Make Time for What Matters | Tips for Setting Priorities as a Family
/DOMINIKA RAMOS
Here's what I expected marriage to look like: a home full of beauty and order, a daily shared prayer life, involvement in ministries at our parish, evenings spent reading great literature together, and setting deep roots in our local community of family and friends.
PHOTOGRAPHY: MACKENZIE REITER PHOTOGRAPHY
Here's what I did not expect: evenings spent consuming tv shows, weeks or months sometimes between seeing friends, parish hopping on Sundays because we're running late...again, a home full of clutter and chaos, a an inconsistent shared prayer life (and, truth be told, an inconsistent private prayer life).
While the highlights reel of social media might give the idea that we're living out the first vision I had for our marriage, we far too often fall into the second picture.
Why, when my husband and I both highly value faith, community, beauty, and art, don't we always live like we want to?
The values that we share with our spouses are ultimately what propel us into marriage and fuel our desire to grow a family and a life together. But if we don’t couple those values with reflection and practical resolutions, they will never take root to ground our marriages. They will recede into the background as ideals we once hoped for and dream that perhaps someday we'll incorporate into our lives.
When I got married, I kept waiting for such things as our prayer life and our involvement in our community to spontaneously take off. Now after seven years of marriage, I know that if we don't set aside time to discuss what is important to us and make a plan to prioritize those things, we'll live a reactive life dictated by whatever is stressing us out and whatever is most convenient.
There are many ways both casual and more formal to have these discussions and make these kinds of resolutions. Here are some ideas for getting started:
Write a Family Mission Statement
A family mission statement is a description of who you are and what direction you want to go in. It doesn't have to be lengthy but if the effort is thoughtful, a family mission statement will be a constant reminder of those values you want informing your family life.
Read more: Finding your Family's Mission
Create a Family Rule
Creating a rule of life seems to have taken off in popularity lately, but the practice has its origins in early Christian monastic communities, and the clarity it brings makes it a worthwhile practice for all Christians. A family rule is more elaborate than a family mission statement as the first succinctly sums up your identity as a family, while the latter gets into the details of how you will live out your goals and values.
Read more: What Married Couples Can Learn from the Rhythms of Religious Communities
Read formational books
Check out books such as Patrick Lencioni's Three Big Questions for a Frantic Family and Steven Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families. These books give families the resources to stop living reactively and start living purposefully.
Whatever your family values include--good conversation, traveling, gardening, music, nature, athletics, board games--building a family culture around those values is only possible to the extent that we intentionally plan for it.
