“Children often get caught up in marital conflicts,” he added.

It was also about this same juncture in his life when the thoughts of writing a book began “to crystallize.”

Bennett has been on the faculty at California Christian College in southeast Fresno for six or seven years. He maintains an office there and teaches “sporadically,” but much of his work involves “Christian counseling.”

Before that, he taught at various places, including Chapman University and Fresno State.

Meanwhile, Sandi Bennett has worked at Jefferson Elementary School in Dinuba for nearly 30 years, and has been a member of the First Baptist Church on Nebraska Avenue for 35 years.

Dave Bennett moved to Dinuba 16 years ago and has been attending the First Baptist Church ever since marrying Sandi in 1998. Together, they teach a Sunday school class there.

“The principles in the book are good for all relationships,” Dave Bennett said, from parents and their children to married couples to friends.

Bennett’s book is Christian-based, so Christians would obviously have an easier time relating to "The Healing Touch."

For example, Bennett makes regular references throughout the book about the “paradisical marriage” Adam and Eve were supposed to have before Satan entered the picture.

"The Healing Touch" can give readers “the necessary tools to get there,” it states on the cover jacket of the book. “He [Bennett] shares how two people can grow in Christ together.”

Despite being faith-based, however, "The Healing Touch" is an easy read, and its messages are so common sense and fundamental that anyone can benefit from it, regardless of the reader’s religious beliefs, Bennett added.

“People who aren’t Christian, who apply the principles [in the book] well and do it consistently, will see positive changes in their lives,” Bennett explained.

One important element of Bennett’s book is self-esteem.

“How you think about yourself and how you feel about yourself affects nearly all areas of your life,” Bennett said.

"The Healing Touch" allows readers to “diagnose themselves,” so they are able to determine “what it is about me that I need to change,” he said.

“In the following pages,” Bennett wrote in the preface of "The Healing Touch," “I have drawn from over 45 years of experience in providing Christian counseling to thousands of people identified with Christian principles.

“Several major questions that continue to surface include the following:

• For what reasons do Christians struggle with marriage?

• Do we simply accept our unhappy marriages as if God is not able to help us experience what He designed marriage to be?

• Is there help for those who are in the midst of these painful struggles, and is there some way to help those preparing for marriage plan their lives together more successfully?

“It is my intent to answer these questions,” he wrote.

Bennett explains how the ideal marriage — that of Adam and Eve — became tainted and corrupted by sin.

As a result, we live in a “narcissistic society,” Bennett wrote in his book, and people tend to be selfish and think of themselves first before others.

That sort of attitude has to change, he says in the book, and it is possible by developing or heightening an “intimacy with God.”

Bennett writes extensively about “agape,” or unconditional love.

“Experiencing agape is essential to how we live in every area of our lives,” he says in the book. “If we have not learned to truly love ourselves, we will have low self esteem. How we think and feel about ourselves affects every area of our lives, including how we relate to God.”

The crux of his message is this: “Staying connected to Him is foundational to all our relationships — especially marriage — and agape is the basis of those connections.”

Another key issue is forgiveness.

“How to walk intimately with God every day” is a challenge, but it can be achieved by accepting and remaining in a “state of forgiveness, being forgiven and forgiving others,” he wrote in the book.

Bennett had been considering the idea of writing "The Healing Touch" for about 35 years, but it took Sandi’s support to actually make it happen. He said his wife was “100%” of the reason he wrote it.

It seems only fitting that the dedication reads as follows: “My deepest gratitude goes to my wife, Sandi, who has shown me what a godly woman and wife can mean to a man who earnestly desires to love his wife as Christ loves the church. Her loving kindness, support and ongoing discussions helped me in the writing of this book.”

 

Other facts

Patti Stout, a friend of the Bennetts, designed the illustration for the cover of "The Healing Touch."

Also, a handful of other people are credited in the preface for their help in getting the manuscript into its final form. Most of these people, but not all of them, are members of the First Baptist Church.