When Dreams Collide: Dreaming with Your Spouse

What do you do when you and your spouse want different things? In this episode, Katherine Craddock explores the quiet heartbreak of misaligned dreams in marriage — the tension, the emotional disconnect, and the fear of choosing between your calling and your connection. You’ll learn how to navigate dream differences with compassion, how to rebuild unity when your visions don’t match, and how to move toward a shared future without losing yourself. This is an invitation to stop fighting each other and start fighting for the dream together. 

Transcript

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Welcome to the Dream Blueprint, where we build your dream into something real. I'm Catherine Craddock, and today we're going to talk about what happens when your dream and someone else's dream collide. And specifically, I'm going to be talking about your relationship with those most intimate to you, your spouse and your kids, and kind of the family dynamics of navigating very different people with very different objectives and goals. Marriage specifically is where dreams meet friction, and friction is where the formation happens, right? In the Bible, it talks about iron sharpening iron, which is one of men's favorite verses. It's always on the like men's retreat t-shirts because it's so like masculine and wary. But that's that creates sparks, right? To create the sharpness. And there's can often be actual battles that I'm smiling now, but it's not fun. It's not funny. There's a lot of anger, there's a lot of tears when your dream and someone else's dream are in conflict. It's literally why we have war. In Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey, referencing that again, this stage can often be the refusal of the call. Not because you don't want the dream, but because the dream disrupts the equilibrium of everything. When somebody's in pursuit of a dream, things have to go off balance for a little while. And a lot of times other people have to go out of balance and sacrifice for you to accomplish your dream. So how do you get everybody on board with daddy has to travel for a while to provide for the family, or mom needs quiet every night to write her book, or whatever it is, like I'm gonna run a triathlon or a marathon. Those things require sacrifice, right? Mom, I really want to join the travel soccer team. Are you okay to drive me all those hours? Those dreams are asking something of somebody else. And so it's a high conflict moment, if not navigated well. The other problem is, you know, a lot of people who are dreamers, probably maybe you are like this, or in entrepreneurial relationships, the two people could not be more different. It's such a common combination. You can see it a mile away. A lot of times there's the people that are like my husband, they're the go-getter, they're the doer, they're the move fast and break things kind of person. They're the shoot first, ask questions later, let's go for it. We'll fix it on the back end. And oftentimes they're paired up with and married to a spouse that's like, can we pump the brakes? Can we research this a little bit? What are the risks that we don't see? Are there ways to set this up so that it has a higher chance of success? Or sometimes, which is in the case of my case, which it's not a great quality that I have, I'll be like, I've seen this pattern before. I think I know how this is gonna play out. And honestly, it's not gonna play out well. This dream's gonna die, so don't even try it, right? That's that's not a very nice personality to have to deal with all the time when you're trying to have a big dream and your spouse is always like, no, no, no, your dream is stupid, right? So this refusal of the call in your own home can often be related to questions like, is this wise? Is this selfish? Is it the right season? What about the kids? How does this affect other people? What about money? Is are you gonna take the money we saved and you're gonna spend it on this dream? Like, because I had other ideas for where that money was gonna go, right? Like, what about us? So, this episode is about navigating that tension with wisdom and unity and grace and keeping your relationships, your most intimate, most precious relationships together by the end of the process of your dream. One of the first things, and I have about 10 principles I'll go through quickly today that have really helped our family achieve big things in the middle of this kind of conflict. And the first thing is that we talk it out, we try to get on the same page. Our family motto is work hard, pray hard, rest hard, and play hard. We're all in agreement in our family that there are seasons where we are all in on playing and having fun, and then there are other seasons where we're all in on working hard. It's grind time, it is not video game time, it is time to lock in. And there's other times where we rest hard, where we just shut everything down and catch up on sleep, catch up on learning, catch up on season of rest. And then we always pray hard through everything that we do. But one thing that's a cool thing that you can do with your family is to come up with your own family motto where everybody in the family is on the same page of, you know, we are the family that serves