Every Good Team Shares a Vision, Shouldn't Your Marriage Have One?

In any management/leadership training I have attended, in just about every management/leadership book I have read, in every good leader I have seen, one of the most important things they all make clear: a leader needs to have a vision and be able to successfully cast that vision to the team.  
I have always seen my marriage to Alise as a team and as extension, our family as a team as well.  In a marriage, the leader is responsible for cultivating the vision in partnership with their spouse and making sure they remain true to the vision.  If children are involved, communicating the vision to them is equally important; after all for a family leader the roles are intertwined: husband/father or wife/mother (and sometimes in this modern world others are the leaders of the family unit as well; children, grandparents etc.)  The vision is cultivated with a few simple questions for a couple to answer: Where do we want this marriage to go?  Where is the marriage currently going?  Where do we want this family to go as a team?

The other piece of the vision is our faith.  Alise and I are both Christian and seek to be disciples of Jesus.  This is something which cannot be denied, like it or not.  It also has a huge amount of influence over how we see the world and our marriage.  As Christians, we are to be a blessing to the world.  How can our marriage reflect and be that for others?  Being a Christian guides the way we see marriage: as two people who love each other and choose to submit to the other, caring, loving and seeking the well being of the other more than their own.

So what is the vision for our marriage?  

• To be supportive, protective and trusting of each other throughout our marriage.
• To encourage and facilitate Spiritual Formation in each other and our children.
• To keep open and honest communication about our feelings no matter how hard it may be at times.  
• To continue to develop a solid theological foundation for ourselves and our family.
• To help each other stay focused as Christians on the "do's" of this world; instead the type of people focused on the "do not's".
• To raise our children to be responsible, mature people with a love for God and life. (there is a vision for the kids as well, but that is another blog post for another day.)
• To be open and honest with our children and with others about our marriage - we want to show them that no marriage is perfect, but there are still a lot of good marriages out there between real people.  We don't want our kids to see Rapunzel and Flynn Ryder to be the models of a healthy marriage.
• To continue to be romantic and take time to have "alone time."
• Intimacy is an important piece of our relationship and a gift, not something to be taken for granted but not to be the focus of who we are either.
• Above all, to work together as a team and keeping each other accountable as needed and yet respecting the other enough to know it is done out of love.

Notice that raising our kids is part of the vision, but not the primary vision in itself.  I think this is important; our kids are a part of the team in helping us reach our goal - not the goal themselves.  There is some child raising intertwined in the marriage vision, but there is also a separate vision for how we want to raise our kids to be.  We recognize that there are surprises and bumps on the road of life, but at least by having a vision we can keep going in the right direction instead of letting life lead the way.  Keep in mind, this is the vision we have for our marriage, not yours.  Every couple is different and has different values.  What is important is that every couple has a vision for their marriage, otherwise how will you know where you are going together?