How to Write a Family Mission Statement (and Actually Live By It)

0:00What is up, One Degree Fam? What is up, fam? Welcome back to the comfy, cozy, virtual leather couch, where today we're gonna be breaking down our family mission statement and our family core values and say why you should have them too. Our exact mission statement and core values you should have too. No, not our exact ones, but why you should, if you don't already, have a family mission statement and family core.

0:28values and I think it's important for us to start out with is like okay where did this idea where did this concept come from and for me I I remember I was actually the one that was the earliest proponent of of it for our family. Earliest what what did I say? Between two of us it's just funny. the earliest. But but I remember when I was in seminary early on reading a book called The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family. And it was

0:55Really, really good. A phenomenal book. For a seminary class or for your job? I think I read it for my I think my like essentially my boss slash mentor right gave it to me and told me to read it. And I did. And it was phenomenal. And I won't spoil what those three questions are, but I will give you the premise of the book. And the overall premise of the book is that if we handled our jobs, like our work jobs or our businesses, if we run businesses, if we ran them

1:21The same way that we run or handle our families, that we would go out of business or that we wouldn't have a job. And essentially what it's a it's by Lencioni. And Lencioni says that he says that people will put immense strategic planning into their jobs, but that when it comes to the most important organization, your family, that we handle them or run them in a relatively chaotic way.

1:51And that's kind of the whole premise. And like, hey, how do we run our families in a organized, healthy way? And so that's kind of it stems out of that. And he takes it into a little bit different direction than we do. Phenomenal, still really, really good. I would recommend the book to anyone. But it was out of reading that is where I kind of we came up with this concept of, you know, hey, we really do want to develop a family mission statement. We want to develop our core values and we want to live by these. And so

2:20Before we dive into ours, let's say like what it actually is. So, like what is a family mission statement? We describe it as something that would be true, that you would desire to be true of your family throughout any season. So it's not a statement that is true of when we have young kids at home. It's not a statement that is just for when our kids like when we're empty nesters. It's something about what we truly value, what

2:50We how we pursue to be s how we desire to be seen, what our identity as a family is, what we would desire to be known for, I guess. But I don't like that idea because it's like the whole goal is not necessarily like for others to knowness necessarily. But like in the purest sense, what we would want to be known for. Yeah, like what are we about? A family mission statement is gonna say, you know.

3:19what is this family about? So for us, what is the Sibley family about? Yeah, what are we about? And I think that key piece though is in all seasons because I think I see a lot of mission statement type encouragements online and stuff. And it is it feels very like true to where you are right now. And I think it's like sometimes good to take a zoom out lens and a zoomed out lens of

3:46Who do we want to what do we want to be true of us regardless of what our circumstances are? And I think it's important to say too that it's not, it's not just a cheesy Pinterest sign or a cheesy hobby lobby sign where it's like, in this family, we give second chances, or in this family, we love hard. Like, you know, it it's not supposed to be cheesy, it's supposed to define like what is your family about. So for us, the mission, our mission statement is to pursue faithfulness.

4:15play the long game and then to live with open hands. So as the Sibley family, we pursue faithfulness, play the long game, and live with open hands. And we'll break that down in a little bit. But so that's that's our mission statement. And then we've got our values. So if your mission statement is the what, like what is your family about, the values are the how. Like how are you about those? Like what are the key values that you implement within your family to really live out that mission? And so for us, we have

4:45Six, which again we will break down. but those six, if I can remember off the top of my head, we've got spiritual disciplines, hospitality, family time, holistic health, cleanliness and organization, and you already say spiritual discipline. Yes, I did. I was waiting for you to say cleanliness and organization the whole time. And so when you said that I didn't have anything left.

5:09Financial stewardship is the last one. Final stewardship. Financial stewardship. That's the one I we have we write these every week in our weekly marriage meeting journal and we usually still to this day flip back. We'll sometimes try to test ourselves, but we'll flip back for that lesson. Right. Yeah. Yeah. and so yeah, so those are our values and those are what or these are the how we get to the what. And so let's start with the the mission. and so ours, like pursue faithfulness.