our community, or we're the family that serves our country, or we're the family that creates beautiful things for the rest of the world. You can come up with your own motto, but we have a family motto. The other thing that we do when we talk things out is we have quarterly semester and annual reviews. These aren't like formal on-the-calendar things, but they can be, but we make sure to check in with each person in the family. There's you know, eight people in our family. I've got six kids, and we say, what's your number one goal this you know quarter, this semester? What is the thing that you're trying to achieve? Are you trying to set a school record? Are you trying to get a C instead of a D, right? Are you trying to just get through this grade? Are you trying to win a scholarship? Is your goal that you know you really want to go to prom or you want to get your driver's license? Whatever their goal is, even for the little kids, we would do this. They would say, I want to do swim lessons, or I want to learn ballet, or I want to have more play dates with friends. We check in with them, we make sure that everybody is on the same page about the goals for that child. We check in, we do it in, we check in on academic, social, spiritual, physical goals. So four areas. The academic area, what are you trying to achieve academically? Socially, what are you trying to achieve socially? Spiritually, what are you trying to learn more about God, or how do you want to connect more to your spiritual community? And for physically, what are you working on in terms of your health and in terms of your progression in some kind of sport or activity? You know, one of the main things about this though is that when you go to have these meetings with your spouse or your children, these are really sensitive. You're talking about a vulnerable piece of your life. And so I always think about Queen Esther in Esther 7, where the king's like, What do you want? I'll give you whatever you want. And she goes, I want you to have dinner with me. And the king goes and he has dinner, and then he goes, Okay, what do you want? What you know, I'll give you anything. And she goes, I want you to have dinner with me again. And it's at the second dinner when he's nice and full and relaxed. That's when he has, she has the big conversation about her dream to save her people, the Jewish people. And it's an important principle that when you have these discussions, you don't want to do it while you're hungry, angry, lonely, tired. You want to make sure to have these when you're relaxed, when everybody's relaxed, because things can get heated very quickly. Which leads me to my second principle, which is this one's so hard for me. Don't be a dream crusher. We need to give people the space to air their dreams, to listen to their whole dream without interrupting. I am terrible at this. I love to interrupt with all my anxieties and what-ifs and why something can't be done. You know, in Proverbs 3, 5 and 6, it says, trust in the Lord, right? Matthew 6, 33, seek first the kingdom and all these things will be added to you. First Corinthians 13, it talks about love is patient, love is kind, it always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. There's a pattern in the Bible of calm down, listen, seek, trust, be patient, be kind, be hopeful, be persevering in these kinds of conversations. So don't be a dream crusher. Love always trusts, it always hopes, it always perseveres, even when dreams collide. The third principle that I like to follow is to be open to new dreams. Sometimes I get so tied into this is my dream and my goal and what I want to do that I forget that kind of Ruth 116 principle that's quoted so often in weddings, which is where you go, I will go. Where my people will be your people, my God will be your God. That marriage is a shared direction. It's not the same as identical dreams all the time, but we're we're moving in the same direction. And maybe my spouse has an insight into me that I didn't have. Maybe they have a better idea than I do. And that's really hard because I fall in love with my ideas, right? And my husband falls in love with his ideas, and we can get very rigid about them. But taking that step back and saying, okay, I let's give this a try, uh, or that let them principle, like, I'm just gonna let them do it, and they can deal with the consequences. The problem is if those consequences fall back on you, right? But a lot of dreams, some of them, it doesn't even hurt to let them talk about it because if it really is too difficult or it's not gonna happen, then it probably will fall apart and it won't happen. So you just kind of let them go through their process. The fourth principle is that it is really important to count the cost. It's important to realize that if you're pursuing a dream, it is gonna affect your spouse. You know, Jesus talks about in Luke 14, 28 through 30, consider the cost when building a tower. There are seasons when you go to accomplish a big dream that you'll be out of balance. And there are hustle seasons and there are rest seasons, but there's no shortcuts. Like it once you commit to a path, that's on it. And my husband and I went through a season where I said, I'm gonna do this dream, and he said, Great, I'm behind you. And then he said, and