Project: Happily Ever After. {Giveaway!}

I admit when the email popped up in my inbox, I was almost ready to hit delete.

Send me a marriage book?
Are they implying my marriage wasn't working?

But I replied, received the book a few days later and devoured it within days.

Here's the deal, I do think that J and I have a good marriage, in fact most days I think we have a great marriage.

But I think I spend more time and energy focusing on being a good mom than I do a wife, and I don't think I'm alone. I want to be a good wife.

Sometimes I think I am, othertimes I know I'm not.

There are days that we, like most married couples, wake up and we're off all day and I'm on him for leaving his breakfast dishes on the counter and he's on me for doing the naggity nag thing. And then I'm irritated he didn't answer his cell phone for the 347th time and he's irritated with me for having an attitude.

Then there are the days he comes home from work and he's tired from working all day and I'm tired from mothering all day and anything either of us do or say is going to annoy the other.

Neither of us are perfect. I can be bossy and overly sensitive and have high expectations and sometimes that drives the guy crazy! He can be forgetful and work late one too many nights and sleep through a train wreck in the middle of the night and sometimes that drives me crazy!

Last Saturday morning, one of our children was up way, way, way too early. Both of us were tired, crabby with said child which then led us to being crabby with each other. The typical molehills of getting ready and getting out the door for T's basketball game turned into mountains and so we drove silently seething at each other to basketball about things that really don't matter.

This April, we'll have been married for seven years {!} and we are happier and more in love today than we were then. And in the end we have way more great days than bad, off and icky days, but that doesn't mean there aren't bad days and that there isn't work involved.

The work is the letting go, caring less about meaningless things, knowing when to speak up and when to just let it roll. The work is into giving our marriage to God, praying over it, reminding each other of His word. The work is in the giving of grace {even when you want to point out mistakes!} and knowing when you need a moment. The work is in the communicating and the scheduling and the coordinating of who will be where, when and how we'll make it work.

Author Alissa Bowman bravely shares her marriage story in her new book Project: Happily Ever After Saving Your Marriage When the Fairytale Falters. She spent four months, doing everything she could to save a marriage that many {friends, colleagues, even her mom} had written off as hopeless. She shares tips and details of what she needed to do and the work her and her husband had to do from being a couple on the verge of divorce to a couple renewing their vows at the end. She writes with refreshing honesty. The kind of honesty that needs to be out there more because I am certain there are other couples in a place that she was in.

She writes about how she originally pinned it all on her husband, that it was his fault their marriage wasn't working and all of his issues. And then realizes that she plays a part in all of this too. It takes two. {This is usually the case, no?} 

They share with each other all the qualities they love about each other and realize they still very much love each other and she especially needed to get her mind and heart on that path again.

Her writing had me laughing many, many times. J would usually peak over and ask what I was reading and what was so funny and he too, found the humor in her stories, typical marriage issues and her advice.

Alissa would like to give one of YOU a copy of her book that just hit bookshelves this month. Maybe you are looking for something just like this, maybe your marriage is on cloud nine and you just think it'd be a fun read. {It is a super easy quick beach read!} Maybe you've got a friend or family member who you think would love the book or maybe you'd like to give it as a wedding gift. Whatever works.

To enter to win your own copy, please leave a comment sharing some marriage advice you have. {Even if you're not married, you can share some advice you've heard or given! I'm excited to read these!}

Contest ends Wednesday Feb. 2 at 8pm.