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A Thriving Family
Carries Out Its Purpose

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OUR FAMILY LOVES TO WALK and hike. Before our kids were born, Lisa had already walked them hundreds of miles. Mark cherished carrying the kids close to his chest in the baby carrier, so it was a sad day when they graduated to the stroller. By the time our kids were toddlers, they had learned to walk two or three miles at a stretch. Over the years, our feet have taken us to amazing places, including the streets of San Francisco, London, Paris and Tijuana, and along the spectacular trails of Yosemite, Zion and Yellowstone National Parks.

When our family walks, we usually have a goal in mind. We’re on an adventure and going somewhere—to the park or museum, a taqueria or an incredible vista. Knowing the destination is especially helpful for those with shorter legs who have a hard time appreciating the simple goal of getting fresh air and exercise.

One hike we took when our kids were in grade school was especially memorable—mostly because we’re grateful to have survived it. On the map of Joshua Tree National Monument, we noticed a one-and-a-half-mile trail out to an oasis called Forty-Nine Palms. Mark had hiked this trail before, and he thought it would be fun for the kids to see the contrast between the high desert heat and the cool shade of a spring surrounded by palm trees.

We packed water for each person, though not quite as much as the guidebook suggested, and set off. Soon we discovered that a mile and a half feels a lot farther when you’re walking up and down hills at a high elevation in 113-degree heat. We couldn’t wait to get to the shade of the oasis. But that season the oasis was a disappointingly muddy pond, teaming with tadpoles and swarming with bees and stinging flies. Then, partway back to the parking lot, we ran out of water. Our pace began to slow and stutter until, at the sight of yet another uphill ascent, the kids finally collapsed, one by one. Red-faced and nearing exhaustion, they began to moan, “Papa, how much farther is it to the car? When are we going to be there?” To keep them motivated, we talked up how refreshing the water would feel back at the hotel swimming pool and promised to buy whatever icy treat they wanted at the nearest gas station once we got back to Highway 62. No one moved.

Finally, Mark looked at the map, climbed to the top of the next hill, and exclaimed, “I can see the car! We’re almost there!” With this news, the kids rallied. When they could see the car their pace quickened, and they ran ahead. Water never tasted so good, even though it was warm from sitting in the hot car. Icy treats had never been so delicious. We’d made it! As we slurped our slushies in the air-conditioning on the way back to Palm Springs, we reminisced about our hike.

“I thought we were going to die!” Isaiah exclaimed dramatically.

“We should have brought more water,” Hailey stated matter-of-factly.

“Or started the hike earlier, before the sun was at its zenith,” Noah added.

“That was my mistake,” Mark said. “We will definitely pack more water next time. But you pushed through and made it. I’m really proud of you!”

Over the coming months and years, that Forty-Nine Palms hike became something of a legend in our family. We had gone on an adventure and, though it was challenging, had accomplished our goal together.

Family life is an epic adventure we embark on together, with many ups and downs and challenging conditions along the way. To be sustained and connected on this journey, we need a shared purpose—to know who we are, where we’ve come from, where we’re going, what to carry and what to leave behind. A thriving family lives from a deep sense of purpose and a positive vision of the future that it can articulate and use as a guide for decision making. In this chapter, we’ll explore steps for cultivating shared purpose as a family.

WHAT TO CARRY AND WHAT TO LEAVE BEHIND

In the family you’re creating, you get to decide what you want to carry with you and what you want to leave behind from your family-of-origin experiences. Think about the values and traditions you’ve inherited that you would like to continue. Lisa wanted to bring along her family’s Christmas celebrations and summer camping trips, and Mark wanted nightly table conversations, long walks and PPP (pizza, pop and popcorn movie nights). Perhaps you, like us, are trying to pack along as many of the qualities you appreciate from your family as you possibly can.

Some of us struggle to find much worth inheriting from our families of origin, or we feel there were major gaps. In those instances, we can borrow from the habits and traditions of families we admire. One person put it like this: “My family situation was extremely difficult, but other families welcomed me into their homes and lives. That love and care made me feel valued and had a powerful impact. I’ve borrowed many of their family traditions and made them my own.”