I'm gonna do this dream, and I said, Great, I'm behind you. And what happened was we were both out of balance for too long, and it took a horrible toll on our marriage. So we both accomplished the thing that we were trying to do, but we almost emerged with the loss of our marriage because we were both out of alignment for too long. We hadn't considered how much it was going to cost. And especially if it's going to cost your children or your extended family, if you're gonna be asking other people for help and assistance, you really have to think through how is this dream going to affect other people? What am I going to give up to achieve this dream? And can I handle that? Can I withstand the grit and the suffering that it's going to take to accomplish a dream? Because no dream is accomplished without a measure of sacrifice. You know, marriage isn't 50-50, it's a hundred-a hundred, but it's not always the same time. So sometimes, you know, it's like, hey, I'd like to have another baby. I'm gonna be pregnant for a while. So now I'm gonna be operating from the time that I'm I go through my nine months of pregnancy to then, you know, really pregnancy is oftentimes almost a three-year commitment, right? Because you've got this baby that then depends on you. So it's it's hey, we're we're gonna go out of balance for almost a three-year period to bring this life into the world. What is that going to cost us? And are we willing to work together to absorb that cost? In our case, we we were, we were both on board for that for for all of our children, but that can be a high conflict, and it's not always in our control. One of the fifth principles, the fifth principle, not one of the fifth principles, the fifth principle is to seek wise counsel in Proverbs 19, 20, 21, it says, listen to counsel, the Lord's purpose prevails. Sometimes God gives one spouse the blueprint and the other spouse the discernment. So we always run our plans, our dreams past other people that we trust, especially if there's a conflict. And we have over time created voices so that I'm not the only person always saying no. In fact, there is a panel of humans that I trust and my husband trusts. And if there's a major decision, like they might know things more about financial things than me, or they might know more about fitness and nutrition than me, or how to build a house than me, or what whatever the category is. We always have someone who's ahead of us that we both have agreed that we trust that person's opinion, and we say that that sounds like an interesting idea. Have you run it by so-and-so, so-and-so, and so and so? And if the spouse is, yes, I have, and they think it's a good idea, then that is then that's a green light. We can proceed. But if the people on our sort of the board of our life in these different categories, if if the financial board member and the spiritual board member and the this is good for your marriage board member, and they're not all the same person, usually, if they aren't in agreement or alignment, if we get counsel that, hey, this is a bad idea, I've been through this before and it can wreck your life, then then we don't proceed with that. And and very grateful to my husband for running a lot of the big risky decisions that he has against a whole team of people for wisdom and insight, because it used to just be me and I would always be afraid and say no, and and that didn't work out very well. So I had to learn the freedom to trust the counselors that he had surrounded himself in. Same thing. If if you think that your spouse has someone who's in their ear who's not giving good advice or whose advice that you don't trust, well, you need to have that conversation and you need to say, hey, I really like so-and-so, but this is not an area where I trust their counsel. So if that's the person giving you advice on this area, like we need to run it by somebody else. I talked about this principle in the very first episode, but writing down the goal or the vision for your family is number six. Writing the vision, making it plain. Dreams become less threatening when they're visible, when you can read it and see it, and you're like, okay, this feels more solid now. It's not just like, oh, I have a new invention or you know, something like that. It's it's more grounded if you write it down, you write it out. And and I've learned too, I love to research things, which is gonna be our next topic, but I don't need days and and years to research things anymore. I can say, would you mind giving me just a couple of minutes to do a little bit of research so I feel more comfortable with this idea? That would be my ideal response. It's not usually my response, but I'm working on that because usually I don't need a long time to evaluate the new information that I'm receiving. I just need a couple of minutes to sit with that. So sometimes just saying, can I think about that? Can I write that down? Can I have a couple minutes to process that dream? That's much better than jumping into like, no, this is the worst idea in the world. Principle number seven is to take action and just do it. You know, it gets back to that how can you make a 10-year plan, a six-month plan? This is what my husband is really, really good at. He doesn't sit around and wait for things to be perfect or