5:39breaking that down, why it is, how we got there and everything like that. OG said. How we got the pursuit faithfulness. Yeah. So if you take all three, pursue faithfulness, play the long game and live with open hands, starting with pursue faithfulness, why did we land on that? Yeah, I think that this was kind of just all encompassing of the this is the explicit faith component of our mission statement of everything we do.

6:10should be to pursue faithfulness to the Lord. Like that is what we mean when we say pursue faithfulness. It's to the Lord. it's not, I guess from like worldly perspective, it would be like to each other and to our to our family, like you're being faithful to your family. But obviously those things are secondhand benefits of being faithful to the Lord. And it is this idea it takes the pressure off of some achievement, like ultimate arrival at some destination.

6:37It's just every I think how it fleshes out every single day, pretty much. I every week at the very least, this comes up in our marriage of like what does it mean to pursue faithfulness with this right now? Whether it's a small decision, a big decision, whether it's like signing up s for a certain extracurricular versus a big a more spiritual decision versus a business decision, like it comes up all the time. Yes, a hundred percent. Like where we literally go back and we're like, what does it look like to be faithful? Yeah. Yeah.

7:07And so I think when we're discerning that, because I think sometimes you can like reverse engineer why did we put this? And it's like, okay, well, now looking at how it fleshes out, why did we choose this? It's like we're discerning this requires prayer. Like to to make that discernment of is this pursuing faithfulness? It requires prayer. It requires being in tune to the Holy Spirit's leading. It requires having open and honest conversations to know where each of us is coming from. So like this ultimately keeps us a

7:33keeps everything that we do, if our pursuit is faithfulness, it keeps everything we do intentional, for lack of a better word. Like it is we are calculating and making that decision through the lens of wisdom, I guess I would say. Like biblical wisdom. Yeah, and I would add that as Christians, we want our lives to be revolving around what faithfulness to the Lord looks like, not what success looks like. Not was

8:02You know, hey, what makes this work or what makes this impressive? Or how are we, you know, X, Y, and Z. It's like, okay, at the root of our family, we want to pursue faithfulness. And you find this all throughout scripture. First Corinthians 4 2. this is talking about kind of like apostleship in general, and it's saying like it is required of stewards that they be found faithful. And again, like required of stewards that they be found what? Faithful, not fruitful, not famous.

8:30Not efficient. And obviously I think that faithfulness will lead to fruitfulness, potentially down the road, but it may not even be in your lifetime. It may be it may be after it. And so just that idea of pursuing faithfulness. you know, you see in Luke 16 where Jesus is talking, he says, one who is faithful in very little will also be faithful in much. And so this idea of, hey, even no matter how little or how much we've been entrusted with, what does it look like to pursue faithfulness? Because I think a lot of times

9:00Being faithful happens unseen. Like you are not seen by anyone but the Lord of you know pursuing faithfulness. you know, and and I think for us it's like it's it's very unseen whether or not you are, you know, reading your Bible doing your quiet time. It's very unseen if you're doing a family devotional. It's very unseen if you are making mistakes and modeling what it looks like to apologize to your spouse and to your children. It's

9:29Very like all of those things go unseen except by the Lord and then maybe your immediate family. And that for us is like we don't want to measure our weeks and our years by what we did. We want or we want to we want to measure it by faithfulness, not kind of like what it produced, what it achieved. Exactly. Yeah, for sure. Okay, so pursue faithfulness, play the long game.

10:00I don't remember the in initial conversations again, but I mean I think it was something along the lines of like not having short-sightedness, not doing the quick, easy fixes, not it's kind of that like long term discipline. If you think about playing the long game, that is the idea of you're not doing the things that are gonna benefit you most for today or tomorrow or for next week. You're doing the things that are gonna benefit you most for a year, five years, ten years from now. So that com

10:26Again, how does that flesh out in our daily life? This is with parenting a lot of like, okay, not what's best for our child right now. Not what gets them to stop crying right now. Yeah. Not yeah, not what is the most beneficial to our family environment right now as far as quietness and stuff goes, but like what will produce the most fruit in them from a fruit in them a year from now, five years from now, ten years from now.

