People want to win in their relationships – it’s a common denominator whether couples are just engaged or have been married for decades. Lucille Williams has experienced this desire firsthand — as a church ministry leader for more than 25 years and a pastor’s wife, she’s heard her share of stories. Lucille draws from these experiences, along with her own now 41-year marriage, to deliver wisdom served with a heaping helping of humor in her podcast, free “Marriage Material Quiz” and two marriage books, From Me to We: A Premarital Guide for the Bride- and Groom-to-Be and The Intimacy You Crave: Straight Talk about Sex and Pancakes. Lucille’s a women’s ministry director as well as a trained Prepare/Enrich Marriage Facilitator and has published several other titles including her recent children’s book, Turtle Finds His Talent.

Getting to know Lucille is easy – the energetic and vivacious author holds little back from her refreshingly honest and down-to-earth description of her own marriage. You can hear about her journey on her Focus on the Family interview that was noted as one of the Best of 2018, tales she also includes in From Me to We. Lucille doesn’t mince details. Married at 19, she shares her husband’s projectile vomiting incident on their honeymoon cruise with good grace, using it as an analogy to describe how the reality of married life sunk in – literally. She reveals her struggle with an eating disorder when she advises not to keep secrets from one’s spouse. And she addresses sexual intimacy with candor – both its importance in marriage and the truth that sometimes the wedding night doesn’t live up to a newlywed’s expectations.

She hopes to help couples dispel myths and move from self-focus to operating as a team. Lucille recounts that when she and her husband, Mike, first started their marriage, the odds were stacked against them – they even had a nasty fight on their wedding day!

“The chances of us making it were so slim with all the obstacles and baggage we had,” she said. “We didn’t know how to do marriage, and we were horrible together. We had to learn how to treat each other well and how to be in a marriage.” After Lucille got help for her eating disorder and they both became Christians, their trajectory changed – they weren’t perfect, but they were moving forward together.

“When we first became Christians (five years into marriage) we realized we needed to fix our marriage. I thought it was all him, then I realized it was also me,” Lucille said. “Whatever struggles you have as a single person are going to be amplified in marriage – and your spouse has a front row seat.” She realized it was time to take care of her “side of the street.”

“You need to look at yourself and say, ‘Would I want to be married to me?’ ‘Would I want to come home to me?’ ‘Would I want to be talked to like that?’ Check yourself every day.” She’s found through her years in church ministry that women struggling in marriage tend to complain about their husbands. Her counsel, “Own your own stuff.” Sometimes she’ll tell the wife, “I think you owe your husband an apology. I think you wounded him. Go to him and tell him you’ll work through it. Take responsibility for your end.”

She advises people to take care of themselves so they can bring their best selves to the table. “If you don’t come to marriage as a whole person, you don’t have much to give,” she said. Forgiveness is another key area.

“Your spouse will hurt you, and you will hurt them. You have to be an expert forgiver if you are going to be a thriving marriage.”

Lucille encourages others with her own example. “We (she and Mike) both have gotten help for all our stuff, and we do the work to deal with things. Marriage for us is better now than in the beginning stage.” She noted a store clerk recently asked the couple how long they had been dating because, even after 41 years of marriage, they were still acting like they were in love.

Realizing her dream to be a published author has been a relatively new phenomenon for Lucille. She spent the first two decades of marriage raising her family and serving in ministry. Encouraged by her teen daughter, she decided to pursue writing. After a few false starts pitching ideas to publishers, she was invited to write a book for pre-married couples that eventually became From Me to We. Lucille was able to glean content ideas from a wide array of volunteers readily available at the megachurch where she was serving in children’s ministry. She’d ask the singles what they wanted to know about being married then survey the young marrieds about what they wished they’d known. Not surprisingly, the topic of sex was high on people’s list, one reason why the subject features prominently in Lucille’s books. She also was asked how to make one’s spouse happy and how to be a good wife or husband. People were happy to share the personal anecdotes that have found their way into her books.

From Me to We

The concept that “marriage is hard work,” has circulated widely enough in today’s culture that even before marriage couples have some idea that something needs to be done to maintain a happy and thriving relationship. The ideal time to begin laying a firm foundation for a future life together is prior to saying “I do.” An engaged couple looking for a good resource will do well to choose From Me to We. Lucille describes her own situation, “Jumping into marriage naïve and selfish, mixed with a whole lot of stupid, was a recipe for disaster and a prescription for pain. Somewhere along the way, God got a hold of me. I learned the key to fulfillment and contentment in marriage was shifting from ME to WE,” she wrote.

The goal of the book is to “help couples get on the same page — and not be ‘me focused’ and self-centered. When you get married, and you choose one person to spend the rest of your life with, we think they will always fill us up and give us everything we want from them. But with that love comes the ability to get hurt. They will hurt us. You are going to be in for a lot of pain and cause your spouse a lot of pain. Marriage is about sacrifice, being willing to say, ‘I was wrong.’”

She reminds couples to safeguard their marriage before it starts so that they are ready. “We’re all broken and need to learn how to be broken together and give each other kindness and forgiveness and be willing to start over.”

Couples hurt each other when they don’t know how to express their needs. Lucille addresses common topics of communication, expectations and finances illustrated by examples of couples who’ve navigated things well or not so much. When it comes to conflict, Lucille tells couples not necessarily to shy away, as long as they work it through and get to the end. “We don’t have to agree with everything, but we need to get to a place where we are ok.”