Each of us also has inherited habits, attitudes and approaches to life that aren’t helpful and that we’d like to leave behind. Daniel wants to leave behind the unpredictable anger and yelling that regularly occurred in his household. Rebecca wants to leave behind the coldness and demanding perfectionism that caused her pain. Even if there’s a lot you appreciate about your family of origin, you’ll likely make some choices that your parents or siblings won’t understand. Every new family goes through this process of differentiation, though it isn’t always easy.

Many of the things we want to unpack from childhood are obvious, while others seem to smuggle their way into our new families like unwanted baggage. Getting married, starting a family and sharing life so intimately can expose wounds and insecurities we weren’t fully aware of. It’s important to reflect on our family-of-origin experiences, because we tend to repeat or react to what we haven’t examined.

MAKING PEACE WITH YOUR FAMILY INHERITANCE

We’ve found it helpful to talk extensively about our inherited family patterns and have, on occasion, read books or talked to a wise counselor to explore how we might make peace with our family inheritances. Leaving behind unwanted baggage from childhood or a previous relationship takes time and grace, but it’s well worth the effort. And doing so helps you free up space to imagine and enact the family purpose you hope to pursue. Here are a few suggestions for making peace with your family inheritance.

See beyond all-or-nothing. Have you noticed the energy and intensity that often surfaces when the topic of parents comes up with close friends? Most of us have complicated feelings about the people who raised us. During the course of human development, it’s natural to have inflated feelings about parents. For a season, our parents can do no wrong; they are perfect in our eyes because they’re all we know of life. Even children who have been severely neglected or abused aggressively defend the reputations of their parents. There’s a deep instinct inside us to honor and value where we come from, because where we come from says a lot about who we are. And we want to believe that we’re beings of tremendous dignity, value and worth.

For many of us, a time comes—often in adolescence or early adulthood—when we begin to see our parents’ faults and limitations, and we experience resistance to their authority. Suddenly, they can scarcely do anything right. Others of us want to hold on to and defend an idealized view of our parents. This can create an unhelpful dynamic in a couple’s relationship where one person’s family is characterized as “the good family” and the other as “the bad one.” Hopefully we reach a point of maturity where we value the good while also acknowledging what was disappointing and painful. A healthy and mature understanding will lead us to hold the beauty and the pain of our family experiences in creative tension, as two parts of one whole.

Avoid determinism. Into the families we create we bring the legacy, gifts and wounds of previous generations and our memories of those who cared for us. Since many difficulties can be traced to early experiences, it’s tempting to blame parents for whatever we don’t like about ourselves. Research suggests that “1individuals who grew up in families that were less functional and had more tension tend to have more difficulty managing the demands of their own marriages.” It’s important to note that we are shaped—not determined—by our family-of-origin experiences. How you process and interpret events from your past profoundly affects how you live in the present. It can take time to develop the wisdom and insight needed to distinguish between struggles that come from your family inheritance and those that are rooted in your personality, circumstances and life choices.

Develop compassion for your parents. Becoming a parent often brings new insight into family-of-origin experiences. Remember how you felt holding your child for the first time—that feeling of awe, utter delight and love you hardly knew existed? It can be an epiphany to realize that your own parent likely felt the same way about you. All parents love and want the very best for their child. Like you, your parents probably did the best they could with the resources they had.

It didn’t take long after our children were born to realize that we were far from perfect parents. At times we’ve spoken harshly, disciplined rashly or acted from anger, impatience or distraction. The demands of adulthood and our personal challenges have made it hard to engage our kids consistently in the way we wish to. Every parent makes mistakes and has limitations that inhibit their ability to provide what’s needed. Acknowledging your imperfections can help you empathize with your parents’ limitations, forgive their mistakes and hope that your children will do the same for you.

We also recall a moment during the toddler years when each of our children began to express frustration, inner turmoil and resistance, despite our best efforts to show love and stay connected. Every parent eventually learns that their love is not enough. You can’t protect your child from the loneliness and struggles inherent to the human condition—just as our parents couldn’t protect us from these realities. But we can encourage each other to grow toward light and health.