10:54it comes up in finances of how can we yeah, just I mean, not even necessarily from like an earthly perspective, like how can we invest for the long run? That does come up, but like how can we ultimately set ourselves up for not just now but for later and it comes up in I mean every component of life with fitness. that's something we talk about a lot of like what is the long we talk about longevity and fitness a lot. Like we just we

11:20Prioritize fitness so much, not for the aesthetics of right now and not for just like being super fit thirty year olds. We prioritize fitness so much now and we genuinely do talk about it all the time. So that when we're sixty five, seventy years old and we have grandkids, like we're strong and we're b we can balance and we're able to run around with them and like we that's our goal. And it's like we wanna teach our kids the joy of

11:43Exercise. You know, like not for like, I gotta get rid of these love handles or I've gotta drop weight. But it's like, no, I enjoy being healthy. We enjoy going for walks or for hikes. We enjoy pushing our bodies and you know, lifting weights, getting stronger. Yeah. Like we have that language a lot in our house around fitness and our kids talk about it. Like even the other day, our daughter was running up the hill and she's like, I gotta, I gotta keep running, I gotta get

12:09Or I I just keep or you were encouraging her that if the more she runs, the less she'll get side cramps. And I was just joking behind, I was like, or you can just resign yourself to not being a runner and and she was like, But then I won't get stronger. I was like, I yeah, you're right. And that's just like her perspective because that's what we talk about of like getting stronger and all of that stuff. Anyway, that's I digress. it does come up just in all the things. I would say parenting's probably the most real most applicable right now.

12:38There's a lot of that of like what how do we set ourselves up for k schooling, for example. There's a lot that would be good right now in the short term. Mm-hmm in our s crazy season of life that I don't believe is best for the long term of our child. And so it's like making those that does that is a good example of something where it's like that is a hard decision to say like, No, I think it is best for us to home school while both working full time, well because I think that's what's best for our kid in the long term. that isn't

13:08Yeah, I think it it fleshes out that way. And again, I think that this is a biblical concept, right? We see in Galatians six this idea of like let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not get up give up. And just this idea of, hey, we we most likely aren't going to r quote unquote reap in this season. You you most likely won't see the results until years down the road. And so we don't want to give up in doing good. We don't want to give up in pursuing faithfulness.

13:37We don't wanna make decisions that are good for today, but bad for tomorrow or for a year down the road. And so for us, playing the long game means like we have a long-term perspective. And honestly, even more than that, like an eternal perspective of we're not living for this world, but we're living for the next, which goes into our third and final component of our mission statement is to live with open hands. So it used to be travel as a pack, but then we felt like we don't.

14:02We don't want that to define our family. Like there are gonna be times, especially now with kids, where we're taking one kid to practice or that, hey, I'm gonna take all the kids so that you can relax or you can get some rest or whatever it may be. And so it felt like we don't want the the you know, the what of our family to be like they always travel as a pack because there are gonna be times where it it might be healthy not to do that. Right. It didn't feel like that was and for the most part we've always said like these should

14:31not change. Like your goal is for them to not change. But I also am somebody who's really big about reserving the right to change your mind. I think it's a good, healthy thing. But we yeah, we basically evaluated of like this isn't necessarily a core identity issue that we want to be people who travel as a pack. It is important in general. Like we believe we want to travel with our kids. We want to pursue things together with our kids. Yeah. But yeah, for example, a lot of times you will take all the kids and give me a chance to work or clean or whatever alone. And it's like that is

