One night after one of my typical, eighteen-hour days of ministry, as we were retiring to bed, my wife announced to me in a calm yet firm voice, “I’ve decided to go home to my mother.”
I began to panic as I saw my relationship with my sweetheart disintegrating, along with the ministry I had worked so hard to develop. As we prayed and cried and talked, what came out was my gross insensitivity to my wife. I had fallen into an overcommitted life. As our ministry in the inner city of Chicago had taken off, I had found myself pulled in a thousand directions. Without my realizing it, the stress on my relationship with Cynthia had risen to a danger point.
What happened?
As a black man growing up in inner-city Chicago, it was branded into my mind that the only way to escape the violence and crime of the ghetto was to work harder than the next person. This work ethic was modeled by my godly grandfather, who worked for over fifty years to raise six children through the Depression, and my mother, who, as a single parent, raised two boys in the midst of great pressure and pain.
As I moved through adolescence, the tendency to value work above all was reinforced through athletics. One thing that motivated me in sports was what I used to call the “dirty sock syndrome.” The more macho a football player was, the dirtier he would get during practice and the more times he would keep his socks on. Dirty socks symbolized effort. As a senior, even though I was an undersized, 170-pound offensive lineman and middle linebacker, I was voted one of the best players in Chicago. That reinforced this subtle tendency toward workaholism.
The tendency increased once I became a Christian through a parachurch ministry that equated spirituality with working hard at the things of God. Undergraduate and graduate school reinforced this pattern, which only increased once we began ministry in the inner city. Yet this virtue that had carried me out of the ghetto was now driving away the one I loved.
Thank God, Cynthia did not leave. However, the pain of that near tragedy, and God’s continual work in my life since, have given me five core commitments that have saved not only my marriage but my ministry as well.
Commitment 1: A mission statement
I cannot do everything. What few things can and must I do?
I committed to writing and trying to keep a personal mission statement. In his best-selling book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey writes, “A mission statement is not something you write overnight. . . . But fundamentally, your mission statement becomes your constitution, the solid expression of your vision and values. It becomes the criterion by which you measure everything else in your life.”
The mission I live by has helped focus how I live: “I will endeavor to honor God on a daily basis by becoming a man who is continually growing in my love for my wife and children, even above my ministry. They are my highest human priority.”
From this mission statement, I have identified five values:
Value 1: My highest value is to worship God and spend time alone with him in his Word and prayer.
Value 2: My wife is my most precious human relationship.
Value 3: Being a godly father is the most important stewardship with which I have been entrusted.
Value 4: I need to focus my ministry in the area of teaching, consulting, and writing as the highest gifts I can give to the church.
Value 5: Personal holiness and integrity are non-negotiables in my life.
Commitment 2: Margin in my life
In his book, Margin, Richard Swenson stresses the importance of realizing, especially as you get older, your emotional and physical limits. We must intentionally provide space for recovery and renewal.
Early in our ministry in Chicago, I had been pushing and pushing, trying to get the work off the ground. Money was tight (a better description would be nonexistent). I came to the point of physical, emotional, and spiritual exhaustion. It got so bad that I could not get out of bed for three weeks and had to be helped to the bathroom by a next-door neighbor.
Since then I have learned some ways to build margin in my life:
One, I never commit to do anything, no matter how appealing, on the spot. In ministry, the problem is not a lack of good things to do but the ability, as Paul says to the saints in Philippi, to “discern that which is excellent” (1:10).
Two, no matter how hectic my schedule, I discipline myself to exercise twenty to thirty minutes per day, five or six days a week. Exercise helps me not only physically but mentally and emotionally as well. It allows me to work off stress and tension.
Three, I use both a daily and long-term planning system. They allow me to look at my commitments and make sure they are based on my mission statement.
Commitment 3: Accountable relationships
This commitment is critical, for support, encouragement, and challenge. It has been helpful for me to establish what I call “truth-telling” relationships with three men. I remember when one of these men confronted me on how I was raising one of our children. It was a strong rebuke, which at first I resisted. However, as I sought to be open to what the Lord might be saying through my brother, I was able not to overreact but to hear what God was saying.
Commitment 4: Nurturing and romancing my spouse
It is easy for me as a man to shift from the pursuit of my wife (prior to marriage) to the pursuit of a career. Full-time ministry has made me susceptible to high demands and expectations from others. But family relationships are fragile; unless they are continually watered and nurtured like a delicate flower, they will wither under the heat of neglect.
For many years, Cynthia and I have practiced a weekly date night. We do a number of things-go to a restaurant to chat or to the park for a walk. I’ve discovered that Satan fights me tooth and nail in this area; he knows there is no substitute for face-to-face time with my wife.
Commitment 5: Personal and marital spiritual development
The primary reason Cynthia and I weathered that storm some seventeen years ago is the strong spiritual foundation that had been laid in our marriage. To present my wife holy and blameless before the Lord, I must prioritize my walk with Christ and our walk with Christ as a couple.
Recently I was going through an extremely busy time in ministry. One morning as I was about to run out the door, my wife looked at me and said quite matter-of-factly, “You know, we don’t pray together anymore.” Her words were a ton of bricks dropped on my head. I repented and renewed our practice of daily prayer together.
My ongoing and only hope is looking to my heavenly Father to help me be the loving, servant leader he has called me to be.
Dwight Perry is assistant professor of pastoral studies at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois.
1997 by Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.
