Vision
Write down 3-7 responses to the following questions.
1. What would you like to be true of your marriage? You may include things that are already true.
2. What would you like to be true of yourself in your marriage?
Our Experience
Every time Libby and I have an intentional conversation like this, our differences show up. Not conflict kinds of differences but the normal ones of how we see things, how we express ourselves, and our assumptions. Yet, those differences can be a little irksome, especially if you are the kind of person who wants your spouse to be amazed at your every thought, and you don’t want to be surprised by anything they say.
For this prompt I showed Libby a detailed Vision Exercise in a best-selling book on marriage. She read the instructions and exclaimed: “I’m overwhelmed by this! It’s ridiculous! I’m not doing it!”
“So, you’re saying a couple’s marriage isn’t worth a little effort?”, was my kind and mature reply."
So much for amazement.
So, we scaled it back to the questions above and each of us wrote for a few minutes. When we shared our responses, I could appreciate our differences. My responses were one-word bullets: encouraging, fun, affectionate, safe, life-giving, playful in intimacy.
Libby’s responses were sentences that could be the beginning of a good essay: “That we might be a blessing to each other, equipping one another more fully to be who we CAN be when we are out in the world.”
(Okay, this is not a contest, so please resist rating these responses.)
Her response to the second question was: “I would like to live gratefully and hopefully with the self-restraint to avoid complaining or criticizing, appreciating who Mark is.”
Here I had to be secure enough to listen and not edit or question, like, “Gee, how much is there to complain about and criticize?”
Like a real good conversation, it kept going because of the safe space we were enjoying. It went even deeper as we shared observations that we had of ourselves, insights into who we are.
It truly was talking like friends.
Try it.
