Q. #1 What makes your family unique?

This is the first big question from Patrick Lencioni's book that I introduced in my last post.

The answer to this question should be two to three purposeful sentences that describe how you/your family is different from any other person/family in the world. What makes you special and one-of-a-kind?

Dennis and I took a few minutes to randomly list our qualities/values, as suggested by Lencioni in the book, to help us discover themes to our uniqueness. This was a fun, simple exercise. These values, Lencioni cautioned, were not to be the following:

o Aspirational Values – desirable but not true
o The “Expected” or “Correct” Values – common minimum standards (like integrity, honesty)
o Value envy – values others have that we wish we were

The list was to be anything and everything that was true about us, no classifying or categorizing, just listing whatever came to our minds. Our list was long, but this will give you the idea.

• empty-nesters
• four adult children
• soon to be grandparents to 3
• love to travel
• extended family far away
• love coaching/mentoring
• ministry/vocational transition
• strong marriage
• church important
• faith is foundational
• giving
• responsible
• passionate
• simple
• risk
• love expressed
• affirming
• investing in our kids - time, teaching, encouraging
• developing the next generation
• both love to read
• love to hike
• enjoy nature
• drive used cars
• learners
• Teaching/preaching (Dennis)
• Counseling (Gwen)

From this list we came up with a few themes that helped us create the following statement that answered the first question.

We are a couple that are passionate and generous in investing in the lives of others, first and foremost with our children and grandchildren and uniquely in this generation and the next generation in persons involved in ministry. Particularly coaching, mentoring, and teaching in life, leadership, family, marriage and spiritual formation.

In our marriage we maximize our life resources – time, money, energy – by choosing a simple lifestyle. We find our grounding in Christ and in the expression of His life through the Church.

Lencioni says, "If you don’t know what differentiates your family from others, you won’t have a basis for making decisions, and you’ll try to be all things to all people."

Next entry we'll take a look at question #2.

The 3 Big Questions...

Back in November, a close friend of Dennis' gave him Patrick Lencioni's new book, The Three Big Questions of the Frantic Family. Although his books are generally on organizational management and teamwork in the workplace (The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, The Three Signs of a Miserable Job to name a few), this one focuses on what Lencioni calls "the most important organization in society: the family."

His trademark writing style is no different in the 3 questions book. An entertaining fable gets his point across, then a few final chapters concentrate on the principles of the fable, making it very practical and applicable to life.

Since we had a long drive to and from PA/NJ for Thanksgiving, we decided to make this book our reading material for the trip. Several years ago we discovered how fun it is to read out loud while traveling (carsickness is a thing of the past for me), giving us both the opportunity to enjoy a book and discuss it together. Lencioni's simple, yet engaging chapters kept us turning the pages. We found ourselves laughing out loud at his realistic characters who live life pretty much the way we do.

This book was a timely gift. Not that I would call our family frantic, but as an empty-nest couple having experienced family and ministry transitions over the past several years, this book helped us to get re-focused. I think it's a good book for anybody, family or not, married or not. The questions can be formatted to your situation.

The 3 Big Questions:

• What makes your family unique?

• What is your family's top priority – your rallying cry – right now?

• How do you talk about and use the answers to these questions?

We had plenty of time on our trip to process the questions, come to some good conclusions and sort through steps that would help us generate momentum towards our rallying cry. My next several entries will flesh out the 3 questions, along with our personal application to each one.

Dr. Duewel - a man after my own heart...

You might think this is a post justifying my nocturnal body clock, but it's really a post on prayer as I conclude my entries on Dr. Wesley Duewel.

Dr. Duewel has not only written numerous books on prayer, but models the life of an intercessor. This legacy of prayer was influenced by his mother who I mentioned before carried prayer burdens evident to a young Wesley by her tears during their family prayer times.

I wondered what personal prayer habits he practiced over the years of his life. If anybody knows me well, you would be aware of the fact that I have been known to take oral surveys asking people what time of day they prayed... morning or night. It seems any book I would read on prayer emphasized the early morning hours of prayer. Great intercessors were the ones who got up before dawn bending their knees in prayer. I always felt torn with these thoughts. I believed in the power of prayer, but this morning thing I could not do.

I've not been a morning person since I can remember... ask my mom, my kids or my husband. They know. I've tried getting up in the morning hours to pray, but decided God wouldn't even want to meet with me at 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. My body and mind are just not awake at those hours, no matter how hard I try. My husband, on the other hand, could probably say along with Thomas Jefferson, The sun has not caught me in bed in fifty years. We decided that we could count on one hand how many times I've been up before Dennis. Some might call me undisciplined or uncommited or even unspiritual, but I very seldom do mornings.

In answer to my question, Dr. Duewel pulls a little notebook out of his shirt pocket. It wasn't a little spiral notebook that you might imagine. The best thing I can find similar to what he had is the smallest possible "Moleskine" notebook (legendary notebook of artists and writers). Some are ruled, some are blank. If you can get past the price (2 x-small for 5.95), they're fun little notebooks.

He flipped through the pages where I could see name after name of people he lifted in prayer. No particular requests, only names. He said he knows what he needs to pray for each one. He began this practice while in college where he ended up with a thousand names of missionaries on his daily prayer list by the time he graduated. He carries this little notebook with him throughout the day and whenever he can "snatch some moments" for prayer, he prays. Might be while he's waiting for an appt. or for a red light to turn green, whatever, he uses the spare minutes in his day to pray. Then in the evening he finds time to finish whatever names he didn't cover throughout his day. This might take anywhere from one to two hours. That was it. I was waiting for the morning hours routine to come through at some point. Surely this man of prayer included morning in his practices.

Wanting some clarity on this, yet with some hesitancy I asked, Sooo.... you don't pray in the morning?

You can just imagine how surprised and thrilled I was when Dr. Duewel didn't even utter a word, but simply shook his head back and forth giving me a "no" answer (I think he actually had a little smile on his face, almost like he knew about my survey). I didn't even know how to respond. I thought he might elaborate, but he didn't. I'm sure I looked a bit stunned. This man who has written books on prayer and prays diligently and consistently did not pray in the morning hours! I wanted to stand up and say Yes! or give him the thumbs up, but all I could say was, Okay! with a silly little smile on my face now.

So, Dr. Duewel has become my hero of prayer warriors. He doesn't do mornings either.

As much as I appreciated his routine of snatching moments in prayer with his little notebook in hand, more than anything it proved to me that it doesn't matter when we pray, but that we pray.

Thank you Dr. Duewel for your time and your legacy of prayer!