The dynamics present in your family of origin may have connections to larger social and historical forces. Brian, who is second-generation Asian American, remembers his parents being busy, preoccupied and demanding, but with time he came to realize that those are common dynamics in first-generation immigrant and refugee families struggling to adjust to a new language and culture. Many people find it helpful to look at their family-of-origin experiences from the larger horizon of ethnic, cultural, religious, economic and historical circumstances. Mark’s family was shaped by the Vietnam War, including the place and circumstances of his birth at a military base in Germany. Lisa’s farming family was impacted by the farm crisis of the 1980s. Going further back, our grandparents were affected by the Dust Bowls and the Great Depression of the 1930s and by the religious fervor that swept through the Midwest during the Second Great Awakening. If you’re able, it can also be helpful to learn about health histories and mental health patterns in your extended family; these factors often run along family lines. Our parents and grandparents and other caregivers experienced the unique challenges and opportunities of their time and place in history, and we will do the same.

2It’s no accident that all of the monotheistic religions teach the wisdom of honoring parents—those whose actions conceived, birthed and nurtured us. The Judeo-Christian instruction includes a promise: “Honor your father and mother so that you may live long.” We honor our parents and ancestors by demonstrating appreciation for all they provided for us. We honor our parents by forgiving them their mistakes and limitations. And we honor our parents by seeking to improve on the good that was present in our family of origin.

Find ways to tell a cohesive story about your life. Sometimes we feel safe, loved and celebrated; other times we feel wounded, alone or abandoned. We develop beliefs and create a story about ourselves based on how we interpret these experiences.

From a neurological perspective, we don’t actually remember what happened in our early lives. We remember our memories. This explains why you may have vivid memories of a dramatic event from childhood that other members of your family have little or no recollection of or that they perceived in a very different way. Our memories are colored by feelings and interpretations and by the ways we’ve practiced remembering. This suggests that there is some elasticity and flexibility to our memories. Clinical psychiatrist Daniel Siegel suggests that3learning to tell a cohesive story about your life, including the difficult and challenging aspects, is critical to becoming an integrated self and a healthy parent—and, we would add, a healthy spouse as well.

We can learn to tell the stories of our lives as good stories that don’t minimize or deny the pain or fixate on where we feel broken. One critical task is learning to see our life experiences within the larger context of the Creator’s care, trusting that love has been with us through every moment of our lives. You can work to create a cohesive narrative about your life, one that owns the pain and affirms God’s care. We see this process at work in the psychology of the psalms, where the poet experiences feelings of loss and abandonment while striving to affirm the promise of God’s enduring love:4

“Why have you forgotten me?

Why must I go about mourning . . . ?”

My bones suffer mortal agony

as my foes taunt me,

saying to me all day long,

“Where is your God?”

Why, my soul, are you downcast?

Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God,

for I will yet praise [God],

my Savior.

Being raised in a family culture characterized by addiction, abuse or neglect may make it more difficult to trust that intimate relationships can be a place of safety and comfort. Knowing the ache that comes from a lack of attachment, an ancient psalmist wrote, “5God sets the lonely in families.” If you experienced a lack of natural attachment in your family of origin, you can pursue what psychologists refer to as “earned attachment”: adult experiences of safety and connection that can help you learn to trust in the reality of love. In situations where parental interactions haven’t been nurturing, it can help to explore questions such as:

Michelle grew up in a family that struggled to thrive. Her parents split up when she was a toddler, and her mom developed what became a lifelong addiction to alcohol that contributed to poverty, neglect and abuse by successive boyfriends. This made Michelle feel abandoned and unlovable. In her early teens, a classmate invited her to church, and there she was welcomed into a new family, where she discovered language for the warmth of God that she had often felt, even in the darkest moments.

Michelle went on to college, got married and now has a growing family of her own. She says,

Many people raised in environments like mine really struggle—but I believe that healing of those memories and experiences is possible. The Scripture “in6all things God works for the good” is sometimes used as a trite response to deep pain, but I actually find it to be profoundly healing and true. This doesn’t negate or dismiss the wounds and scars I have, but I’ve seen many of them turned for good.

Our family-of-origin experiences give us our first impressions of what God is like and the trust and hope that love is real. However, the love that parents and family can provide is never enough. Our experience of family sets us on the journey and search for a true parent and true home. Perhaps this is the greatest journey of our lives—to discover our connection to the ultimate reality, trusting that the universe is a safe place to be and embracing all that life brings. “7Live in me. Make your home in me” is how Jesus described this invitation, affirming what the ancients knew: “8Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.”

