- Dream together. Les is built for the future. He loves planning and dreaming. If I don’t work at it, he gets way ahead of me. That’s why we start every year (for more than a decade now) by taking a couple hours to talk about our future. In fact, we typically do this on New Year’s Day.
- Review the previous year. We start by making a list of our top 10 highlights from the previous year. It’s fun. We review photos, reminisce, and make a list of 10 things we both loved about our previous year. Some of them are big (like a vacation to Montana) and others are seemingly small but significant (a great talk we had while walking in our neighborhood).
- Imagine your shared future. Here’s where we turn up the volume on our marriage. We get super intentional about creating future highlights – some just for fun while others build in meaning to our marriage. In 2015 we plan on writing a book together we’ve been talking about for years, we want to take a family trip to France, and do an inner-city search-and-rescue for the homeless through a local mission – to name just a few.
There is surely a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off.
Proverbs 23:18
We live in Seattle – a city known for Amazon, Microsoft, Costco, and coffee. Lot’s of coffee. I can name half dozen coffee shops within a 3-minute walk from our door. I (Leslie) love coffee. Les, not so much. He says I drink enough for both of us. And he may be right. The largest cup, “venti,” is my got-to order. And if you want to see what Les thinks of how much coffee I drink, check out the photo on our Facebook page from yesterday.
Lots of my thoughts about life – and my prayers – have been scribbled on a napkin in the white space around the margins of the green-ringed Starbucks logo. And that’s where I wrote this:
Like the white rings from a scuba-driver’s tank,
My heart is energized.
I dare to dream Venti.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about making a difference with my life and my marriage it’s that my difference-making is only limited by the size of my dreams. I’m not talking about setting resolutions or even goals. I’m talking about dreaming.
Dreams are the touchstones of our character. Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake. –Henry David Thoreau
Here’s what Les and I have learned about dreaming that makes a big difference for us:
Again, we write them all down and get our top 10. We each keep an electronic copy of it and review it together in the weeks ahead (often on a date night). Why? Because we’ve learned that when we dare to dream “venti,” each year is better than the last.
We hope you’ll do the same. Dare to dream big together in 2015.
Reflect and Respond
What would you like to look back on in 12 months and say you’ve accomplished in your marriage?
Go ahead, tell us in the comments.
Related Resource
The first steps to improving this single most important factor in any marriage or love relationship are to identify your fear factors and determine your personal communication styles, and then learn how the two of you can best interact. Information is presented in easy-to-understand language that clearly teaches you what you need to do – and not do – for speaking each other’s language like you never have before.
My most precious hope and prayer is to look back in 12 months and understand what God wants me to have learned from all the betrayal, pain, devastation and broken promises I’ve endured and how to use it to help someone else like me when I could find no one to help me. I pray God will help me make the changes in myself that he knows need to change. I pray God will make a way for my marriage to survive, my broken heart to be healed, and our marriage to be what he designed marriage to be. Please pray for me..us. Thank you, Cindy
That my husband would receive Jesus Christ as Lord & Savior and actually walked with Christ (after our conversation yesterday he clearly hasn’t) (neither Jesus nor God made a pact with the devil) If he did that all the other things I could list here would stop. Otherwise our marriage is over because I won’t live with this behavior anymore
Cindy,
I sympathize with your situation lies & betrayal are something I’m quite familiar with. Dear Jesus speak to our husband’s in their dreams make yourself so real to them that they surrender to you. Search our hearts Lord & see if there be any wicked way in us. God of love & restoration, God of wonders in the name of Jesus of Nazareth we reclaim our husband’s and ask you to take back what the canker worm has stolen. You are the God that sees, hears provides our banner and very present help in time of trouble. Ladies read Psalm 91 & dwell in the secret place
We have gone to greater levels of perseverance together! It has been quite the year,,
We have some fantastic memories of a 3 week trip we took to baltimore and DC with our 3 children ,
That was incredible :)) but overall we have stood at the face of discouragement and loss
And had to once again choose to go deeper in the Lord ! I am so grateful that He loves us and doesn’t ever
Relent !! I have also seen the faith that Greg has for His God and that is incredible to see in a man!
God gets my worship and praise!!! He alone is worthy. in a bad marriage.