Resources.
Relationships.
“5 Love Languages” by Gary Chapman. One key resource in the pre-marital prep course is the time to learn how to love others and be able to communicate how you feel loved.
“The Relationship Cure” by John Gottman. It may not solve all your problems but it is an intriguing read that gives you great hints at how to react to your partner. How you react actually predicts how long you will stay married!
“Boundaries” by Henry Cloud and John Townsend, a book I have recommended countless times! So many of us want to carry others people’s burdens for them. In the process of helping we take on their burdens instead of helping them carry their own burdens. Boundaries keep all of us in healthy relationships.
Enneagram.
“The Road Back to You” by Ian Cron and Suzanne Stabile. The starter book. If you don’t know much and you want an easy read that lets you know if you want to dive deeper…this is for you!
“The Enneagram Spectrum of Personality Types” by Jerome Wagner. Go deeper and know more about each individual style. Jerome Wagner offers one of the most reliable tests for the Enneagram as well and it only costs $10!! After you take it here, we can go through the results together and you can understand it all! It is not a super fancy website but what you get is insightful and life changing.
“The Enneagram a Christian Perspective” by Richard Rohr. Deeper and deeper we go! This is a thick book and will take some time but it connects it with faith which I think is a really important aspect of the Enneagram.
Spiritual Formation.
“Invitation to Solitude and Silence” by Ruth Haley Barton. Want to grow spiritually? Get this book. It challenges and attempts to strengthen the bond you have with God. Practices taught in this book will transform the way you interact with GOD! Obsessed!
“Liturgy of the Ordinary” by Tish Harrison Warren. How to connect with God in the ordinary things of life. Spirituality when you don’t have hours a day to spend reading and praying…you know, most of the world lives in that space! Get it, it changed my mindset around emails and dishes!
Want to challenge yourself faith wise? This one is the one! Rachel Held Evans was an incredible writer and desperately wanted to love God but also saw that the things she had been taught growing up don’t fit with the God she knew. This is a challenging read. It challenges the way Evangelical Christians have been taught to read the Bible. It makes scripture come alive in ways that I had been wanting! I loved this book and have recommended it to many people who are struggling spiritually.
So many more books will be put on this list as I read them and have thoughts about them! So many books so little time!