THE SCRIPTS THAT GUIDE AND SHAPE US

We are each guided by scripts that inform our goals and decisions about daily activities. They are the rails our lives run on. Often we develop these scripts based on values we’ve adopted from our family or culture, or in reaction to what we felt was missing or overemphasized. Your scripts are likely rooted in the particular longings of your personality and life experiences. Some scripts are very concrete: “I didn’t get to play sports, but my kids are definitely going to be in Little League.” Others reflect overall themes: “I didn’t feel known or nurtured in my family, so I’m going to make sure my kids feel close and cared for.”

The scripts we inherit aren’t necessarily the ones that were intended. Justin grew up with parents who worked hard to provide him with a life of opportunity and financial security. They never would have said, “What’s important in life is making lots of money and achieving in your career,” but that’s the unspoken impression he got from their actions. So he finds himself saying, “The family I help create is going to be about adventure and fun. Who cares about money!” Reflecting on his scripts, Justin made this observation, “So much of what I do as a parent is a negative reflex to what I experienced in my family. My hope is to find a positive family purpose and not just react to what I experienced as a kid. When I think about it, I am grateful for what my parents taught me; I just want there to be more balance.”

In themselves, scripts aren’t good or bad, right or wrong. But each script can have a negative impact if it leads to the neglect of other dimensions of family thriving. For instance, in our family, Mark tends to be driven by an intense sense of mission. He wants our family to be about a higher purpose. This is a good thing, but can sometimes lead him to take on too many commitments. Lisa, on the other hand, longs to feel close and connected to our kids. But she also recognizes that her desire for intimacy, if not kept in balance, can prevent her from empowering our kids to develop autonomy and responsibility. As you become more conscious of your scripts, you’re better able to decide how you want them to guide your family’s journey. Which of the scripts below do you most identify with?

The drive toward achievement: I want our family to be successful. Every person must learn how to be effective and productive, but it can be harmful if we measure success only by external outcomes and validation. Our goal can be helping one another identify the unique work we were made to do in the world. A better question than “Are we successful?” may be “Are we becoming the kind of people we were made to be?”

The drive toward security: I want our family to be safe and protected. The world can feel like a scary place, and it’s every parent’s desire to create a safe and nurturing environment for their child. But if we’re too careful, we can let our worries and fears prevent our children from experiencing the small dangers and discomforts that can help them gain the competence and confidence to navigate larger challenges. We grow by taking risks and learning from our mistakes.

The drive toward moral perfection: I want our family to do what’s right. We all want our kids to make good moral and ethical choices and to avoid harmful decisions. The question is whether this is best achieved by focusing on external behavior and conformity or by helping our kids develop the critical thinking and internal character to be governed by a deeper moral compass.

The drive toward individuality: I want people in our family to be free to express themselves. It’s important for children to develop autonomy and volition, gaining confidence in their desires; but this doesn’t mean they always get what they want. We were designed to find our deepest satisfaction in relationships of mutuality, respect and self-giving love, which requires balancing individual preferences with the needs and feelings of others and focusing on the common good.

The drive toward the good life: I want our family to have fun and enjoy the best. As parents, we naturally want to give good gifts to our children, providing them with resources and experiences they enjoy. Yet a preoccupation with material goods and consumptive experiences can distract from what’s important. The question is, how much is enough, and what actually brings satisfaction?

The drive toward family intimacy: I want our family to feel close and connected. We’re made to experience intimacy and connection, but when taken to the extreme, the desire for belonging can inhibit becoming. At its best, family provides a sense of safety from which family members are launched into growth, purpose, individual identity and interdependence.

The drive toward a mission: I want our family to be about a higher purpose. It’s important for a family to have a purpose beyond itself. But when the mission is pursued at the expense of family members’ well-being, this drive can be a problem. At times the mission may need to be put on hold to care for family concerns, because our family members are as important as the causes we serve—and no less worthy of our time, care and attention.

The drive toward survival: I have to manage pressing concerns. Many of us will experience a crisis during the course of family life that taxes our resources and exceeds our abilities to cope (financial difficulties, divorce, death or disability, physical or mental health issues). As we face these emergencies, it can be challenging to find a balance between the urgencies of the moment and the ongoing needs of family members. If we get stuck in fight-or-flight responses, family life can be characterized by chaos and alarm. Finding external support, internal strength and perspective can help us navigate these times with resiliency.

