By DONOVAN PLATT
BYU professor, Wendy Watson, is trying to help students strengthen their relationships by providing a guide to the greatest 'how-to' book ever made.
'After 30 years as a marriage and family therapist, I've absolutely come to believe that the best 'how-to' book for any and all relationship problems is the scriptures,' Watson said. 'When we're told that if we will 'feast upon the words of Christ, the words of Christ will show us all things that we should do,' that's serious. 'All things' are ALL things.'
Watson, a professor of marriage and family therapy in the School of Family Life at BYU, will be signing copies of her latest book, 'Rock Solid Relationships' today from 11:30 this morning to 1:30 this afternoon in the BYU Bookstore.
'Rock Solid Relationships' hit book shelves right after Christmas and is already one of our top-ten best-sellers, said Jana Erickson, product director of Deseret Book.
'What I've done in this book is gone and offered 14 of my favorite scriptures, that when you really unpack them, there is pure gold that will help any relationship,' Watson said. 'From questions about 'how can I deal with my sister who twists everything I say?' to 'how can I help my brother who's turning away from the family?' to 'how can I reach out to my roommates in a way that doesn't oppress them?' 'How can I be my true self on dates so that I can find those people with whom I am best suited.' The answers are absolutely in the scriptures.
'When we start to find out that there are answers in the scriptures to every relationship problem -- every -- then we don't need anyone to set us up on some reading schedule. We can't restrain ourselves from seeking the word of the Lord as brought to us through the Spirit, as we immerse ourselves regularly in the scriptures.'
Watson enjoys and uses the scriptures now more than she ever has before.
'As I have immersed myself more and more in the scriptures, every time I've read, I've asked myself, 'if this is the only verse that I had access to, how could one verse actually strengthen marriages and families? How could one verse help me be a better professor?'' she said.
'What really prompted me, I must say, is September 11, 2001,' Watson said. 'I think it rocked all of our worlds. I started to think, 'okay, we need rock solid relationships. We need relationships we can count on, people we can trust. We need some rock-solid things that don't move, that terrorists can't get to.'
'In my profession, I deal with rocky relationships. But my experience is that you can absolutely take a rocky relationship and make it rock-solid as you build it upon 'the' rock, which is obviously Jesus Christ and His words.'
Watson is quick to point out that this book is not just for the women.
'I've received some wonderful emails from men. As with 'Purity and Passion,' I thought that the women would like it, and they have, but it's the men that either phone me or write me and say ... 'Thanks so much for the book. I'm seeing things in the scriptures and in my relationships that I never thought of before.''
Erickson says that she doesn't only hope that people will read the book, but go the next step and apply the teachings.
She has a section at the end of the each chapter that invites people to experiment, she said, much like the invitation from Alma in the Book of Mormon.
'These are doable things,' Erickson said. 'Not things that are huge changes in someone's life.'
'I learned a lot just by working on the book, with the author,' she said. 'You don't have to have relationship problems for the book to be effective. It's not to build broken relationships, it's to improve current relationships, no matter the status of those relationships.'