It's Wednesday, the day when we talk marriage! I introduce a topic, and then you follow up either by commenting or by writing your own post and then linking up!
This week we're talking about how to simplify your life, and now that we're 8 days into it, and a bunch of you are excited about some of the things I've shared, it's time for a warning.
It's always dangerous in a marriage when one person gets excited about something, and the other hasn't caught the vision yet. You get mad at them for not seeing it your way, but realistically, they haven't had the input into it that you have. They haven't experienced the things you did which gave you a little shove in that direction. They're still living in their comfort zone.
That's not their fault. You're the one who's changed; we can't always expect our husbands to follow right along happily, like a little lap dog.
But what do we do when we think the change we've embraced is something important? We can't just let it go, but he's not on board!
Here's a thought: give him a chance. Don't hector him. Think about how you embraced the change: you saw the potential for how life could be different, and you got sick of the direction you were going in. He's not going to change unless he also sees those two things: he needs to catch the vision, and he needs to become dissatisfied with the way things are now.
He's not going to catch the vision if you're pestering him about it. It just won't work.
Arrange a date to connect. Get a baby-sitter, and plan a romantic getaway when you have some time just to talk--not to nag, not to worry about the taps that need repair or the painting that needs to be done, but just to connect. Try to do something that he enjoys doing, like hiking, or watching a game, or driving somewhere he enjoys.
Tell him that you want to spend some time talking to him about what he wants out of life--what his dreams are, what he feels God telling him, where he's going.
And then start asking him. Don't ask him about the things that you necessarily think are crucial; let him start talking about the things that he thinks are important. His opinion is, after all, rather central!
What I'd recommend is breaking it down into these big questions:
1. Where do you see our finances in five years? In ten years? And what can I do to help us get there?
Don't tell him what you want him to do; ask him how you can participate in his goals. One little tip about talking finances, though: how much money you have saved has far less to do with how much you make and far more to do with your spending/saving habits. Many people assume that once they get a raise, then they will save--but the raise comes, and they just spend it all. So when you're making your financial goals, don't put it off, thinking "once I have a new job I'll talk about that", or "once we're out of this rough patch we can make some goals." Make some goals now, and ask what you can do to help reach those goals. If he sees that you're trying to participate with what he wants, he's far more likely to embrace the process!
2. Where do you see our marriage in five years? In ten years? How can we build our friendship?
Ask him what sorts of things he enjoys doing together. What did he like to do with you once that you don't do anymore? How can you steal some more alone time?
3. Where do you see the kids in five years? In ten years? In fifteen? What character traits do you want them to have? How can we nurture those character traits?
Here's one of the biggest discussion topics! If your husband, for instance, really wants to raise boys that will be responsible, independent go-getters, and these boys right now are 8 & 10 and do nothing but play on videogames, then ask him how we're going to turn them into responsible, independent go-getters. What can we start doing now that can put them on that road?
Perhaps your husband, for instance, has been of the opinion that the house is your responsibility. Showing him that having the boys learn to clean the bathroom and do the dishes is part of teaching them to be responsible and independent may be enough to get him to embrace the concept of chores, rather than having you do all of them.
If you want your boys to be independent go-getters, you probably also don't want them spending all their time on video games. So what can you do instead? Can you start a family games night? Can you play sports as a family more, and get away from the TV? Can your husband teach them to mow the lawn?
Ask him what he did as a child that made him responsible (or that turned him in the opposite direction)! Many men just haven't thought of this stuff very deeply, and when you start asking questions, you draw it out of them. They become part of the process.
This is far better than announcing to your husband that you want to downsize, that you want to get rid of the TV, that you want to quit all extracurricular activities, have family games night, or set up chore charts for everyone. Do that, and you're making changes with no input from him. And honestly, even if you've thought a lot about goals, it doesn't necessarily mean that you know best how to get your family there. I've found quite frequently that I can diagnose a problem very well in our household, but my husband often comes up with better solutions on how to deal with the girls about it. At first I resist, and often I get angry at him for not deferring to my obviously superior wisdom, but sometimes he sees things I just don't. Let your husband talk!
Will all husbands embrace this idea of goal setting? No. But many will, if you present it in the right way with the right heart: you want to be part of making sure your family goes in the right direction, and you want to make sure that both of you agree on that direction. You're not setting the agenda. You're not dictating anything. You're talking about it together. And many men find it much easier to picture where they want to be in five years or ten years than they do figure out how they want to change right now. Give them the big picture first, and then ask them to plot a route to get there, rather than trying to diagnose what's wrong now and what we should do about it. Don't start with what's wrong; that just assigns blame and can start disagreements. Start with the far-off picture that you can both usually agree on fairly easily, and then back up. It's usually much more effective.
Talk about it in a friendly, low-stress setting, and he's more likely to agree to have the conversation in the first place!
Simplifying your life depends upon figuring out where you're going, and then making sure your family is heading there. Too often we think we're going somewhere--raising independent, responsible, godly kids--but our actions are often taking us in a different direction because we haven't really analyzed the route to our goals. Think about those goals explicitly, and then plan the route. Then your family won't get so tired and discouraged from being thrown off track.
