catch…even if it was caught on a kid’s fishing pole.

It was a memorable day!

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