15:00In my mind, pursuing faithfulness, playing the long game of sustainability, and not antithetical to who we are. Exactly. And so we've only in the past we've had our mission statement for what six or seven years, no pun intended, no six seven intended there. But we've had our mission statement for a while. I think it's been at least seven. Yeah. And we've only changed it once, and it was to make that change. We the entire time it stayed like pursue faithfulness, play the long game, and then we switched it from travel as a pack to live with open hands. And this philosophy

15:29Kind of stems from the idea that everything we have is not ours. It is entrusted to us for us to steward, but ultimately it is God's. Like our time, our money, everything, our possessions, everything that we have is not ours. it is God's. And we are called to steward it. And so this idea of living with open hands is that, hey, we are going to seek to radically give, even if it doesn't fit in with

15:55the standard financial playbook that says you are not supposed to radically, generously give until the very last step. You know, like, no, I want to radically and generously give throughout my entire life, even if I don't hit all the quote unquote baby steps, because I think that is more faithful. And when you look at have we hit all the steps? I don't know what all of them are. No, I I think we've hit You have to have like year in savings. First four or five. No, and it's three to six months. But we've hit step like five, probably. Okay. But like throughout the whole process, it's like we could have.

16:23gone through it so much faster if we would have just like done the standard giving or whatever. And this I don't want this to sound arrogant or pat ourselves on the back. For me, there's because there's so much more that we can grow in when it comes to being radically generous. I look at examples out there of people who have lived with radical generosity. And and I think we can still have lots of room to grow here. Funnel all my royalties into no but nonprofits instead. What I am

16:52What I'm trying to get at is like the parable or when they're watching at the temple and the the the old lady that is praised for giving two copper coins, you know, like people were giving bags of money. and Jesus doesn't praise them. He praised the praises the one who gives all that she had to live on, and that's who he praises on as an example of generosity. And I think so often in Western Christianity we conflate

17:20Generosity with how much you give. You know, like you know, people who are richer and give more money are more generous when in reality that's not how Jesus measured it. Not that I think he's getting a lot of praise, but like a billionaire giving away a few million dollars for something, it's like, okay, on the scale, you know, somebody giving away a hundred dollars would be so much more impactful. And I think that applies for more than live with open hands means like, hey, we

17:45we live with open hands when it comes to our house. Like we want to have people open in our house and into our house and using that. I think when we change this, I'd propose to live with open hands and open doors. Just this concept of what's ours is really the Lord's and what's ours is now yours. And that just that kind of countercultural mentality of not having super individualistic perspective on our possessions, on our money, on our resources, on our home, but really trying to

18:14Yeah, view it as something to steward and to minister to others with. And I think that goes in that flushes out in a lot of ways too. Yeah. In conversations we have. And it it does flush out with a sense of like, hey, we have people over and kids over and something gets broken. It's not like, my goodness, I can't believe or we're gonna have things that are off limits or whatever it may be. It's like, no, like this is very Yeah, pretty much the only rules that we have around those things are like safety things. It's like I

18:43Our couch is really bad. Our our couch is really bad. Our cars are dented from baseball bats and balls, like our you know, all that kind of thing. I never want to have things where it makes yeah, where peop I I'm a I like nice things. I like cultivating a nice environment. But I also since our espresso machine got ruined from a kid, but watch out. I would just very much ask that it be replaced by you, not by the person. I'm just saying like we'd need to get that replaced. But you know, I wouldn't have a problem with it, it'd be fine.