You may find it helpful to spend some time exploring the potential benefits and shadows of the scripts you most closely identify with. When you’re aware of what’s guiding your decisions, you’re more prepared to make conscious, life-affirming choices.

imageREFLECTION: EXAMINE YOUR FAMILY-OF-ORIGIN EXPERIENCES AND SCRIPTS

Important steps in activating your family purpose are (1) appreciating the gifts and challenges of your family inheritance, (2) seeking to understand, forgive and honor your parents and (3) deciding what you want to carry with you and what you want to leave behind. Considering the family situation that you were raised in, spend twenty to thirty minutes writing your responses to the following journal prompts. At your next family meeting, share what you discover in your reflection.

Family inheritance.

Coming to peace with your family-of-origin experiences.

Your personal scripts.

WHERE ARE WE GOING TOGETHER?

Have you ever been part of a group that can’t decide where to go or what to do? It can be very frustrating. Having a clear purpose becomes crucial when two or more people travel together. Creating a family purpose agreement will help your family build a shared identity and vision. It can also provide a mechanism for focusing your energy and making important decisions. To say it another way, a family purpose agreement gives you a reliable compass for navigating the terrain of life together.

Before we got married, the two of us spent a lot of time talking about our shared dreams. We were drawn together by a common purpose and values. As we looked into the future, our vision was somewhat cloudy. As our kids came along, we found ourselves overwhelmed by very specific decisions and responsibilities. Is it time to get a new job? What about graduate school? How long do we want to stay living here? Where do we see ourselves in five or ten years?

As we mentioned in the first chapter, it felt like competing demands were pulling us apart and making our lives disjointed. We were tired, busy and distracted. It was time to revisit the big questions again and make our vague common direction more explicit.

One night, after putting Hailey to bed, we sat down to craft a formal family purpose agreement. We spent some time praying and then brainstormed a two-page list of values and potential goals based on questions such as “What matters most to us?” and “What do we want to be about together in life?” Then we tried to distill our brainstorm into a few essential statements that looked something like this:

As a family, with God’s help, we strive to

It was energizing to articulate and affirm what mattered most to us. We were so excited by this newfound clarity that we created a poster of our agreement and hung it in the kitchen, on the bathroom mirror and on the front door of our house. For the next few weeks, we read it aloud together every night at dinner. As we began using it to orient our family meetings, it became a compass to guide us over the coming years.

For us, getting more clarity about short-term decisions prepared us to consider what the longer future might look like. We had imagined living in an urban neighborhood in a global city, working side by side to create community, love our neighbors and help people experience greater wholeness in their lives. But here we were living in the country, miles from Mark’s job and separated for most of the day. How could we get from the life we had to the life we imagined?

Over the next few months we spent many hours talking and praying through steps we could take, like saving money, shifting careers and adjusting some of our expectations about what life might look like for our family. Moving to a big city and starting new work seemed like a big risk. Might it be possible to live into our dreams and ideals and thrive as a family? We decided that if we had the courage to live the life we felt called to, then we could trust that this was also a life where our kids would flourish. What if our kids would best be served if they saw us being fully alive?

When our children were one, two and three, we launched into what would prove to be one of the greatest adventures of our lives. We relocated to San Francisco, bought an old rundown house in a struggling neighborhood and began the journey to the life we have today. Eventually we started a nonprofit and began launching programs to create community, make beauty, serve needs and live out our deepest values. Our kids have been our partners in this adventure, and our home has been the center of our shared life and work. In a typical week twenty or thirty people might walk through the door. If you stopped by you might meet a guest who is currently sleeping on our couch, find a group of high school students learning chemistry together at the kitchen table or discover a group of university students working on a community art project in our backyard. We do all of this in eleven hundred square feet that is a school, an office, a community meeting space and home to our family of five. Clarifying and articulating our family purpose agreement was an important step that launched us into this adventure. It hasn’t always been easy, and we’ve often gone off course, but our family purpose agreement has been like a compass pointing us to true north.

imageFAMILY MEETING: CREATE A FAMILY
PURPOSE AGREEMENT

The particulars of your family vision might be very different from ours, and that’s okay. Every family is unique. Taking the time to develop a shared purpose agreement will help you live more fully into your dreams and values.

