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in a lot of ways, marriage is defined by decision-making.
to be more precise, your married life together will be a never-ending avalanche of decisions that you and your partner will have to make…together. (and since i see marriage as a co-equal partnership and not the traditional hierarchical model, that means the “big” decisions don’t just fall to daddy!)
in marriage, you will make all sorts of decisions: to have kids or not…when to have them…cars to buy…jobs to take… houses to purchase… financial investments…insurance…friends to invest in…career paths…continued education… church involvement…and countless subplots that all demand decisions.
and it never ends.
so after nearly four decades of wedded bliss, here is the most important piece of advice i can give you…not just about decision-making…but about the whole direction of your lives together:
don’t try to ever try to make life-family-financial-spiritual decisions of any kind or of any magnitude without being in agreement on where everything is headed.
in other words, don’t ever do the “what?”, without being in agreement on the “why?”.
nobody can do this for you. you cannot try to be what some other married couple is like. you can learn from others or be inspired by others, but you have to arrive at your own “why’s”. and if you’re married, there’s no time to lose.
* personally, i think this is the one area of our life together that has created the most stability and contentment for me and wanda. from the very beginning of our relationship, we reached agreement on the things that were the most important in our lives.
we agreed that if we honestly and practically placed the kingdom of god and our service to people for their good and the honor of god first, then that decision could frame and define every other important decision we would make in our lives…
where we would live…
what kinds of jobs we would take…
how we would raise our kids…
the kinds of friendships we would invest in…
the kinds of houses and cars and stuff we would buy…
how much money we would give away…
the things we could and would say “yes” to…
the things and people and places and opportunities we would say “no” to…
how we’ve defined fun and contentment…
what we’ve learned to be satisfied with…
people seem pretty amazed to find out that we don’t fight. ever. i’m not. we agree on where we’re headed and what we are to be doing with our lives along the way.
we are both opinionated. we definitely disagree on things. but when it comes it comes to purpose, we ironed that out years ago.
and it’s never too late for you to start ironing…
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