19:12Yeah. anyway, so I the what the sentence that I didn't finish that you know where I was going with it is just like I never want to have things that I would be heartbroken about them being like I don't want to ever have that emotional tie to a thing. Yeah. okay, so let's go into our core values. Standard mission statement. Now core core values. Core values being the how. How do we live these out? How do we so I'll give you a macro perspective of like

19:41where these are coming up because we said these do come up in our life all the time. So our mission statement. So in our weekly marriage meeting, we taught we reiterate our mission statement. It also does just come up conversationally throughout the week because it is so ingrained in us at this point. But then our core values, we list them out every week in our marriage meeting. And we score them. I mean score them. So we do this in our weekly marriage meeting journal. If you get the one degree marriage app, this is not supposed to be a plug, but you can also do that in there and then you can score them in there. You'll be

20:10The point of that is you can if you want to look at this template, you can look at it live. But anyway, we write them all out. We score them one to five. Five one being this literally did not show up in our life at all. Like if it's finances, if it's our financial stewardship, one it's like we blew our budget so badly was not there. Like we can't even say this was there. Or cleanliness, like I don't even know. one spiritual disciplines is one that has gotten ones.

20:35Because it's like we just simply did not open our Bibles, you know? Like that's an easy one to like, this just was not present. There were no spiritual disciplines. five being, yeah, honestly, we kinda killed it. Like, I don't know that we would be able to improve it much more in this season. And then we choose one for the week because we don't think that you can focus on it's good to just focus on one and we basically choose whichever was the lowest.

21:00Which one do we need to really be intentional about holding each other accountable and having more open conversations and just like being more mindful of that one in the week forward? So that's kind of the context of how these are routinely put in. Cause I think a lot of times people can come up with they go to a marriage retreat and they come up with their mission statement and they come up with their core values and they write down and maybe they frame them. And then the it's just never integrated into their lives. So I think it's important to preface with how this is integrated into our lives because it truly is. So

21:27It almost reminds me of like wedding vows of you do your wedding vows and then you never revisit I had a pastor that he was so big about after you get married that you read your wedding vows to each other like three times a week. And then after that, after you've been married for a year, do it once a week, where you're constantly coming back to your vows, like reminding each other what you committed to. Far too long and poetic for that. And

21:50But that was just an encouragement that he had. And so similarly for this, of like obviously your family mission statement and your core values aren't gonna do anything if you're not coming back to them and revisiting them and evaluating your life based upon them. And so that's what I would say. And for core values specifically, family mission statement, it should be all encompassing, you know, who or what do you want your family to be.

22:13And then your values are like how you get that, but it should also be all-encompassing of like, hey, this touches on every area of life. There's nothing that's left out that isn't touched upon by these core values. And so for us as we go through ours, the first one is spiritual discipline. Pretty self-explanatory. We don't have to spend much time here. It's part of the pursuing faithfulness, but I I think it's first, like we always list it first for a reason because like everything else on our on our family values kind of comes downstream.

22:42From this first one, from the spiritual disciplines. Like we want to be pursuing the Lord. We want to be in the scripture. We want to be praying. We want to be fasting. We want to be growing in our faith and pursuing these spiritual disciplines. And so I think that it's especially important that this is a family value. This isn't just like a personal value. Like we want to practice these as a family, be sitting down and reading the scripture and answering questions with our kids and memorizing scripture.

23:11there's a lot of room that we have to grow in here, but this is like our number one family value for reason. so yeah, first one. Number two, family time. So obviously time we talk about a lot of times people talk about the fact that that's like your greatest asset, your greatest commodity. you can't make more of it. Everyone has the same twenty-four hours in a day. So it's our priority to yeah, just like put those hours where we most value. And so

23:43this looks like being intentional with our time outside of work and when we're home, not just being on our phones, not just placating the kids with a screen, having that be time, whether it's just going for a walk. I mean, it's simple. The I'm the weeks that we have a five. I feel like we've had some good five weeks lately. And it's like it's not anything crazy. It's just after work we're doing things together. We're going for walk, taking things. Going for a walk, playing a game. The kids are going swimming out.

