As a young pastor, Ryan thought he was ready to get married, but soon after the wedding, he had a big problem.

When I'm doing counseling, I tell people oftentimes that I had the worst beginning six months of a marriage that I know of,

and so I'm a qualified counselor for them.

And what really began to give me a 180 in my marriage and understanding my role as a husband was just the

ministry of focus on the family. Now, Pastor Ryan points his congregation to all the resources we

provide for families because we're still helping them today. Focus on the family empowers me in my

marriage because I can understand

that other people have gone through the same thing that I'm going through and I'm not alone

in the struggles that I face and my wife and I can gain hope from the stories that are shared

on air. I'm Jim Daly. Help us give families hope today. Donate and your gift will be doubled at

Focus on thefamily.com slash gift.

Anything successful in life is going to require some preparation and that's true for marriage as well. Now, 40 years ago,

when I was first meeting my wife and we started thinking about marriage, we hadn't really

talked about doing any premarital counseling, but we did do a video class featuring Larry Krab.

It was the old school video, you know, film kind of stuff on a screen

in the church. And we were watching these sessions with Larry Crabb talk about relational, intimacy,

and about strength and transparency. It was such good material for us. We didn't even know it was

premarital. So that when we actually got engaged, the guy who ran

that course, our church counselor looked at us and said, I think you'll be fine.

And was he right?

Well, so far, we're working on it, but so far it's going pretty well 40 years in.

I'm John Fuller, along with Greg Smalley and his wife of 32 years, I think,

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