How to Create a Healthy and Happy Marriage (60 Second Read)
Daniel Crosby • June 13, 2023

Day 14


How to Create a Healthy and Happy Marriage (60 Second Read)


Hopefully your marriage is a long-term pursuit. However, when you stand up in front of God and your family and make those “as long as we both shall live” vows it’s hard to imagine how long “till death do us part” really is.


Here are 2 ideas to grow a LONG successful marriage:


1. SMALL CONSISTENT DEPOSITS – Like saving for retirement, it doesn’t happen overnight. If you save just a little out of each paycheck and invest it, then hopefully you’ll have a huge chunk of money at retirement. Similarly in marriage, we must make small regular deposits of love over a lifetime. Anniversaries and vacations are big and fun, but it’s the daily deposits that really add up. Doing the dishes, hugs, serving, and genuine compliments all communicate love.


2. VALUE PARTNERSHIP – The power in partnership is that we can both do something bigger together than we could do separately. This means that each of you must value the others’ abilities. Learning to appreciate the complementary strengths of your spouse (even if they drive you nuts sometimes) is a big part of success in any partnership. Valuing one another’s unique giftings also keeps criticism and resentment at bay.


HOMEWORK: Tonight, anonymously make one small deposit into your marriage that you don’t immediately get credit for. Then go tell your spouse something you value about them that you wouldn’t be good at doing on your own.


As always, if you’re stuck then don’t hesitate to reach out to me personally. I help couples reconnect every day and get back on track to having a marriage they’re excited to go home to.

"Uncomfortable" Book Review

By Daniel Crosby • May 7, 2025
“Uncomfortable: The Awkward and Essential Challenge of Christian Community” by Brett McCracken is a great book to read if you’re a church person or if you’ve become somewhat detached and frustrated with the church. McCracken challenges all of us, conservatives and progressives, to think about the WHY behind Christian community and one of the fundamentals of finding the WHY is approaching it with humility. Maybe you having it your way and telling everyone else they’re wrong wasn’t exactly what Christ had in mind when He instituted the church. iPhones and iPads seem to have morphed into iChurch in a sense. American culture has turned Christ’s church into a business that caters to our comforts aesthetically, relationally, and politically. It’s made us consumers, critics, and reviewers of the Church rather than servants of THE Kingdom. It’s not wrong to have preferences and to like some things better than others. Music, décor, and speaking style are all over the spectrum at different churches, but he argues that the point of picking a church and serving in it should be less about does it meet my needs and more about whether I’m showing up and using this place along with this group to glorify God. He annoyed me in parts because he steps on my toes but maybe we need that a little more often. If you’re disenfranchised with the status quo and you feel like it’d be good to be challenged about church then go grab “Uncomfortable” by Brett McCrackin.

Look for Beautiful Things

By Daniel Crosby • April 28, 2025
Look for beautiful things when you're restless, uncomfortable, or on edge. There's something about acknowledging the good around us that helps us reset and realize that it's not all bad. If you're struggling to see beautiful things in the world, come see me and we can talk more about it. www.danielcrosbycounseling.com

"The Needs of the Heart" Book Review

By Daniel Crosby • April 24, 2025
“The Needs of the Heart” by Chip Dodd is a book that will blow your mind. When I picked it up, it’s a very small thin book. Less than 100 pages. I assumed I’d breeze through it in a couple of hours. About a month later I finished digesting it. The truth is we cannot fully live the life God has called us to unless we acknowledge that we do have needs, that these needs are good, and discover the healthy ways of meeting these needs. Chip takes common human needs like Security and Accomplishment and he unpacks what they really are pointing us to in his typical concise but brilliant depth. There’s no fluff here. With chapters just 3-4 pages each, you’re going to want to have a highlighter ready to underline, to ponder these topics, and maybe then to discuss them with someone you know and trust. You’ll come away from this book with a deeper sense what is already fulfilled within you and ones that might be lacking where you need to go do a deep dive with a lot of prayer and introspection. If you liked Chip’s book “The Voice of the Heart,” this is one is your next read. Go grab “The Needs of the Heart” by Chip Dodd.