My reading list

It's summer holidays and I get to do what I like to do (well most of the time). For me that means time alone with my beloved just hanging out, long chats over coffee (or you name the beverage), cooking favourite meals and even trying some new ones, washing the car, resting, reading, sipping, and even time alone. Now that's what I call a vacation. We will also spend 5 days next week sans enfants.

The rest of this week (and the majority of next week) will be comprised of a combination of resting and reading. I have continued to journey through the bible, in fact I am more than half way through the entire book and I plan on continuing my bible reading on a daily basis(can't quit now and don't want to).

In addition to this, I will be reading everything from the Sun (Toronto and Ottawa, to see what's up with the latest Heater saga) to simple reads like: "The Shack" (I have tried reading it at least five times), "tuesdays with Morrie", the latest Cussler (or some older ones), a biography on Churchill and some marriage related books. No we are not in trouble, we are doing well thank you very much and have been given the opportunity to mentor others in their marriages. We will ensure that we are not considered counsellors, because we are not. Our role is to walk beside people as they need someone to chat with as they navigate the roller coaster that marriage invariably is. We will also use the "Love and Respect" material, by Emmerson Eggerichs. We have used this material in a small group setting and will be presenting it to a larger group on Sunday mornings at our church in the fall. I am excited to go through this again, more opportunities to learn to be a better husband.

One marriage book is called: "How we Love" by Milan and Kay Yerkovich (great name eh?). They are a married couple who are trained marriage counsellors. I've been trying to read this book for some time and now have finally been able to crack the pages and have begun to delve deeper into the things that affect our current state. Interestingly, they point to childhood issues that now continue to affect our lives in the present. Those issues are comfort, touch and listening. They suggest that how we were comforted (or not at all), how we were touched (lots of issues for lots of people here) and how we were listened to (or not at all) have a significant affect on our adult to adult (married and other) and adult to child relationships.

I feel like I am back at school and studying and I am enjoying it. I want to take all of it in and then pass it on to as many people as I can. I love this stuff because it makes sense. I realize that I need to be in "the mood" to get this stuff. I need to be away from the daily demands of work and be able to focus my attention on the material at hand. Fortunately, this being vacation time I can take as much time as I want to read, take notes, commit it to memory and then continue to learn from it.

I am sure that there will be many blogs coming from my summer reading material, so be prepared to hear(read) some of my thoughts about the material.