My husband and I sat in the warm November sun at Cafe Beignet on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, eating beignets and listening to a live jazz band. We started working on our yearly vision casting sheet, a little worksheet I made to help us focus on and recenter the coming year.
Our conversation shifted around from stressors in our lives, to creating margin, to things that are forming us, and to our mission. All things are easy to neglect when you’re not paying attention or are too distracted to notice.
Have you paused and considered what things have caused you stress this past year? What things have formed you into being more or less like Jesus? How much margin do you have in your days and weeks for rest and interruptions? How focused are you on your mission of making disciples both in your marriage and as a family?
Vision Casting
Vision casting sounds like a fancy term, but it simply means to have a clear mission and purpose for your life or upcoming year. It helps we recenter our lives around Jesus and his mission for us.
Vision is central to a marriage and a family. Without it, we lack direction and are prone to live life based on our immediate desires – usually lazy or selfish desires. Without clear vision, we tend to neglect areas in our lives that should be addressed.
God has given us too important of a mission to be without vision. He tells us to go and make disciples, and to teach those disciples to obey everything he has commanded (Matt 28:19-20). Our marriage and our families are places of mission where we disciple each other and our children and teach each other how to be obedient to God. It is worth creating an intentional direction for our marriages and families to be sure we do our best to carry live out this mission.
So how do we create a vision for our marriage?
Vision casting is more than goal-making. Vision casting causes us to think about how we can use our days, weeks, and year to form ourselves to becoming like Jesus. It helps us to reflect on how we spend our time, what things are causing us stress, what influences are forming us, and how much margin we have in our lives. It helps us not just reflect, but think about what we can do differently throughout the next year to improve our marriages and families and to be people more centered on Christs’ vision for life.
Choose a time a place to talk with your husband (or do this yourself if he isn’t interested). You don’t need a fancy location to make your vision. Your living room is most likely the best place for it. Grab a pencil, some paper, and start asking questions. What causes you stress? What is impacting and shaping you and your husband to look more or less like Jesus? How much margin do you have in your days and weeks? How focused are you on your mission?
I created an 11-page simple document filled with questions my husband and I like to ask each other that you can download here. A Wife Like Me has also created a Marriage & Family Review to supplement the process you can download here. I hope it helps you recenter your lives around the way of Jesus and aligns you and your husband.
Remember: vision-casting helps us recenter our lives around Jesus and his mission, which also gives an anchor to our marriages and families.
Wife Step: Choose a time to complete the above questions, or one of the downloads:
Meagan Elling is a wife of 7 years to Reed, mama to two little girls, writer, and house renovator. She is a SAHM {I’ll let you decide if you want this spelled out or not} in Duluth, MN with a writing degree she thought would go to waste. She is passionate about encouraging women, ministry, traveling, reading 5 books at once, and Texas Roadhouse bread. Meagan writes at www.meaganelling.com and on Instagram @meaganelling.
I would love to get a pdf or interactive document to share with my wife that goes above and beyond your current document.