Flying Your Course
A mission statement is not some “to do” to check off your list. It’s meant to be a literal constitution of your family life. Just as the United States Constitution has survived for more than two hundred sometimes turbulent years, your family constitution can be the foundational document that will unify and hold your family together for decades – even generations – to come.
A mission statement will create a powerful bonding between parents and children, between husbands and wives that simply does not exist when there’s no sense of shared vision and values. It’s like the difference between a diamond and a piece of graphite. They are both made of the same material, but a diamond is among the hardest of all substances while graphite can be split apart. The difference lies in the depth of bonding between the individual atoms.
You may well find that the challenge of creating a family mission statement will drive you to do the inner work you need to do to have your own vision and values clear. You may also discover that this challenge will drive you back into your relationship with your spouse – this very fundamental relationship out of which everything else in the family grows.
“We stand at a crossroads, each minute, each hour, each day, making choices. We choose the thoughts we allow ourselves to think, the passions we allow ourselves to feel, and the actions we allow ourselves to perform. Each choice is made in the context of whatever value system we’ve selected to govern our lives. In selecting that value system, we are, in a very real way, making the most important choice we will ever make.”
~ Benjamin Franklin