VISION

One of the most popular subjects I blog about continues to be Eileen. You like reading about her and our relationship, which is nice because I don’t mind writing about her!! However, it takes a lot for me to write about private issues and she is a private issue to me. However, some of the responses I have gotten from you tell of the inspiration and hope that these posts have given some of your relationships. That’s worth getting out of my comfort zone a bit. We’re glad to share a bit of our lives if it helps.

It’s important to have a vision of what we want our lives to be like. We ought to outwardly decide if we are going to be happy, content, strong, humble, joyful, loving, spiritual, helpful, and on and on. It’s our decision of how we are going to be. Too many people just show up for life and turn out the way they do after the world beats them up and spits them out. Deciding on the person we want to be doesn’t make our challenges go away but it does make challenges much easier to deal with.

One of the other big decisions we can make is how we are going to behave in an important relationship. Too many people go from day to day with no vision in their heart of what kind of wife, husband, parent, or person they want to be. Again, most people just show up and deal with life as it comes, allowing circumstances and situations to mostly define the person they are. If we want to be a loving person, we have to be able to envision ourselves as loving. It’s then that we can train ourselves in our thinking, attitudes, and behaviors to be more in line with our vision. The Bible teaches us that without vision the people perish. Having a mental image/vision of who we want to be is very important.

Although I take little personal or singular credit for the things that are good in my relationship with Eileen and our kids, and we acknowledge our great blessings, our part has been done with a vision of how we want things to turn out. We’ve worked toward that vision. We continue to work toward that vision. While Eileen may not have to work as much on being a gracious and loving person, there are areas that even Eileen works on. As for me, I work on all areas!!!

In all seriousness, no relationship is without vulnerability to satan. Yet, if we seek to love each other more each day with all that love entails, our marital vulnerability to satan, arguments, and disagreements becomes very low. Therefore, it’s important to have a very clear vision of what that kind of love looks like, smells like, and tastes like. We must be willing to shed all of our resentments, heartaches, arrogance, and grudges against our spouse or others in order to truly pursue a loving vision. It’s also important to accentuate our strengths and correct our weaknesses. Please note that I didn’t say ignore or discount our weaknesses. We need to absolutely correct them. I can tell you the main strength and weakness of Eileen and me. Eileen is our strength and I am our weakness!! I just wanted to say that before one of you did!! Certainly though, if there is ever a problem in our marriage you can correctly presume that I will probably be the one at the heart of the difficulty. Eileen truly is the real deal. We learn a lot from interacting with each other and pursuing our vision together.