Mommypotamus and I spent some time this past weekend at a local coffee shop talking over our vision. It’s a vision two years in the making, and we’re not there yet.
God Speaks Through the Discount Book Table
Thanks to this book God led me to at Mardel, Visioneering: God’s Bluepring for Developing and Maintaining Personal Vision, we finally have some help understanding the frustrations we’ve been facing. How many of you know that two years into a dreaming and planning and scheming mode, you can start to get a little weary, frustrated, and pissed off when the vision’s not coming to fruition?
That’s where we’ve been. No idea why we’re not seeing momentum. Wondering what we’ve done wrong. Watching our close friends expand their vision quickly while we can’t even get ours off the ground yet.
Vision 101
We failed to immediately understand the process of visioneering. Here’s what Andy Stanley has to say about Vision 101:
- A Vision Begins as a Concern
- A Vision Does Not Necessarily Require Immediate Action
- The Vision Matures in Us
- We Mature in Preparation for the Vision
- God is at Work Behind the Scenes Preparing the Way
- A God Ordained Vision Will Eventually Feel Like a Moral Imperative
- There Seems to Be a Correlation Between the Preparation Time and the Magnitude of the Task to Which We Are Called
He spells out these points in the first chapter. It was enough to give me hope. It seems like I should already know these points. And yet, here we are, frustrated because our prayers haven’t yielded any visible fruit.
Learning How to Mature the Vision
Our coffee house chat was an important step in growing the vision God’s placed inside us. First, I’d come to realize that we weren’t really pursuing OUR vision. We were pursuing HER vision. And it wasn’t her fault. In the absence of any clear directive or vision on my part, hers filled the vacuum. But that won’t sustain a family long-term.
Her vision involves the house to entertain and mentor, the land to garden and raise chickens, the well to water the land without municipal fees or fluoride. There’s more, but all of those points of our vision came from her. I like most if not all of them, but none of them came from me.
In Heather’s mind, the vision is clear. She can see herself doing the stuff in detail. Me? I see myself as the money. I see myself working from home in my own business if I’m lucky. I see myself hidden away in a home office most of the day. I see myself leading worship and mentoring young men. And that’s it. No real definition.
And that, my friends, may be why we’re still here. I’m just along for the ride. And that’s not good enough.
There are two issues that hold me back from developing a vision:
- I don’t yet have the faith to trust God to provide for our needs no matter what
- I know my role in the body of Christ, but I have no idea what it looks like long-term
Put those two together and I’ve been sitting here, twittling my thumbs, while my wife does the visioneering by herself. I know. I’m not proud of myself. This is all news to me.
The Blending of the Potami
So there’s a challenge: what is MY vision? What do I bring to the table? And how will our visions fit together?
It sounds like there’s much more to come.