24:09At the lake, they yeah, it's simple stuff. But it's like, okay, we're with those hours that we had when Nathaniel gets home from work, were we intentional to use them mostly well? You know? So that's family time. Number three is financial stewardship. again that this hospitality is number three is hospitality. Sorry, I skipped one. I mean it doesn't matter though. We're after the spiritual disciplines, it doesn't matter. Just too wanted that one to get dropped. so number three is hospitality, where again this is

24:39We've already kind of touched on it. I don't need to belabor the point, but where we are having people into our home where we are seeking to serve people, where when people are struggling, where you're reaching out and offering help, assistance, groceries, whatever it may be. but the big thing for us how we flesh this out was or how we live this out and seek to live it out was a year and a half ago we were talking and like, we just wanna host people in our home and do a casual Friday night dinner where all are welcome, open doors, whoever can come can come.

25:07Whoever can't, you know, it's okay, come next week. And we just it's a standing Friday night dinner. And we were like, man, our house isn't the best for it. It's just not. So I can't wait to do this until we get into a bigger house. In the sense that we don't have a our backyard is a lake, so we don't have like a grassy backyard where people can hang out and we don't have like a separate like our basement is where our bedrooms are. We don't we have a playroom, but it's very much attacked attached to where our living room is. I just when we say our house isn't good, I just don't

25:36Really anyone could say that. It's just not conducive to kids just being able to run free, which is the nature of our friend group. Yes. And so for us this was like, okay, well, that idea of being faithful in a in a little like, okay, let's not say we're gonna wait till we get a bigger or better house or whatever it may be, but let's pursue this now and see what happens. And then Friday Night Gang was born out of that, and it's just been so

26:04Rich and rewarding and fruitful and it's been something to look forward to every week and it's literally like every single Friday and it's awesome and we have kids in our house and it's a wreck and it's a mess and it is fun and it's just an absolute blast. And that's something that it's just a small example of hey, this are our value of hospitality and how do we live this out? This is one way to live that out. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then financial stewardship.

26:29So you can kind of see all of these how we've the reason we've already talked about them is because we already talked about how we live out our mission statement. These are the house. Like each of these could kind of be tied back to like hospitality being tied back to open hands, financial stewardship, I mean, being tied back to faithfulness, being tied back to playing the long game. So this idea that everything that we have, I mean, also being tying back to open hands. This one kind of permeates all three, but all three components of our mission statement. But yeah, it's the idea that everything that we have is God's.

26:58that we are just stewards here on this earth for everything, that we are not the owners of it. yeah, and just making sure we s we've talked before when we've done episodes explicitly about finances, but your budget is a reflection of what you value. And so making sure that our kind of doing a recon and making sure it is that the right way I say that a budget a budget reconciliation to make sure that everything matches our values. Yeah. Okay. Yep.

27:27Number five is holistic health. A again, this is part of playing the long game, pursuing faithfulness. You know, these are these permeate, you know, kind of hey, these are how we live out the what. so holistic health that, hey, we want to be healthy, we want to eat healthy, we want to be active, we want to get quality sleep. you know, and and so

27:53Just this idea of we want to pursue holistic health. not just like a version of dieting culture, not just a version of I wanna get yoked. Like, no, I want to pursue health, overall physical health. and then lastly, cleanliness and organization. This one I would be willing to bet I was the one that fought for this to be on there. I don't think he would I don't think he would put this as a core value. For me

28:17It just matters to me. It was one of those things that I wanted to be coming back to every week to see whether we lived it out because I, you know, cleanliness is right up there with godliness. I'm just kidding. But I just do truly value not having a chaotic home. It is really so this maybe is more of a me identity thing than a us identity, but you know, what's we are one. So it's now your identity. But I want our home to be a place of order and peace. And I think that that.

28:47comes through general cleanliness and organization. I say this and it's almost laughable because we also do not have a spotless home by any means and do not have a perfectly organized home. But it is something that I'm constantly like pursuing. We are just also in a season where that is quickly undone as soon as you per achieve it. So anyway, those are our core values. Hopefully you get the gauge of like how the difference between your core value, the difference between your mission statement, hopefully you're encouraged to set them for yourselves. I think that

29:16If nothing else, the conversation that develops those are is a very important conversation to have because that's a conversation where you're ultimately digging into what do we value, what do we what have we pri been prioritizing? What are we not prioritizing? Who do we like, what do we believe about life and about our role as husband and wife and our role as mom and dad and all of those things? Yeah. And I think if you're trying to consider like, okay, how do we do this for ourselves? You know, it start with.

