It has been my observation that churches tend to invest a fair bit of effort in preparing couples to begin a healthy marriage, but perhaps a little less in helping couples sustain a healthy marriage. We offer pre-marriage seminars designed to deliberately help a couple better understand the challenges that will come their way in the years ahead, but don’t offer as many seminars deliberately designed to help couples through the middle and later years of marriage and, thus, through issues like sorrow, loss, declining sexuality, empty-nesting, unmet expectations, unresolved conflict, and so on. I wanted to address this in my church (and in my own marriage, for that), so decided to lead a marriage seminar that would appeal specifically to couples who have been married for at least a decade and perhaps even several. I built it around Dave Harvey’s I Still Do: Growing Closer and Stronger through Life’s Defining Moments—a book that is meant to foster a marriage that is lasting and durable. With Dave doing the heavy lifting, I put a good deal of effort into creating questions that would prompt conversation and prayer between the couples and also lead to helpful group discussions. Because I expect others may benefit from such a course, I thought I’d share the material and make it freely available for you to download for your own purposes, whether that’s to lead a course with others or just go through the material with your spouse. You are free to download it, use it, edit it, and so … Continue reading I Still Do: A Marriage Course for the Middle Years