Mike and I have been married since 1988, and we have experienced the protection and blessing of God all along the way. And, wow, we have needed it!

Back then, we believed we were both ready for marriage. We shared lots of similarities, priorities, and values. We were both older than most of our friends and family when they got married. We were finished with college and starting careers. In hindsight, though, we can look back now and see how much we lacked in real preparation and how immaturity and inexperience, mistakes and sins, lack of training and faulty thoughts hindered and actually hurt our marriage.

Mike and I married in 1988, about 14 months after we first met in his small hometown, Crossett, Arkansas. I had moved to Crossett for my first post-college job to serve as the Director of Public Relations and Personnel at the hospital in Crossett, Ashley Memorial Hospital, after graduating from Harding University. Mike had recently graduated from Louisiana Tech in Ruston and returned home as his job hunt continued.

As, I mentioned, we had a lot in common: we both graduated from high school in 1982, both grew up in Christian families living in modest homes on 3 acres , both had finished college, both led very social, active lives. Below the service, though, we were very different. I grew up as the middle child of 7; Mike grew up an only child. I lived in Kennedale, Texas, a small town with a high school graduating class of only 72 back then, but we could be in downtown Fort Worth in 20 minutes, at Six Flags over Texas in 30 and in downtown Dallas in 35. Mike's hometown actually had a higher population than Kennedale, but the nearest shopping mall was an hour south in Monroe, Louisiana, the next nearest was two hours north in Little Rock. I grew up going to with loud, large extended family events, summer camps, museums, theaters, and regional youth group events. He grew up with a very quiet and calm family of three, fishing and hunting, and cruising through town, circling the Sonic.

Our first significant marital struggle revolved around his desire to live in his hometown and continue doing the things he had grown up doing and my desire to move back to Texas and all the experiences I loved.

By the time we started having children, we both knew we wanted to be very intentional about preparing them specifically for marriage because we were clearly seeing the cracks in our foundation.

These two journals find their root right there in the earliest years of our marriage when we faced the challenges of marriage without a guide to help and in the earliest moments of the lives of our children when we began praying for their marriages to be God-centered and Biblically sound.