In Alaska, there are mountain ranges around Denali where the weather and clouds are so thick that there are only twenty to thirty days a year where it is clear enough to see the peaks of the mountains. Twenty to thirty days per year! Think about it. You could save up money for the adventure of a lifetime; the opportunity to see, or even climb the highest peak in North America. You travel thousands of miles to reach the beginning of the adventure, only to discover that clouds and weather will force you to turn around. You can not see where you are going. Doesn’t life sometimes feel this way? Consisting of only a few mornings where you wake up and know clearly your path or purpose.

A requirement for experiencing a marriage fully alive is clarity. Clarity is the ability to see both near and far with accuracy, understanding and insight. Along with space (as discussed last week) clarity is instrumental in creating a life and relationship we want.

When you don’t know where you want to go, any route will do. This leaves a lot to chance, luck, circumstances, etc. When you know where you want to go however, life becomes easier to live, circumstances are easier to navigate. I’m sure that there have been times where you have been clear about life and relationships. When it felt like you were in the flow. You had energy and a zest for life. This begins with clarity but clarity alone will not sustain it. Otherwise life would have been clear all along.

So where do we begin to find clarity? It starts with identifying clearly your gifts. Your strengths, your abilities, your skills, your attitudes. When you know clearly what you have been gifted with, you then can begin to choose how you want to use your gifts. Take some time and name your gifts. Ask others for their input and see if you agree with their insights.

Society seems to want you to become a jack-of-all-trades. Good at a lot of things, masters of nothing. This produces relationships and lives that are nice, not great. Getting by, not fully alive. You may be unsettled about things or bored and not know why. You may be feeling like you are spinning your wheels at times, getting nowhere fast. When you begin to create clarity, you pick up momentum in life. And the more clarity you get, the more fulfilling life becomes.

Personal development is what will sustain the momentum clarity creates. Seeking to become a better human creates better relationships and families. It starts and ends with you. The others involved will have influence over what happens, but you are the major player in the creation of the life you desire. The star of your story.

There is an art to personal development. It involves incorporating some of your own desires, goals, and dreams. This is not done by ignoring the others in your life and their desires, goals, and dreams. You are faced everyday with the give and take of relationships. To blindly seek your own desires and goals will likely end up hurting those you care about and yourself. You can however, begin sharing your dreams and desires with your spouse and hearing about their own. When this is done, relationship desires, goals, and dreams can be created or addressed.

In a nutshell, the vision of a marriage fully alive is done by discovering and expanding the space needed for the life and relationship you want. Which is done when you become clear about the life and relationship you want. Which requires you to develop personally to create the life and relationship you want. All of these are interconnected. When you are working on one, you are working on the others. These concepts feed off each other and are necessary for the creation of marriages that are fully alive. If you are waiting for another person to do the work for you, you may be waiting a long time. If you are waiting for your spouse to begin before you do, you may never start. It starts with you. What are you waiting for?

While standing in line at the store, you can feel the person right behind you. They are shifting back and forth and mumbling something inaudible under the breath. They are crowding your space in line as if by doing so the line will move faster. If you try to get a bit more room, you will crowd the person in front of you. You’re stuck.

The things in our lives require space. When pressed for space we are often unable to be fully present. We simply have no room. So the important things in our lives are shoved to the back of the line in order to address the immediate things. When we understand the ebb and flow of our space, we will better understand our relationships. Our relationships ebb and flow along with our space. When we have space for our relationships, our relationships improve.

There are five areas where space is basic to us all; physical, mental, time, emotional and spiritual.

Physical space allows for comfort. When things are in their place, they are easy to retrieve because everything has a home. We know right where things are. There is a flow to getting things done. Relationally, physical space is the shared space in our relationships. We share our lives with another human being by choice. We share a house, a room, a bathroom, a closet. How do these spaces look right now? Would they benefit from some decluttering? Next time you are in your relational space, take a look around. Take action to create a good space for your relationship. Amazing things will happen with this very first step.

Mental space allows us to be present in the moment. Space to create, reminisce, honor, cherish, love. When mental space is not present, busyness takes over. The mind is always “on”. On the next meeting, the work at the office, the housework, the kids. Too little mental space leads to lying in bed at night unable to go to sleep because the mind is racing. And it leads to being unable to really connect with a spouse because they have no room in your head or can’t possibly keep up with the speed of your thoughts. Let’s begin to clear our heads by looking at what’s bugging us. Unfinished projects, clutter, unresolved issues, housework, just getting by. Address the things you can. Confront yourself about whether the things you want to do you really should be doing. Then learn to incorporate some mind clearing exercise into each day; take a walk in the morning or evening, meditate, pray, listen to good music, be silent in nature, exercise. As we improve our ability to give our minds space, our relationships will improve.

