Leaders: Go Home

From age two to five, I wanted to be a “Dowboy.” That’s cowboy—with a speech impediment.

No one dreams about being mediocre as a kid. We want to be cowboys or firemen or astronauts or wealthy philanthropists. We don’t dream about TPS reports, or 401k’s, or wiping babies butts. We dream about doing something important—something meaningful.

When architecting this meaningful life, most of us—myself included—default to leading a business or pastoring a church or starting an orphanage on the East coast of Mozambique. Yes, being a wife or a husband may be somewhere in the plan, but rarely is it the focal point of our dreams of impact.

Yet...

Nearly every possible way we can measure impact—socially, scientifically, biblically—tells us that we may want to reconsider leaving our role as a spouse out of our plans to help the world. Here are just a few reasons that going home and loving our spouse well could be the most meaningful and world-changing thing we can give ourselves to.

Your marriage changes your spouse.

As hard as some of us try, it's challenging to stay the same person after getting married. A spouse is like a mirror—affording us the chance to frequently see the good, bad, and ugly in ourselves—and the choice to do something about it. Psychologist Caryl E. Rusbult has observed, throughout years of research, the effect marriage has on a spouse. He says,

“Close partners shape [each other’s] skills and traits and either promote or inhibit one another’s goal pursuits. As a result of the manner in which partners behave toward one another, each person enjoys greater or lesser success at attaining his or her ideal self.”

In other words, the way you love—and the intention with which you do so—effects, for better or worse, who your spouse becomes for the world around them.

Your marriage changes your kids.

Sociological and biological studies have a few things to say about the implications a marriage on a child’s development.

• As an infant, the lack of development of a children’s attention abilities, impulse control, motor skills, and high-level thinking have been traced back to stress experienced from instability in a home.
• As a student, kids from a stable home environment are statistically more likely to stay in school, have fewer behavioral problems, and finish higher education.
• Emotionally, kids with married parents are less vulnerable to emotional illness, depression, and suicide.

I sipped coffee a few months ago with John Medina—the author of Brain Rules for Babies and a molecular biologist devoted to family development. During our time, I asked him about the effect marriage has on children. He immediately referenced how parents are constantly asking him for the silver bullet of parenting and how his answer is always the same.

"The most important thing parents can do for their kids is to go home and love their spouse."

Your marriage changes the world.

Again, studies show that the investment you make into your spouse has implications on more than your spouse and kids. Practically speaking, marriage changes personal goals and behavior that are proven to help boost an economy—and alter lifestyles and habits in pro-social ways that have stabilized a society. However, Dietrich Bonhoeffer points to this ripple effect well when he says,

“Marriage is more than your love for each other. It has a higher dignity and power, through which God wills to perpetuate the human race till the end of time. In your love you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind.”

Our modern world doesn't need any more “dowboys” or millionaires or leaders or pastors or soldiers or philanthropists -- not primarily, anyway. What the world needs are better lovers—husbands and wives committed to learning the unnatural art of loving another person.

So spouse, the next time you find yourself dreaming about leadership or influence or being a catalyst in your world, do the world a favor. Go home and love your spouse. Because though this art of loving another may be unnatural, it just might change the world.