How often have you let a need determine your availability?
Leaders in business, non-profits or faith organizations carry huge burdens in managing the expectations of those they serve. Pete Scazzero, in his book, The Emotionally Healthy Leader, remembers a conference where he was told that “if you are going to marry, make sure you marry someone who doubles your ministry and doesn’t cut it in half!” The pressure falls on both members of the marriage. When his marriage caved under the pressure of ministry expectations, he finally got the help he needed and took a sabbatical to focus on his most important relationship.
Voices like Scazzero are sounding an alarm and a warning in what has been taken for granted - Dedicated leaders will have a healthy, intimate, and solid marriage while focusing primarily on their ministries. He says that faith leaders, especially, need to make marriage their first ambition and their first passion.
While agreeing in principle with this idea, I often brushed it off as having to do with personal capacity, circumstances, and spousal understanding. Meeting needs fostered my adrenaline rush and gave me the strength I needed to persevere. My favorite saying was that God gives enough joys to keep you going and enough troubles to keep you humble. I argued that ministry demands are sometimes seasonal and adjustments need to be made along the way by leadership couples.
Scazzero gained a different understanding. From his understanding of marriage as a covenant declaring that we vow to love our spouse “faithfully, freely, fruitfully and forever” he postulates the following: “The first ambition for married Christian leaders must shift from leading our church, organization, or team to loving our spouse passionately. We must cultivate a strong desire to make visible the invisible – the love of Jesus for his church – in and through the love we have for our spouse. We then lead out of the overflow of this love. In other words, out of the giving and receiving of love in our relationship, we have extra “give away” love. It overflows from the nurturing, connection, and sense of well-being we receive from one another.” (p.92)
This demands a change in orientation from thinking first on whether my board is happy with my performance to consistently demonstrating to my partner that they are of primary importance in my expression of love through my demeanor and choices. Of course, this may demand some significant conversations with the leadership teams I am accountable to. It does set up an opportunity for modeling in your community.
Let’s admit it. There are countless distractions pulling for our attention. My laptop and phone are two of them. The needs of my spouse to go for a walk, to share an adventure, to get something done around the house or to cook a meal together can easily take a back seat to the urgent text or voice mail.
Culture is something to consider since the expectations of some ethnicities on their leader’s availability seems to limit the flexibility to set your own parameters on the job. In my interaction with Asian, Middle-eastern, South American, Filippino and even African congregants, there was a huge expectation that the pastor be available for everything from house and baby blessings to birthday parties, picnics and community festivals. Preserving relationships is a delicate dance.
Once again, Scazzero reminds us that while our passion is easily stoked in the early years of marriage, this can change over time. He says “most couples become less passionate and less sexual after they marry, especially when one spouse is consumed with leadership tasks. Very few of us have been equipped to have a passionate, flourishing marriage. We expect that it will happen naturally. It does not. It must be cultivated. The question, then, is how. How do we cultivate a passionate marriage, especially in the context of leadership?” (p. 95-96)
While Scazzero lays out his own ideas to fan embers into flames physically, spiritually, emotionally and intellectually the key element is intentionality in thinking about each other and in affirming each other. At 1 heart coaching, we too would like you to chart out an intentional and thoughtfully positive way forward to establishing a strong relationship as a leadership couple. In what ways have you chosen to put your marriage first and how are you communicating that connection with the most important relationship in your world?