“Strive to resolve the conflict,” she wrote, “then your tomorrow will look much brighter and your marriage will grow stronger. …. No matter what nasty words were spoken. No matter how much you’ve been hurt or have hurt the other. You will forgive. You will work it out. There is no turning back - you have the other’s back.”

She reminds couples to set boundaries to put their relationship and family ahead of the desires of their parents. Chapter seven is titled, Ladies, Don’t Be His Mother, and Men, Learn to Stand Up to Yours.

Lucille writes about some areas many marriage books leave unexplored. In chapter 13 she speaks to one who is previously divorced. “Learn as much as you can from your experience, and then focus on your current engagement/marriage and working at being the best husband /wife you can. Don’t bring your ex-spouse with you into your new marriage. …Many of the strongest, happiest, and most fulfilled marriages are those in which one or both spouses have been married before. … many times, when we are given a second chance, we cherish it more.”

She also thoroughly explains the role the sexual relationship plays in marriage. Both chapters nine and 10 highlight the importance of physical intimacy to a marriage, starting with, “Where can engaged couples go for straight talk about what to expect on their wedding night.” A time for Christian couples, “when sex goes from no to GO!” Lucille includes discussion questions at the end of every short chapter, an important one included here, “How will you handle when one of you wants to be intimate but the other does not,” is a perfect segue to chapter 10 — Keeping the Bedroom Steamy.

In this chapter Lucille explains to women how crucial the sexual relationship is to their husbands, quoting venerable marriage leader Kevin Lehman several times. “Sexual intimacy needs to be a priority in your marriage. Do you want to safeguard your marriage? Sex can be one of the strongest safeguards. When you expect to be ‘intimate’ on a regular basis, it will force you to always be in harmony,” she writes. Lucille expands on this concept in her subsequent Straight Talk about Sex and Pancakes.

She explains a wife’s power to fulfill her husband. “You are the only one your husband can go to for his sexual needs. … Think of it this way, he is running the marathon of life and you are the only one with the life-sustaining water he needs. If he were running a marathon and you had a cup of water for him, how mean would it be of you to pour it on the ground? When you withhold sex from him, this is essentially what you are doing to the man you chose and promised to love and honor. You, and only you, hold the cup of water he needs.”

Lest the women feel forgotten, she wrote, “A man who feels sexually satisfied will not be distant — and when you talk to him, he’ll want to hear what you have to say…. Cultivating and keeping your sex life a priority will pay off in huge dividends for your marriage.”

In the last chapter, Lucille offers a few best practices.

Cultivate your marriage – Go to church. She quoted Shaunti Feldhahn in The Good News About Marriage, “Couples who go to church or other religious services together on a regular basis have the lowest divorce rate of any group studied, regardless of other factors such as how long they’ve been married.”

Sex: Keep your marriage running on high-octane with a fulfilled, unselfish, mutually satisfying sex life.

Time: Happy couples make time for each other.

Never toss the D word around, ever: It will cause tremendous insecurity in your spouse and hurt him/her, you and your marriage.

Grit: Many have unhappy marriages because they stopped doing the work. Somewhere along the way they lost their grit. Have the fortitude to be undeterred.

After she published From Me To We, women flocked to Lucille with their stories. She found often marriage problems stem from physical intimacy problems, a concept she unpacked in a popular 2019 podcast titled Sex and Pancakes. She noted a husband wants to know his wife is pleased with him. Lucille quotes John Gray in Venus on Fire Mars on Ice. “The perfect partner for a man is a woman he can please.”

“Not pleasing his wife is like a dagger to a man’s heart,” Lucille said. “Wives don’t recognize our power. It matters that we are happy, and that we are happy with our physical relationship with him. It’s really rare to find a couple having serious problems when the sex is good. When their wives aren’t interested, men withdraw. If you are not having fun in the intimacy department, it’s downhill from there.”

She elaborates in The Intimacy You Crave: Straight Talk about Sex and Pancakes. The premise: if you remain always prepared to have some “physical fun” in your marriage, everything else falls into place.

“No one wants to jump in the sack with someone they are mad at,” Lucille said. “If you were to get out of sync, angry, irked, or bothered by your spouse, getting naked is the last thing you’ll want to do. But if you work on being in harmony and ready for action, it forces you to always work on your relationship. What’s happening in the ‘romance department’ will give you a pretty good gauge on the overall health of your marriage. Have a mutual understanding that you will have sex on a regular basis, making it a matter of when, not if,” she wrote.

“When we are in a thriving relationship our mental health is better and we feel better,” she added. “Studies show there is something about feeling loved and cherished and nurtured that feels great.” But women let things get in the way of intimacy. “We look at the imperfections in the mirror and take that into the bedroom. If you were the only two people in the world you wouldn’t care about those things,” she said. “That’s how your husband sees you. Don’t let hindrances from the world and the past enter in that space.”

Sometimes trauma or sexual abuse in someone’s background can be a barrier. Lucille exhorts couples to get help for their problems. “When you say, ‘I do,’ you are committing to a sexual relationship with that person. That’s part of the marriage covenant. If you’ve had sexual abuse in your past, get help dealing with it so you can be better both for yourself and your marriage. There’s so much help out there.”

Whether getting ready to wed or working to keep both sex sizzling and pancakes flipping, Lucille encourages couples that “God created marriage, and when you do marriage the way God says, you get a marriage that’s God-sized.” Find her resources at www.lusays.com.

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