Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 230 | Were We Meant to Work With Our Wives?

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Ep. 230 | Were We Meant to Work With Our Wives? · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  And I think that's like, I think you're significantly missing out and probably will lose in the long run.
• 0:09
  What's up, guys? Welcome to 5-Minute Fatherhood. So were we meant to work with our wives? This is oftentimes a conversation or a question that most people in our culture have sort of a knee-jerk response to, no, like she's got her thing, I got my thing. Even if your wife stays at home, there isn't a natural expectation that, hey, maybe the design was for us to work together at some level.
• 0:36
  And I was having this conversation recently, and somebody pointed out in Genesis 2 something I'd never really thought of before. So in Genesis 2.18, it says, And so a lot of us know about that verse, but what this friend of mine pointed out was, you know, that was in the context of his work. I was like, what? And it was like, it kind of surprised me, because of course there were no children yet.
• 1:04
  Yeah, that's true. And if you read the context, what's going on is that Adam is working. He's cultivating. He's naming the animals. He's given all this responsibility over this garden. And then the Lord looks at it and says, it's not good for him to be alone. He needs help. I'm going to make a helper suitable for him. And so that made me think, wow, there's...
• 1:21
  This question or this knee-jerk reaction we have to the idea that husbands and wives are really not meant to work together, that may be a bit of sort of a modern reality as opposed to a design. And if you think about...
• 1:40
  the way that God brings husbands and wives together, how they complement each other. And a lot of that happens, obviously, in the family, in the home. I don't think this is a rule. If this is not either work for you logistically or healthy for you, this is not one of the Ten Commandments, thou shalt work with your wife. I just find it really interesting, though, that when God looked at Adam and in his work,
• 2:07
  there was a sense in which I don't want him to do that alone. And so one of the things I know that we've tried to figure out as a couple with April and I is there are places where we can overlap. And so we've started five different companies over the last 20 years.
• 2:23
  And every single one of those have had a very different conversation around, how do we work together in this company? How do we work together in this company? And some of them have been, like, really, really intense, like, working together. Others have been a lot less. And so we've kind of waded into this, and it's been a really huge blessing for us to figure this out. But I think that it's instructive to think about the original design.
• 2:53
  with his wife and wanted to find a woman that would really, where they would complement one another, not just in sort of a family setting that's kind of removed from everything else, but really in all of life, and much of life is work. And so, again, that's challenging in this culture, but I think that it's important to kind of think about the design of what's going on there in Genesis 2. But yeah, Jeff, what are your thoughts on that?
• 3:18
  Yeah, no, I agree. And I think it's even less too about, I think, it meaning like, oh, we have to both do the exact same thing together at all times, like you said, and more about like what you said of...
• 3:31
  Well, I like how you said, like you and April have found, you know, five companies, but it's looked different each time. And that's what I love is like, man, we have to work to be as a team going towards whatever we're going towards, right? And another way that I like to think about it that's kind of helpful for me and Alyssa is like we are both, because I think sometimes, especially talking to the guy audience, I think sometimes what guys can do
• 3:49
  is think that like the wife, you know, if, if, cause some wives are way better, you know, and way smarter than the men on like business and all that type of stuff. But in general, some men can think like, Oh, I'm the, I do the business stuff. And my wife has like no idea about that. So why would I include her? She's kind of like a novice, that whole thing. And I think that's like, I think you're significantly missing out and probably will lose in the long run. If you are not including her in whatever type of business or venture you do. Um, because
• 4:19
  are both investors at some level in a company. And that company is like our work, right? Our vocation of just like what we've been, how we've been gifted by God to go out into the world. Now, just like with any company, there's usually a passive investor and an active investor, right? There's maybe an investor who kind of turns CEO. And there's one investor who like never, who's more like a consultant, right?
• 4:38
  who just shows up at the boardroom, you know, in board meetings, but in the boardroom, they're very powerful and they give really good advice. And I think, but, but at the same time, they're still kind of like joined at the hip because they're both investors or founders of that company. Right. And so I think that's a really helpful way that we think about it is like, you know,
• 4:54
  me and Alyssa as a team means that we are both like on the boardroom, right? We are both in the boardroom making those decisions. Now, one of us might go functionally do more work in this thing, right? And I don't just mean even business. I mean like with our kids, right? I mean with business. I mean with our job, with our community, with our neighbors. Like one might take a heavier...
• 5:12
  role. But we are both kind of equal seats in the boardroom with vision and with founding and as like investors in this. And I think that is really important to like really unify yourself as a team with your wife, because you're losing out on just...
• 5:28
  I just feel like, yeah, there's been so many times that's like, they're almost intangible moments, right? There's been so many times where you just think you might make a decision or it'd be fine, you know, or you'd be like, oh, well, they don't, you know, my wife doesn't really know this or know the business, so it's okay. But then you maybe bring it to them and you, and you just kind of off a cuff, like mention, I'm struggling through this and they just drop golden nuggets, right? And you're like, man, that is what marriage is for. You know, that like there's this unit there, there is this kind of, um, yeah.
• 5:53
  roundedness, this well-roundedness when two become one that I think we don't take advantage of enough. And so that's what I would say.
• 6:00
  Yeah. If you guys are wondering, like, for a framework for how do you balance all of this stuff, one of the things that we really encourage you guys to do is establish a seven-day rhythm. And if you're looking for, like, a tool or for how to, like, actually begin to live into a seven-day rhythm, we have a course over at familyteams.com called The Seven-Day Family. So if you go over to familyteams.com, check out The Seven-Day Family course. It'll help you figure out exactly how to design your...
• 6:28
  your week and how to figure out your ideal week, how to live into that, how to tweak that, how to grow that, which is a really big part of figuring out how to steward things together. So check that out. If you want to get a discount, uh, code is dads. Uh, so just put that in, um, on the, on the store there and you can get 10% off of the seven day family.