Many families know the benefits of creating a shared purpose agreement.

From our observations, couples and families who can clearly articulate a shared vision and purpose are more likely to thrive in their relationships. It’s never too early or too late to consider larger questions of meaning and purpose.

A family purpose agreement isn’t something that one person can dictate or impose on other members of the family. That approach just won’t work. But, as a parent, you have the power to initiate the process, inviting family members to shape and contribute to a shared vision and common understanding. While there will likely be some overlap between your personal goals and your family purpose agreement, they aren’t synonymous and won’t be in total agreement, because one is individual and the other is what you share in common as a family.

When new parents Dave and Krissy came to us for advice about family life, our first question was “What is your family purpose?” Their response was “Umm, we’re not sure we have one.” After further consideration, they came to realize that they had a shared purpose; it just hadn’t been clearly articulated. Most families have some sense of their purpose, but until it’s spoken, it’s difficult to use as a guide for navigating life and making decisions.

Over the next few months, Dave and Krissy created a family purpose agreement that’s now their shared compass. Here’s what they came up with:

Dave and Krissy’s family purpose agreement is poetic, which fits their interests and personalities. But a simple list of words can be just as useful. Melissa and her ex-husband, Michael, coparent two high-needs children who are on the autism spectrum. “Because of our challenges,” Melissa says, “our family purpose agreement is focused on boundaries and basics: Pray. Be kind. Show respect. Be grateful. Love God and people. Work on yourself so you have something to give.”

What you want is something succinct, but adequately descriptive and memorable. Don’t get hung up on trying to say it perfectly or capture every nuance. If your kids are at an age that they can participate, you’ll eventually want to invite them into this process, but it can be helpful to think about your family purpose first as adults. Take time to pray, reflect and discuss what matters most to you. Practice good brainstorming, which means focusing on the future, staying positive and not editing each other’s ideas.

Below are some key life dimensions you may want to address in your family purpose agreement. Use these questions to spark your initial brainstorming conversation:

After you’ve had a chance to dream together and capture a substantial list of possibilities, try to distill your family’s purpose into five to seven key words or phrases. They should be broad enough to span several stages of family life and specific enough to be evocative. Write these in your notebook.

As a side note, some couples find it challenging to have deep conversations about what matters most, and one person may be more interested than the other. Often in relationships one person initiates while the other responds, but lack of initiation doesn’t necessarily indicate a lack of interest or willingness. Perhaps a different way of approaching the conversation is needed. Are you invested in a particular outcome, or are you open to other perspectives? If you have different ideas about what’s important, start by focusing on areas where you do have agreement. What values and goals do you share? Perhaps there’s a larger value or principle that can encompass what you both desire. Take time to discover a style of communication that works for both of you.

imageWHOLE FAMILY ACTIVITY: INVITING YOUR KIDS
TO ENGAGE WITH YOUR FAMILY PURPOSE

Once you’ve brainstormed a family purpose agreement, engage your kids in the process by inviting them to contribute language and ideas toward the final product, so they feel ownership. They’ll likely come up with a list similar to yours. If your children help shape your family purpose, they’re more likely to be invested and excited about living into it. As you share a summary of your brainstorming, give them an opportunity to name, in their own words, what they believe is most important to your family. Below are some ideas for doing this at various ages and stages of family life.

Let’s play family. Use your family’s stuffed animals, dolls or action figures to play, pretend and talk about family purpose. Have each person pick a toy that they will role play with and narrate as you play together. Offer some prompts, such as

During your play, introduce themes from the five to seven statements you brainstormed. For example, “This family loves each other. How do they show it?” “This family goes on adventures. Where are they going?”

Go on an adventure. For this activity, choose a fun destination in your neighborhood, a park, an open space, a library or a child-friendly café or grocery store. Invite your children to decide what route you’ll take to get there. Do whatever drew you to this destination, and when you’re ready, explain that being a family is an epic adventure. Then invite the family to brainstorm about that adventure. “Let’s think about where we want to go as a family and how we want to get there.”

