Parenting Religion

God's love, plans, and promises for you are forever unfolding. I get it, Momma. I totally get it. Every day you wake up and try your very best. You love, give, and pour out your life for the ones who call you Momma. But no matter how much you offer, there are still days you feel as though you come up short. You worry, "Am I loving these babies enough? Is this ever going to get easier? Why does it seem like I am the only one who cannot balance it all?" Sometimes we just need hope (and maybe a long, uninterrupted nap).

In The Marriage Challenge: A Finance Guide for Married Couples, financial expert and author of The Money Challenge Art Rainer takes you on a journey to a financially healthy marriage. Get started on the right foot, or get back on the right track, by accepting the challenge and realizing God's design for money and marriage.

As a teenager, Kristin Berry had heard all the horror stories surrounding foster care and adoption - abuse, neglect, rejection, anger, and misunderstandings. But instead of closing her heart, God opened it wide. This is Kristin's honest, unvarnished story of some of her experiences as a foster parent of 23 children over the course of nine years. What she learned is that living in a foster home is like living with a revolving door. You never know who will arrive or who you will have to say goodbye to. Leaving the door open means there will be heartache and pain, but also adventure and unexpected joy.

When Carolyn Weber moved to Oxford University to study, she didn't expect to find God there. But she did. As she grappled with her newest and most important relationship, she also found that there was another invitation: to think bigger about love. In this book we follow Weber through courtship and into marriage and parenthood. Now a literature professor, Weber reflects on her relationship with a sometimes-absent father and how that has shaped her.

Studies show that roughly one out of two marriages end in divorce. One of the reasons for this is couples today are not prepared for all - the good and bad - that may happen in marriage. Are you prepared? Author and blogger Jackie Bledsoe outlines the seven stages, or seven rings of marriages, that will equip couples for all stages in marriage. He challenges couples to keep moving through each stage for a lasting and fulfilling marriage.

With more than five million copies in print, in nearly two dozen languages, The Love Dare has become an exciting, enriching journey for couples around the world. It can now become yours. Though unconditional love is promised at weddings, it is rarely practiced in real life. As a result, romantic hopes often fade into disappointment at home. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. Whether your marriage is hanging by a thread or healthy and strong, this 40-day journey (featured in the hit movie Fireproof) challenges husbands and wives to understand and practice unconditional love.

Practicing the Power of Now is a carefully arranged series of excerpts from the The Power of Now that directly gives us those exercises and keys. Return to those words, reflect on the words, reflect even on the space between the words and - maybe over time, maybe immediately - you'll discover something of life-changing significance.

Great marriages don't just happen - they're made, intentionally, day by day. Yet most of us enter the covenant of marriage thinking that the role of spouse will be easy, natural, effortless. Rarely is this true. In fact, the number one cause of divorce isn't adultery or finances or disagreements. It's apathy - a lack of intentional emotional, physical, and mental investment in the relationship.

The Orthodox Christian tradition is filled with wisdom and guidance about the biblical path of salvation. Yet this guidance remains largely inaccessible to parents and often disconnected from the parenting challenges we face in our homes. Parenting Toward the Kingdom will help you make the connections between the spiritual life as we understand it in the Orthodox Church and the ongoing challenges of raising children.

Parenting isn't rocket science, it's just brain surgery. And Dr. Joshua Straub has good news for you: You can do it! You don't need to do all the "right" things as a parent. Both science and the Bible show us that the most important thing we can provide for our kids is a place of emotional safety. In other words, the posture from which we parent matters infinitely more than the techniques of parenting. Emotional safety - more than any other factor - is scientifically linked to raising kids who live, love, and lead well.

For 30 years Randy Alcorn has been encouraging people - young and old - to pursue the rewards of sexual purity. Too often we settle for a compromised Christianity that's just a baptized version of the world's sad existence, rather than the abundant life to which God calls us.

Love Is a Verb takes his teaching to the next level. Rather than a typical marriage self-help book filled with lengthy explanations of principles and techniques, it is a compilation of true stories displaying love in action. These stories - written by everyday people - go straight to the hearts of readers, who often say that illustrations are the most effective parts of a book. Gary Chapman adds a "Love Lesson" to each story, showing readers how they can apply the same principles to their own relationships.

You can meet Hannah in 1 Samuel, chapters 1 and 2. The Bible says she was "barren", and we know she suffered heartache, anguish, and grief because of her empty arms. Perhaps you do, too. Hannah's Hope is for all who long for a child yet to be conceived, grieve for a baby too soon passed from the womb, or have lived through the no-man's-land of failed adoption. It is intended as a guide to assist you in making wise decisions as you struggle through your grief.

Strengthening your own foundation is one of the very best beginnings you can give your child. In The Mindful Mom-to-Be, doula and pregnancy coach Lori Bregman guides you in your journey toward motherhood by empowering you to find what works best for you and your baby. In addition to concrete, prescriptive health information, including nutritional advice, natural remedies, developmental milestones, and techniques for labor, she offers simple and enjoyable spiritual and emotional exercises to help you prepare for motherhood.

In Gay Girl, Good God, author Jackie Hill Perry shares her own story, offering practical tools that helped her in the process of finding wholeness. Jackie grew up fatherless and experienced gender confusion. She embraced masculinity and homosexuality with every fiber of her being. She knew that Christians had a lot to say about all of the above. But was she supposed to change herself? How was she supposed to stop loving women, when homosexuality felt more natural to her than heterosexuality ever could?

Marriage is all about sharing: sharing space, sharing joys and sorrows, sharing hopes and dreams. Yet we often hold back a part of ourselves because we fear that being wholly transparent - about our past, our desires, our failures, our faults - will bring judgment, rejection, or even just unwanted friction to our relationship. We are afraid to be fully known. As a result, we never experience being fully loved. In this paradigm-shifting book, Ryan and Selena Frederick show you how to develop a see-through marriage, one that is marked by full transparency and confident vulnerability.

You're deeply committed to helping your kids succeed. But you're concerned. Why are so many graduates unprepared to enter the workforce and face life on their own? You're doing your best to raise healthy children, but sometimes you wonder, am I really helping them? Tim Elmore shows you how to avoid 12 critical mistakes parents unintentionally make. He outlines practical and effective parenting skills so you won't fall into common traps. Find out why thousands of organizations have sought out Tim Elmore to help them develop young leaders.

The Song of Solomon is an important biblical book for understanding God’s intentions for romance and sex. In Sex, Romance, and the Glory of God, pastor C. J. Mahaney leads men through this biblical book, making the case that sex is a good gift God gave his people to be enjoyed within the bounds of marriage between a man and a woman.

Playing off the themes in the Caldecott Medal-winning children's book Where the Wild Things Are, this informative, practical, and encouraging guide will help parents guide boys down the path to healthy and authentic manhood. Wild Things addresses the physical, emotional, and spiritual parts of a boy, written by two therapists who are currently engaged in clinical work with boys and their parents and who are also fathers raising five sons.

Karol Truman provides a comprehensive and enlightening resource for getting in touch with unresolved feelings which, she explains, can distort not only happiness but also health and well-being. Leaving no emotion unnamed, and in fact listing around 750 labels for feelings, Truman helps identify problem areas, and offers a "script" to help process the feelings, replacing the negative feeling with a new, positive outlook.