Now, what advice do you have for us today? Have you ever goal planned with your husband? Write your own Wifey Wednesday post that links back to here, and then leave the link of THAT POST in the Mcklinky below. Thanks!
Powered by Linky Tools
Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list...
Some of us are. We're not comfortable with plans. We want to leave life open to possibilities. We want to be open to God, not put constraints on Him, and just let life happen!
I think that attitude definitely has positive aspects. I know there are times in my life when I need to learn to go with the flow more and I need to stop trying to control everything. Sometimes things just aren't working, and we need to throw up our arms in exasperation and head to Dairy Queen.
I've done that on some homeschooling days, when nobody is getting anything done, everybody is sniping at everybody else, and it's better just to call it a day. So we head out on an impromptu field trip, or we decide to scrap the books and curl up under a blanket to watch a Jane Austen movie.
Sometimes you need to go with the flow at other times. You have your week planned ahead of you, and a friend calls. Her little boy has had an accident, and she has to be at the hospital with him. Can you take her two little girls? You can't say no, but there go all of your plans. Rather than stressing about it, it's better just to realize that your plans are toast, and embrace your new reality! Otherwise you'll just end up grumpy at everybody.
But even though we need to go with the flow at times, and even though we need to open to God's Spirit, I don't think this lackadaisical attitude towards life is the best one. Most of life has to be intentional. When we are not intentional about where we are going, or why we are going there, we're going to end up going nowhere, and then wonder why.
I mentioned in my column last Friday that nobody ever drifts together; they only ever drift apart.Many people are living their lives without really being intentional. They're raising their kids, but they don't have a good idea what they're raising them for. They believe in God, but they haven't ever thought through how they're going to pass on that belief to their children. They want a good marriage, but they haven't though through what that entails.
And until we do, we won't be effective. You can have all the emotional and spiritual resources in the world to make your family strong, but unless you sit down and intentionally use those resources, your family won't benefit.
Too many things pull us apart: time, technology, jobs, responsibilities. Very few pull us together. I know so many families who let their teens work so hard at part-time jobs that they don't have time for youth group or church. Those kids are making all their friends at school, but don't really have a Christian peer group. Or then there are the dads who are super-involved at church and super-involved in their work, and they figure that their kids will somehow pick up their faith by osmosis, even though they take no time to talk to their kids or mentor their kids or even play with their kids.
One of the best ways to counter the drift that so often happens in our lives is long term planning. I have two friends, a husband and wife team, who spend much of August strategically planning for their family. They ask themselves:
1. Where do we want to be in five years? 2. Where do we want to be in two years? 3. Where do we want to be in one year?
And then they figure out how to get there! And over the last few years, as their daughters have grown and they've realized that their time as a family is short before everyone grows up and moves on, they've made it a priority to spend more time as a family. They've gone on medical missions trips together. They've taken vacations. They've deliberately done things, even in the midst of their busy lives, because they had to.
This family lives in a small town where large churches with mega resources for great youth groups don't exist. They've had to create a youth group out of the kids' friends, and make sure that they have a good set of peers who are being discipled. They've had to take the responsibility for their kids' Christian education, because it wasn't happening at their church.
And in the meantime, they've made sure that their children learned some job skills and other skills they would need when they left home. But they did it by taking August to plan.
They mapped out their vacation schedules, months in advance. They are both professionals (they're both doctors), so they've figured out what conferences they would go to that year based on whether the kids could go and whether it could be a family activity. They've scheduled in the kids' stuff.
And they've decided what extra-curricular activities they were going to do, and when. If they saw a certain month was getting busy for work, they deliberately planned some romantic nights and weekends the month before and the month after.
And they prayed. They brought their multi-coloured highlighters, their full sized calendars, and their Bibles and journals, and they spent a weekend praying through their year.
It's a great idea, because when you don't, life happens, and you drift along with the current. You don't realize that you don't actually want to be swimming in that direction.
When your child comes to you in September and announces he wants to take karate, you can't think of a good reason to say no, so you sign him up. But you don't realize that lessons are Thursday nights, and Thursday is the only night all of you have free during November and December, so that was supposed to be your family games' night. If you had planned, you would have known that.
I find men often appreciate a bit of strategic planning because it's already how they think. They like having things mapped out, perhaps more than we do. They like knowing where they're going. And if you can turn it into a romantic getaway with multi-coloured highlighters, more power to you!
I have found more and more that time is sneaking up on me, and I have to be intentional about what we're doing as a family. So this August, Keith and I are taking off for a four-day trip to be together and to pray through this year, while doing a bunch of biking, too. Don't let the summer go by without thinking about what you really want your next year to look like. Take some time and pray and plan with your honey. Make it fun for him, too. Ask the important questions. And then you're far less likely to feel swept away by tides you can't control.
About Me: I'm a Christian author of a bunch of books, and a frequent speaker to women's groups and marriage conferences. Best of all, I love homeschooling my daughters, Rebecca and Katie. And I love to knit. Preferably simultaneously.
Stumble It!