Bring markers and paper for everyone to draw on. On one sheet of paper, write the following fill-in-the blank questions. On another sheet, write the words that they brainstorm in response.

Two things that are important to our family are _____________ and ______________.

Our family is made to _________________ together.

We live out what is important to us by __________________.

When people think of our family, a word that we hope they use to describe us is ___________.

The unique job God has for our family is _____________________.

We want our family to feel ______________________.

With others, we want to be ______________________.

Then have each person draw a picture of what they imagine your family will be like and feel like in ten, fifteen or twenty years. Take turns explaining your pictures.

Present and future. With teens, you may have just a few more years in the same household together to live out a common purpose. Have a conversation about what your family journey has been like so far and where you hope to go together in the future. You may want to have a whiteboard and markers on hand to document the process with words and pictures.

Discuss the present together. Use the questions below as conversation starters.

Imagine the future together. Sometimes it’s good to remember that we’re going to be part of our families for the rest of our lives. You can help each other envision a positive future together. Invite each person to imagine how you may be a family in twenty, thirty or forty years, and then share some of your hopes and dreams. Below are some examples from conversations we’ve had in our family:

“Someday you’ll make a great husband and caring father. If you have a child someday, I’ll be so excited to hold that little one in my arms.”

“When I have a family, I hope you’ll live close by and help me teach my kids.”

“Maybe someday we’ll buy some property together or start a nonprofit or business.”

“When we’re older and have our own families, I hope all of us can get together once a year at a cabin or the beach.”

“When you were young, I changed your diapers. And someday, when I’m older, you might have to change mine.”

After sharing what you imagine and hope for, ask each other this question: What do we need to do now in order to make those good hopes and visions for the future real?

AFFIRMING YOUR FAMILY’S PURPOSE

After getting input from your kids, finalize a family purpose agreement and find ways to regularly remind each other of it. Make a poster or display your purpose agreement on a bulletin board or chalkboard. Or make an art piece that communicates your agreement, using words or symbols to illustrate key points. Display what you create near your dinner table or another place where you will see it often.

Some families memorize and regularly recite Scripture passages that embody aspects of their shared purpose. For generations, in Jewish tradition, families have sung the Shema together as a way of orienting to their core purpose: “12Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God.”

Or you could craft your own family prayers. Our family created a prayer to say together based on the meanings of our kids’ middle names. We repeat this prayer three times, each time using another one of their names (Agape, Joy and Shalom). For example:

Love in me.

Love between.

Love to our house.

Love to our neighbors.

May your love be upon us today.

We will speak love.

We will walk in love.

A CHILD’S TAKE ON FAMILY PURPOSE,
BY HAILEY JOY SCANDRETTE

Another word for purpose is mission. The first thing I think of when I read the word mission is how much I wanted to be a spy when I was little. Now, before you decide this is wholly unrelated to the concept of setting values-based intentions for yourself and your family, hear me out.

From about age seven to age eleven, I thought that being a spy was as cool as life could get. I would put on silver plastic pants that I thought were the epitome of cool, a lavender turtleneck that I had cut the sleeves off of and a pair of purple sunglasses. (Every good spy needs a uniform.) I would grab a small notebook and sit on my bed, taking notes on passersby like Harriet the Spy.

Every so often my adventures in espionage took a more exciting turn in the form of “missions.” In the weeks leading up to Christmas, my brothers and I would engage in covert operations. The mission: make the target’s day better. For that person, I’d sneak chocolate under their pillow, leave affectionate notes, do chores or throw a surprise tea party complete with snacks and attended by dinosaurs and American Girl dolls.

Even when playing pretend or planning silly surprises for one another, we were aware that our purpose was to love others and to contribute to their well-being. I don’t know if we were explicitly told as young children that part of our family’s purpose was to love one another and those outside our family through generosity and hospitality. But it’s clear our parents had a cohesive vision for the kind of family they wanted us to be, which they modeled so clearly that we picked up on it.

As an adult, I’m very grateful that the concept of having a purpose in life was so present in my family. It gave me a framework for developing a clear, values-based vision for the kind of life I want to have and the kind of person I want to be. Even when the details of career, education, relationships, etc., are up in the air, I can always ground myself by keeping my purpose in sight.