There is a silent partner that is present in every marriage. The partner is there when a decision is made to become a couple. It journeys with you when a ring and a promise leads to a special day when family gathers and the couple exchanges vows to commit to life together until death parts them. The silent partner remains during a series of firsts including the first home, first jobs, and first child. The silent partner remains during the first argument, the financial differences and decisions about social involvements. The silent partner is hope.
Hope has been present since the beginning of the relationship. Without hope there would be no relationship. The relationship needs hope to survive. Hope is needed to create the building blocks needed to establish a home, a career and a family. When my husband and I bought our first home together we walked into a large 19 room house with two full baths and two half baths. We were coming from a six-room home, plus one bath. Needless to say, there were a lot of empty spaces. Hope was everywhere present. We hoped to furnish that house, thus creating a home. We could not have accepted that challenge without hope. Item by item was added to make hope realized and then hope took us to new hopes and challenges.
Hope is essential for a healthy marriage. When hope is no long apparent it is important to make it real by establishing a Strategic Plan. The plan should have a set of values, short and long range goals, anticipated outcomes, obstacles, barriers and an anticipated timeline. Hope will be present on every line of the Plan. Life does not just happen, but an effective plan written or verbal, but written is more effective. For those who are more spontaneous, other things may be added as needed. The plan is not written in steel. There was a book entitled, “If you don’t know where you are going, you might end up some place else.” Hope will help us get to where we want to go in a timely fashion.
QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS
· Consider writing a paragraph about the presence of hope in your relationship.
· What would life be like without hope?
· Consider what you saw in your partner that convinced you that your relationship would be adorned with hope?
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