My wife and I had to give a presentation for a Retouvaille CORE meeting recently, and we were asked to give a title to the talk a month ahead of time. When my wife asked what we were going to present on, I said, “I don’t know, I like to wait until the last minute and just wing it when it comes what to write about.” When she pressed for a subject I said, just call it “Winging It” and we will figure something out.
Then just before the presentation, I had to come up with something that fit “winging it” for a marriage group.
Luckily I am a runner, so one morning I had a lot of time to think about it while on a run.
There is something to be said for winging it. I am often the king of it many days. I wake up with some thoughts in my mind on how the day will go and then life happens. And when you have seven kids, that life happening and disrupting usually happens before 6:30 AM. With kids fighting, to kids getting sick to schedules changing at the last minute, something seems to always get in the way of my plans and the rest of the day. I try to just make adjustments, and I just figure it out as I go.
I am also that stereotype guy when it comes to things like packing. The last trip we went on was a family camping trip last summer. While my wife had had all the kids and herself packed well before we left, I waited until about 20 minutes before we left and packed up all my stuff.
My wife loves to plan, and I love to just wing-it. Can you relate guys?
When I look back at my life, I can now see how if I had paid more attention, things could have been different and maybe we would not have had some of the issues in our marriage that we did have because I was winging it.
Sometimes life happens, and you need to be willing to go with the flow. But what about the big things in life? Think of the most important things you have done in your life for just a minute.
If you are a practicing Catholic, you go to church every week. It is not a thing where you wake up on Sunday morning and decide maybe I will, maybe I won’t, we will see how I am feeling at 9:30 when it is time to leave the house. No, it is important, so you make the time and do it intentionally.
If you are married, what about your wedding? Do you wake up in the morning and say ok today is the day I am getting married. What should I wear? Where can I go to before the service to get a ring? Where should we have the party after? Of course not, you plan well ahead of time, so every detail is just as you want it to be.
What about your children’s birthday or your desire to make your kids Christmas a memorable day. Do you wing it by waking up and say ok what can I get today to put under the tree and what are we having for dinner? Or do you plan ahead of time to make sure everything runs smoothly and everyone is happy?
Smaller things are not as important. When you wake up in the morning, you may decide between an omelet or having your eggs medium on the leftover steak from last night?
There are other small decisions you may often make too such as should I sit down and watch The Last Man Standing on Hulu, or should I watch House of Cards on Netflix.
The difference between the first few major examples and the last two are pretty obvious. Important aspects of your life such as Mass, Weddings, important family dates or vacations are planned and done with intention. Little decisions that don’t matter in life, like what show to watch, or how to have your eggs in the morning, you can just wing it.
So when it comes to marriage, is that something that we can just wing it because it doesn’t matter or is it something we should do more with more intention because it is important? I would argue it is the most important thing we do in our lives.
Men, and when I say men, I am pointing the finger right back at myself, have a tendency just to wing it when it comes to marriage. We may think we are living our vocation of marriage intentionally, but are we really doing that? Do we have set things we do with our spouse such as praying with them or dialoguing or spending a certain amount of time with them each day or do we just wing it and figure it will work itself out? Is a man more likely to plan three hours on a Sunday around watching a football game or plan three hours a week with their spouse in a quality way?
I need to stop winging it when it comes to my marriage. I spend time planning each week and each day my calendar. I plan how many hours that week I want to spend working on different projects. I plan how many hours a week I will spend at school coaching the track or cross country team. But how often will I put time into my calendar that says spend time with Jess? Hint… I don’t.
When things get put into my calendar, they tend to get done. If I have an hour block in my calendar to edit a podcast, it will almost always get done. If I have a two-hour block to write or work with a client, I do it. So why am I just winging it when it comes to my marriage and hoping it will work itself out. Why am I not calendaring it?
Sometimes, winging it is necessary. Sometimes, winging it is fun. But when it comes to our marriage and what is important we should not always rely on winging it.
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