How to Read This Book

Three parts, in order. Part One is about the man underneath, because the husband and the father can't be rebuilt while he stays untouched. Part Two is your marriage. Part Three is your kids.

Every chapter ends with something small to do that week. The book was never meant to be read. It was meant to be used, so do the things, badly at first, repeatedly, and let God handle the building.

Now something about what is and isn't in here, because you should know what you're holding.

The failures in this book are mine, told honestly from memory, and none of them are exaggerated. If anything, the truth was worse.

What you will not find is my family's side of it. My wife and my daughters lived through every year I describe, and they did not choose to be in a book. So I have told you what I did, and I have kept their stories, their words, and their private business out of it. Where a chapter needed a picture to make a point, I made one up. When you read about a man named Wes, there is no Wes. He is there so I could show you something without spending somebody else's privacy to do it.

Everything about me is real. Everything about them is theirs.

All Scripture is quoted from the NASB 1995, word for word. Where a quotation is shortened, three dots mark what I left out.