Remember this song, Dreamweaver by Gary Wright?
Dreamweaver is a poetical expression for someone, who “creates”, “designs”, “manufactures” a dream.
Did you have dreams for your marriage?
Do you and your spouse talk about them?
Have they changed?
Do your dreams feel like they are a million miles away?
In our blog, Check-In or you may Check-Out, we talk about how important it is to talk about your dreams frequently.
WHAT ARE YOUR DREAMS?
One Saturday morning I woke up late and joined my husband, Russ, on our screened-in patio to eat breakfast. As I was eating, he asked me what my dreams were? At first, I thought we were having our weekly check-in. I’m not a morning person so the last thing I wanted to do was have a heavy conversation while eating breakfast. He had just finished reading the book Dream Manager by Matthew Kelly.
Ironically, the book is intended for business people but can be applied to your personal life. In the book, Matthew Kelly talks about helping others achieve their dreams. So Russ asked me what my dreams were. I welled up a bit because I could tell he was serious about helping me make my dreams come true. We went through several of them and narrowed down my top 10 dreams.
Next he asked me to prioritize them. Which one was the top dream? I had no idea but as we walked through them (building a home, a decked out Jeep, interior decorating budget, Crossfit, etc…) I found the one closest to my heart was for my husband to join me at Crossfit, even over building a house.
CROSSFIT OR BUST!
He did go to Crossfit with me…for a while. Russ had spent most of his sports life in a gym doing squats and push presses. The last thing he wanted to do was to go put his 48 year old body through that kind of regimen again. But he finally joined me. Russ being the athlete he is, I knew he would blend in very well with this crowd. But after a few sessions, I found the coaches were spending a lot of time with him. I couldn’t figure out why he needed so much supervision. It wasn’t until I watched him did I notice he wasn’t doing the workout with the class. He was doing his own workout. He wanted to do a full body workout vs burning out one muscle group because he couldn’t attend class often enough. How embarrassing for me though. So much so that I fired him. If he wasn’t going to participate in the structure of the class, I didn’t want him to join at all. If we couldn’t do it together, it lacked the essence of the dream. Sheesh. haha
What we have learned in sharing our dreams with each other is how important it is to act on them. I could have wondered what it would be like if Russ had joined me at Crossfit. But until he did, my dream would have not evolved. I don’t want him to enter into my dreams only to end up miserable. So the dream changes and becomes a little more realistic. When and if Russ has more time to attend, he might revisit Crossfit. I’m not holding my breath but the fact he tried showed me how much he loves me and really wants to make my dreams come true…as long as it doesn’t create pain for him sitting down on the toilet.
HOMEBOUND?
Building a home is another dream and a close first on the list. One day Russ told me to start looking around town for locations where I might like to build back in 2015. What’s important to note here is we weren’t ready financially to build but we’ve learned to execute as much of the dream we can without involving finances.
We thought we wanted to be closer to the club, where my husband has been a member since 1992. The club is approximately 25 minutes away so moving closer would allow us to use the facilities more. But after driving around the club area, I found myself getting depressed about leaving our current area. I had no idea how attached I had gotten to our current surroundings. Executing the dream helped me revisit what I thought was the dream into a different dream but one we would not have known until we actually tried to move.
CONCLUSION
My hope in sharing these two stories is to emphasize the importance of discussing your dreams but also executing them to the extent you can. Sometimes you may find out a dream was not really the dream you thought it would be. Be a Dreamweaver and dream on!
Sometimes writing down dreams/goals helps make them come true. Tell us one of your dreams you hope will come true with your spouse in the comments below.
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