The Silly Grin Club! Beginning of a book by an 80 year old HAPPY Husband!

[JoelandKathy]

There is a man who has been in contact with us for a while. He is from Canada. His wife just passed away at 80 plus years of age.  He has been encouraged to write a book on marriage and the beginnings of the book is introducing the "Silly Grin Club!"   He got it!

 

He is going to keep us in the loop as the book progresses.  These are just some starting notes but I love it.. and I LOVE his translation of Genesis 1:26-27 !!!!    That is what we want!  A bunch of marriages with Silly Grins!

 

Here are the beginning seed thoughts. His doctor is going to be helping him to edit the book and help to keep him on the project. I can't wait to read more!

 

 

 

A book on marriage?   Who needs another one?  Go to almost any Christian bookstore and there are shelves of books devoted to marriage – so why am I being asked to write another one?  To answer this question, we need to go back several years when my wife Shirley and I had moved to a new home and joined a new church.

  

            Having previously been very involved in church leadership activities, we had decided to take a rest, but It did not turn out this way. The church had an “Older Married Couples Bible Study” and as the one leading it was moving to a new home, we were asked if they could use our home for a time.  I noted that while it was called a “Married Couples Bible Study” – in reality it was more like “Married Women’s Bible Study” as husbands rarely turned up.   A few weeks into this, the person leading the study did not turn up, so I took it.  This was no problem for me as I was a teaching prof. at our local community college.   Then the lady who led the study found she could not continue – and this left me ‘holding the bag’ as it were.

 

            I found the supplied “Bible Study Guide” was rather boring, I decided to dump it and take a serious look at what the Bible really had to say about marriage.  I used the standard engineering approach of going back to the beginning.  I started with Adam and Eve and how God designed their bodies for each other.  I noted that something that the church frowned on was God’s first command after Eve was made:  “Go and have fun and lots of sex”. ( Gen 1:27-28).

 

            Instead of going over the usual advice and counsel given to married couples, do this, do that etc.  I went into how our bodies and brains were designed for marriage,  how God created us so that in marriage, we could become, as the Bible States “as one”.

 

            The husbands started turning up.  More married couples joined and it was not long before our rather large living room was full.  Marriages, some which were heading for divorce, became alive and exciting again.   The group decided to change the name of the study to “The Silly Grin Club” because that is what married couples had within weeks of joining us.   So many wanted to join that for a time, we had two meetings a week.   Marriages became exciting, and as our minister later told me,  men who had been into pornography, were no longer interested in it.   

 

            After a few years, there was a change of minister who used his ‘new broom’ to reorganize the church to his liking and most of the church/home groups, including these bible studies came to an end.   While Shirley and I have also moved on,  some who were part of the group, and those who have read the papers and notes used during these studies, have been telling me that all this information must not be lost.   This came to a head, when a nurse came to our home to look after my wife Shirley, who was recovering from a back injury, commented on our marriage, and also read some of my notes.  She became excited and told me that the information is very very important, that there are many who need to know all this and that I must put it into a book.  Our family doctor offered to critique and with her expertise, keep me on track, so I no longer had any excuse to procrastinate.

 

 **************

Both man and women are designed by God to become ‘one’ in order to be really complete.

***************

 

 

            I was born into a family who encouraged taking a close look at anything we took an interest in.  One of the reasons for this was that in many cases, what is taken as fact is often based on an ‘opinion or theory’ – and is still accepted as fact even when, at a later time, this ‘opinion/theory’ is proved to be wrong.

 

For example: The ‘fact’ that the public has been  told, that as the glaciers at the North and South poles melt, the level of the oceans will rise and cover much of the Earth.    The truth is that Ice takes a greater volume than water and so the water level does not change as the ice melts.  Filling a glass of water almost to the top and then dropping in a few ice cubes easily proves this.  You can see that the water level in the glass does NOT change as the ice melts.

 

I took a close look at what both the Church and the Bible had to say about marriage.   What I quickly realized was that much of what is understood and taught about marriage by the Church is based on incorrect translation and ‘church politics’.    When a correct biblical understanding of marriage is combined with knowledge about how our bodies and brains are designed, a totally different picture of marriage appears.    As the  “Silly Grin Club” began to apply what we learned to their own marriages – their marriages became alive and exciting.    Also exiting was that their children, seeing the change in their parents, wanted the same when they got married. 

 

Both my wife Shirley and I are qualified marriage and family counsellors, but in reality a marriage counsellor is more like a fireman – helping put out the fires of marriage problems.    With so many marriages in serious trouble,  there had to be a cause.  Also with so many of the marriages of the clergy being in trouble, it did not appear that the church had any real answer.

 

            When things are going wrong with a machine and one cannot find out how to put it right – there is the engineering maxim “As a last resort – read the instructions”.  While it is true that in some cases, the instructions were not read,  often it a case that the instructions cannot be fully understood before knowing  something about the machine first.      This seemed logical, and so I decided to study “the machine” -  How our bodies and brains work – and to “re-read the instructions”.  What I found was  a complex system of both body and brain designed bring a man and a woman together in the first place, and to make them ‘one’. 

 

The amazing results of what we found as this knowledge was applied to the marriages of ‘The Silly Grin Club”  is what this book is all about.

 

 

[Crystal]

 I like it !     

[ChooseLove]

Yes I agree.  I can't wait to read more myself.  Would love to me a part of that club.  

[MaryJane]

More! More!

[JoelandKathy]

I am hoping to get more from the author soon!

[Rebuilding Trust]

Love it!