Barry Ham - Unstuck: Escaping the Rut of a Lifeless Marriage

Barry Ham has great passion for helping couples who have found marriage difficult. For those who are stuck, this book offers practical help on how to get UNSTUCK.

I highly recommend it.

Gary Chapman, Ph.D.
Author of The Five Love Languages

Many couples in America today do not find themselves in deep trouble. Nor, if pressed, do they find themselves at the highest precipice of joy. If they were to sum up their marriage, they might simply use one wordSTUCK. Drawing on a lifetime of therapeutic experience and biblical insight, Barry Ham has written an extremely helpful book for couples in any stage of marital development. This book will help you getUNSTUCK. Read it!

Graham Baird
Lead Pastor of Mission Street Church, Camarillo, California,
and author of One Hundred Years of Ministry

In this book Barry identifies many of the pitfalls that have contributed to marriages becoming stale and lifeless. But more importantly, he offers clear guidelines and strategies to enable couples to reverse this trend, get unstuck, and experience the marriage that both they and God had in mind.

H.B. LONDON
Pastor to Pastors Emeritus for Focus on the Family and author of
Pastors at Greater Risk

Barry has dialed into the life journey of so many couples, including Christian couples, who really are stuck and only enduring year after year. The raw honesty and clarity he has captured are both courageous and inviting. But Barrys response to these and other couples has helped them discover that their story isnt overthey get to discover that a new story of healing and restoration awaits them in the grace and truth that Jesus personally invites them into.

BRENT WILLIAMS
Director of Pastoral Care Ministries, Woodmen Valley Chapel,
Colorado Springs, Colorado

Dr. Ham really gets itlong-term, intimate marriage is not based on emotions, but rather on commitment. Our generation has forgotten this fact, and Dr. Ham does an excellent job of providing both insightful and practical suggestions for how to return to this unavoidable truth. Following the roadmap in this book dramatically improves your chance of realizing your dream for a lifelong marriage.

CRAIG CATO
Therapist and author of Solo on a Tandem Bicycle

If youre stuck in a painful and deeply disappointing relationship, there is hope and healing and even possible reconciliation. A well-seasoned counselor and author of God Understands Divorce, Barry understands broken relationships and offers practical, compassionate counsel. If you or a friend is stuck and sees no way out, this is a must-read. Share it with a friend.

MARK SKALBERG
Creator of the Starting Over workshops

Unstuck is real. With stories and examples that most couples will relate to, this book encourages couples to put God at the center and choose to love one another again. For many unhappy couples, the gloom of marriage came out of nowhere, and Barry helps them find the love they always wanted.

DR. TIM CLINTON
President of the American Association of Christian Counselors

Barry Hams Unstuck is a glorious mess. Barry writes not as a mere theorist but as a seasoned practitioner on the subject. As a marriage and family therapist, he has seen it all. Unstuck addresses Gods design for marriage and healthy relationships with fresh eyes and an eternal perspective. This book hits the target!

JIMMY DODD
President of PastorServe and author of
Survive Or Thrive: 6 Relationships Every Pastor Needs

Copyright 2016Barry D. Ham

All rights reserved. This book is protected by the copyright laws of the United States of America. This book may not be copied or reprinted for commercial gain or profit. The use of short quotations or occasional page copying for personal or group study is permitted and encouraged. Permission will be granted upon request. Unless otherwise identified, Scripture quotations are taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION, NIV, Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE, Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, Copyright 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked GW are taken from the GODs WORD Translation, Copyright 1995 by Gods Word to the Nations. Used by permission of Baker Publishing Group. All emphasis within Scripture quotations is the authors own. Please note that Destiny Images publishing style capitalizes certain pronouns in Scripture that refer to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and may differ from some publishers styles. Take note that the name satan and related names are not capitalized. We choose not to acknowledge him, even to the point of violating grammatical rules.

DESTINY IMAGE PUBLISHERS, INC.

P.O. Box 310, Shippensburg, PA 17257-0310

Promoting Inspired Lives.

This book and all other Destiny Image and Destiny Image Fiction books are available at Christian bookstores and distributors worldwide.

Cover design by: Prodigy Pixel

For more information on foreign distributors, call 717-532-3040.

Reach us on the Internet: www.destinyimage.com.

ISBN 10: 0-7684-0853-9

ISBN 13 TP: 978-0-7684-0853-9

ISBN 13 EBook: 978-0-7684-0854-6

For Worldwide Distribution, Printed in the U.S.A.

1 2 3 4 5 6 / 20 19 18 17 16

Just because the past didnt turn out like you wanted it to, doesnt mean your future cant be better than youve ever imagined.
UNKNOWN

While the threat of divorce may appear to be the major motivation for change, the threat that the relationship will remain the same is far more powerful.

Why are you reading this? You may have picked the book up off the shelf because the title or the cover caught your eye. Perhaps you were online searching, stumbled across this, and ordered it. Or it may have been recommended or loaned to you by a friend. Those are all good pieces to the answer, but the question remainswhy are you reading this?

While I most likely have not met you, I can make some educated guesses. In all my years as a marriage and family therapist, I have yet to have someone call me and say, My marriage is in terrific shape and my spouse and I are thoroughly enjoying life and each other. We just had some free time on our hands so we thought we would see if we could make an appointment to come in and just chat. We saw your picture on the Internet and thought you looked like you would be a nice person to meet.

People come to my office because they are struggling with relationship issues. Things are not going as they had anticipated and now their marriage may be in crisis. They need help and they are looking for answers. My guess is that you are reading this book because you feel that your marriage is far from what you had dreamed it would be. You may have envisioned a spouse who would fully accept you, emotionally support you, treat you with grace and kindness, and, well, love you like no other. Yet the point in time arrived, whether it was a year ago or this morning, when you realized: This is as good as it is ever going to get. You may have contemplated divorce but are petrified by the prospect of how your children will be impacted, ways that your family might react, or how you would survive financially. Perhaps you have been married for decades when you came to this status quo realization and it seems too late now to get out. The bottom line seems to beyoure stuck!