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12. Get a life coach if you can. If you can afford a professional Christian life coach to help you get organized, that might be a great investment. I spent a few years being coached professionally, and Grace has also been coached for a year.

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13. Work on your life, not just in it. Most people waste their whole lives working in them. If you take the time to work on your life, you will save time and increase your odds of living passionately, fruitfully, and joyfully. Life is to be more than just feeling overwhelmed every day with more work than can be done, which results in being exhausted and overwhelmed.

Reverse-Engineering Rhythms

• Daily—pray with and for each other, read the Bible and other good books; eat at least one meal together without the television on or other distractions, such as the phone; visit for at least twenty minutes each day getting your face-to-face time, checking in to see how each other is doing; and go to bed together.

• Weekly—have a date night, attend church together, attend a Christian small group or class together, and sabbath together with a purposeful and restful day off. To make all of this happen, schedule and keep a weekly sync meeting. This is a weekly calendar meeting on a time other than date night. This meeting is solely for you as a couple to go through your calendar and budget, getting and keeping your life unified as one. At this meeting you decide how to juggle your responsibilities, how to serve and pray for each other, who and what to say no to, how to get ready for the holidays, and how to plan out vacations and other events, well in advance.

• Quarterly—go for a romantic and fun overnight getaway together. Before you go, talk about your fears and expectations, and work together to make fun memories and connect.

• Annually—if finances allow, take a planned vacation that you are both excited about. Work together to get ready for the vacation, and while on vacation, do not allow other people and technology to rob you of time together. Guard this time and enjoy it. If you cannot afford it, consider inexpensive ways to take a vacation, including house swapping for a week or two with someone you know and trust.

Reverse-Engineering Questions

The following questions are ones we have used. You are free to add to them and delete them as needed.

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Step 1: Write Out Priorities

Write out no more than seven priorities and place them in order of importance (for example, physical health, spiritual health, marital intimacy, parenting success). We have given you the first four that we always recommend be in this order. The truth is most people will have full plates doing these four, and even people with big plates cannot usually do more than seven things well. For you, this means that anything not on the list has to be cut, because it is prohibiting you from doing your God-given priorities. And by Christian, we mean reading your Bible, praying, attending church, being in a group or class, and so forth. Anything beyond that, such as church leadership in an unpaid position, should be in category 5 or lower.

1. Christian

2. Spouse

3. Parent

4. Worker (both paid and unpaid, such as being a stay-at-home mom)

5. Ministry volunteer?

6.

7.

Step 2: Envision the Future

Pick a day for yourself, your family, and your ministry, sometime in the future (two years, five years, ten years), and envision that day. Pick a day that is far enough down the road that you have to work to get there, but is not so distant that you cannot see it. This has to be a reasonable look into a future date you can see. To do this, answer as many pertinent, specific questions about life on that day as you can reasonably generate. Following are some examples:

Spiritual

1. What church will you attend? Will it be a church with strong men leading so that the husband is motivated, engaged, and committed?

2. What criteria will determine what church you choose?

3. How will you serve in that church and be a blessing?

4. How