29:42separately on a it doesn't even need to be a true date night out. It can be the kids go to bed and then we're gonna talk about this of what it looks like. For your mission statement, it's just like what do we want to be? What do we want our family to be known for? There are people that I know that their family mission statement is to love God, love others, have fun. Like that's what they want their family and I was honestly like, man, that's so good and so succinct and and just all encompassing.

30:07And so it it can be something like that, but just sit down separately almost, like write down what do you want your family to be known for and then what are the values, what's the how if you're gonna get that, and then come together and then really craft and create your family mission statement with the goal of it never changes. That's the other big thing of it's not like this season, like, our family mission statement is to be the best parents that we can be. Well, eventually your kids are gonna grow up and be out of the house. Yeah, or like our fam to raise disciples, and it's like

30:35Well, maybe would be fair. Well, I was gonna say disciples would be good. But something that once your kids are raised in autonomous, you now suddenly do not have that identity. Mm-hmm. Yep. Exactly. Or if it's like, we want to, you know, greatly impact the city we're living in. It's like, well, what happens if you leave cities? You'd have to change it. Like if you were saying like, I don't know. Yeah. You get it. You get it. It's like not time dependent. It's gonna be the goal is to have it last for the rest of your life.

31:04And then for values, I would say between five and seven values. Like you don't want any more because you know it's you're gonna get kind of you can't focus on all of those, but you don't want any less because you do want your values to encompass every area of your life. You don't want to have an area of your life that is not neglected, that isn't encompassed by your values. So shoot for five to seven values. And I I think again, you do this, you sit down, you put in the work, and you craft this, it's only as good as your follow-up.

31:32Like that's the importance of crafting it and then having your weekly marriage meeting where you are reviewing it, where you're talking about it, where you are, hey, these are this is our family mission statement. How do we live that out? How do we not live that out? Here are the values, let's give them scores. What do we need to focus on moving forward? And again, it just goes back to of like doing those small things week after week, month after month, year after year, transforms your marriage and helps you

31:59Like truly live that out. Because we didn't say this at the beginning, and we probably should have set the stage with this, is even if you don't have your quote unquote family values written out or your family mission statement written out, if you don't choose what it is, it is going to be chosen for you. Because it is going to be crafted by your upbringing, or it is going to be crafted by your friends, or it is going to be crafted by what you see on social media or those you see around you. Because all of a sudden when you don't

32:28when you don't have established this is what my family to look like and then it's like, shoot, you know, every other kid is playing travel sports. I guess our kids need to play travel sports or shoot, you know, every other family is maxing out the retirement or going on lavish vacations, we need to go on lavish vacations. You know, like if you don't if you aren't intentional with choosing it,

32:52It will be chosen for you and you will be molded by those around you. And in some sense, like it's good to be molded by fellow believers who are pursuing the Lord. Iron sharpens iron, but I think oftentimes we'll be molded by the culture if we aren't explicit in saying what we want to be and how we want to accomplish that. And so I wish I could go back and add that from the beginning, but that would be a big, you know, encouragement for you. The quote at the beginning. There you go. There you go. So one degree shift.

33:21One degree shift. I would say sit down with your spouse and then write a rough first draft of that mission statement of your core values and maybe mole on them for a couple weeks to before you lock them in stone. But have that conversation. Like I said, that conversation alone. The means to get to that end will be very fruitful for you. Yeah. And then if you already have your family mission statement and core values, start reviewing them on a weekly basis. Like make them part of your weekly marriage meeting. Make them something that, hey, these are genuinely transforming.

33:50Our lives, our marriages, our families. Like they are they are something we truly do live by. Yeah. That's good. All right. All right. Catch you next week, One Degree fam. Love your one degree fam.