We all want a home that sparks joy. But many times we get confused and start doing things that promise in vain to spark joy and peace in our homes… like decluttering our garage, our closets, and our kitchen.

And though we all know how satisfying it is to declutter our closet, we also know that many times, after we are finished with that big cleaning project that took us all day, the atmosphere in our home can still feel very heavy.  Why? Because we are spending all our energy decluttering our house, while neglecting decluttering the most important thing to in our home: our marriage.

Pastor Douglas Wilson wrote a wonderful book called Decluttering Your Marriage that I strongly recommend to you. It is shorter than any other book that promises to spark joy in your life, and has a cover that, well… is not necessarily the cover of a book for your coffee table, but that you really need to get and read (even if it has to be 1 of the 30 books you choose to keep in your house).

In this short -but not sweet- book, Pastor Wilson helps us understand how important it is to declutter our marriage from our daily sin to find true joy in our home.

It is important to understand and believe as Christian wives that our focus, when things start to look and feel ugly in our marriage, should be to deal with our own sin (note the possessive). Trying to declutter the attic and our husband’s heart seems easier to do than decluttering our own heart, our own attitudes, our own intentions, our own thoughts, and our own sins. We feel that just like we have the right to sort out things in our husband’s side of the closet, we also have the right to sort out his own sins. After all we are women, which means that we know better how to make things and relationships spark joy, right?

Pastor Wilson’s book is straightforward and written with the intent to help his readers live in good and godly marriages. Marriages in which sin doesn’t reign, marriages in which sinful messes are cleaned up quickly, where love covers a multitude of offenses, and forgiveness abound.

This is a very practical book. But this doesn’t mean that it deals with sin issues in marriage in a superficial or simplistic way. Pastor Wilson believes through and through in the power of the gospel: repent and believe because all sins can be forgiven in Christ. And this book is about dealing with sin in marriage with the gospel.

Decluttering Your Marriage is a challenging and helpful book, that at first will not spark joy in your life. It will make you uncomfortable, it will force you to look into your own heart and repent of your own sin before doing the next thing. But, oh boy, the joy, the true joy that doesn’t fade away like a spark that flies up in the air and then disappears,  will for sure invade your heart and home if you put all effort to declutter your marriage starting with your own sins.

You can buy this little book from Amazon, Canon Press, and also as an Audiobook (which you can listen in less than an hour!)

Under His sun and by grace,

Becky