When there is time in life to do the things important to us, life is fulfilling and satisfying. Life is clear and on purpose. When there isn’t enough time, we are rushed and frazzled. We have no standards as to how to use our time, thus we have poor boundaries. We waste time. Handle only the immediate, rarely returning to the important. So ask yourself this; how much time do I have for my relationship? Am I using my time well in my relationship? When we understand the role time plays in our relationship, we have the power to choose how to spend that time. If we don’t allow time in our relationship, it will deteriorate. Acknowledge the time you have or don’t have and take action accordingly.

Emotional space allows us to experience the whole range of life’s emotions. When we have emotional room, we are free to heed our emotion’s advice, no longer being dominated by them. We can be close to ourselves and others with less fear of being lost or smothered. We all have certain amounts of emotional clutter; past issues, hurts, grief, grudges. Just like the stacks of clutter in our office or home, it is beneficial to clear away emotional clutter. Seek professional help in counseling, hire a professional coach to assist you, take a vacation. Take care of your emotional space and you will experience more out of life.

When our spiritual space is open and clear, our gifts and talents are evident and free flowing. When our spiritual space is cramped or blocked, we lose access to our intuition and our deeper selves. So much of our learning comes from our internal listening, our intuition. We would be wise to continually look for ways to expand our spiritual channels. Pray, mediate, read spiritual writings, listen to uplifting music. Connecting with God pulls us out of ourselves. It helps to keep things in perspective, gives hope and the ability to enjoy more in life.

By increasing the space in our lives, we uncover the possibility to create more in life. Better relationships, jobs, homes, families. We are each capable of more in life. Acknowledge the spaces you have, and then create the spaces you want.

As the years pass and your marriage progresses, I am willing to bet that you are not in the same relationship from which you began. Oh you may still be with the one you originally married, but the relationship is not the same. It can’t be. We constantly change and evolve. It is one of the natural laws that can not be avoided. I would also be willing to bet that most of us would not want to still be in that same relationship.

Every relationship starts off in that euphoric, sappy state of being where you can not imagine life without the other. You spend all your time each day wondering what the other person is doing, thinking, feeling, and if they miss you as much as you miss them; even though you’ve only been apart for 15 minutes. As we have all experienced, this state can not last forever and life settles in. This is where the relationship is faced with the choice of either growing or deteriorating. Now this may be a bit simplistic but it is still true. How much planning is spent on relational growth from this point? Have you developed a vision of your relationship down the road? Now. Five years from now. Ten. Twenty.

We are each capable of pointing out what is wrong with our relationship or what is missing (we are also quick to point this out in our spouse). How often are we willing to do this about ourselves? We need to be able to develop a vision for ourselves; and then for our relationship. Only then will life begin to run more smoothly. When you don’t know where you want to go, any route will do. If you have a vision for where you want to go, you can then share that with your spouse and get their input on a shared vision, of which you will only control half.

A relationship vision begins with three distinct, yet interrelated concepts. They are space, clarity, and personal development. These concepts are born out of the idea that we are capable of creating the life we desire from intention. The first step to creating from intention is to focus within ourselves. This week will set the foundation briefly for each of these concepts and the following weeks will go more in depth.

The things in our lives require space. When we have enough space, things run smoothly. Space usually entails many different areas; physical, mental, time, emotional and spiritual. We all know what is like to not have enough space. You board your plane for the flight to the coast and discover you are sitting next to the person that you swear used to play offensive lineman for the Cowboys. When we don’t have enough space, we are often short. Short of room, short of temper, short of clarity.

Clarity is the ability to see both close and far with awareness and insight. Clarity is instrumental in developing the life and relationship we want. This involves not just what we want in our life, but also what we do not want. What are the things you want to have in your relationship? What are your relationship deal breakers? Spend some time developing a clear vision of life going forward. Realize however, that when another person is involved with the fulfillment of this vision, you will have to adapt and adjust at times since you can not control what they want for their own lives.

The last area is personal development, which is necessary for sustained growth. The previous two areas will produce short term improvement, but lasting growth will only come from you developing into a better human. When both members of the relationship take care of this within themselves, a tremendous amount of energy is created.

In the following weeks we will discuss each topic more in depth. Feel free to join in the discussion with questions and comments along the way.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR NEWSLETTER OR WEBSITE? No problem, as long as you include the following: For more resources and information visit www.marriagefullyalive.com.