just right. It's he takes massive and perfect action and he's been able to accomplish a lot of things that way. You know, in Matthew 6, 24, Jesus says, take up your cross and follow me. In Matthew 4.22, it says, immediately the disciples left the ship and followed him. And immediately appears 55 times in the Bible. So it's not haste, but shortcuts to take action and just do it. It might look fast, but sometimes taking immediate action is just decisive, purposeful obedience. It's totally okay to move quickly if you know something is the right opportunity. And in fact, a lot of times, if you don't move quickly, then you're gonna miss the opportunity. You're gonna totally miss the boat. And that does happen. The eighth principle that I have for working with my spouse or my children or my family, or you know, with a team is multitasking dreams in phases. So I like, I love, I read one time about how Danielle Steele, the author, she had nine children, and it would take her two to three years to create each book. But what she did was she had up to five projects going at once. So she'd have a book that she was dreaming about, she had a book she was outlining, she had a book that she was actively writing the first draft on, she had a book that she was editing, she had a book that she was promoting. And the important thing about that though was she wasn't double-minded on her goal, she she had a single-minded focus, which was writing, but she was accomplishing the goal by having that goal be in various phases of development. You know, again, I know this is a scripture-heavy episode, but this is where the Bible really shines is these kinds of conflicts and navigating them. You know, in Luke 10, 41, Jesus is talking to Mary Martha, and he says, only one thing is needed, which is abiding in his presence. In James, first, it talks about don't be double minded. In Ecclesiastes 9 10, it says, Whatever your hands find to do, do it with all your might. In 1 Chronicles 28, if you start the framework, others can complete the vision. So you can hold multiple dreams. But you can really only focus on one with that intensity of focus at a time. The ninth principle is that you have to be flexible. You have to be prepared to pivot. In again, I just have a lot of Bible verses for this episode, but Isaiah 43, 15 through 19, it talks about forgetting the former things. Those are in the past. I'm doing a new thing. Jesus talks about putting new wine in new wineskins. You know, sometimes you are going to have to become a different person. You're gonna have to change who you are. And you've got to have a spouse that understands that you're gonna change and that is willing to change alongside of you. And that is a massive conflict point. If one spouse is all in on changing and the other spouse is like, nope, I'm good. I don't want any part of this. So be really careful that you're prepared together to pivot, that you're prepared together to change into this new version of your relationship that you're becoming. And it's especially important to remember like if you do go out out of too wildly out of balance, if you guys are not changing at the same pace or changing together, that your marriage is your most important business that you will ever have. It is the core relationship of your life, and that's the one thing that can't be sacrificed. So that's where you know, if your dream is causing your spouse to sacrifice themselves to the point that they are losing their light, right? Or if your dream is causing your spouse, or if your resistance to your spouse's dream is causing them to get so frustrated and feel trapped, you really have to examine that and say, okay, let's get back to the core. We, our relationship is what is vital, and what do we need to change in order to accomplish that? You know, the final principle is to remember the Lord your God. It's important as a family to remember what God has done in your family's life and to celebrate that. We love looking at the like daily photos and the Amazon photos scrolling by. And you know, in Joshua 4, 21 through 24, they set up stones of remembrance. And in Deuteronomy 8, 8 17 through 18, it says, it is God who gives you the power to produce wealth. Dreams are not monuments to our greatness, they are testimonies to God's faithfulness. And we need those stones of remembrance, those moments where we can go, remember what God did, remember how he blessed that dream, because it's what inspires us to pursue other dreams together and say, you know what? When we work together as a family, when we work together as spouses, we do powerful things. And just that reminder of those moments where you did come together and you did accomplish powerful dreams together, that's what keeps marriages going through the hard times and the conflict times when dreams collide. Because your spouse is not the enemy, the enemy is anything that threatens unity. So thanks for listening to today's podcast. And join me next time for episode four when we talk about the gathering season, which is my favorite one because I love research. This is this is a principle I apply to every single dream I set out to pursue. The gathering season, identifying the tools, teachers, and mentors who will help you with your dream. Talk to you next time, and thanks for listening.