Somebody Has to Decide

Series: 5 Steps That Move Your Family From Existing to Engaged — Post 4 of 5 (Intention)

A few years ago, Sara and I realized we had gotten remarkably good at living in the same house without actually being together in it.

It wasn’t a fight that revealed it. It was smaller than that, and honestly harder to catch. We’d pass each other in the hallway, ask about each other’s day, handle the calendar together like a well-run small business. By every outward measure, we were connected. We liked each other. We weren’t in some kind of crisis.

But I remember one night sitting across from her and realizing we hadn’t had a real conversation, the kind that goes somewhere, in longer than either of us wanted to admit. We had direction. We had interaction. We even had connection, in the sense that we genuinely enjoyed each other. What we didn’t have, at least not consistently, was intention.

This is where most families get stuck, and I don’t think it’s talked about enough. You can have direction, interaction, and even genuine moments of connection, and still not arrive at real engagement. Because the thing that turns connection into engagement is intention.

Intentionality is the choice to go deeper, even when it’s uncomfortable. Instead of letting the relationship run on autopilot, you make an active choice to connect on a level below the surface. It’s the difference between a marriage, or a family, that’s coasting on goodwill, and one that’s actually being built.

In my own house, the bigger space we moved into years ago was a lesson in exactly this. The extra square footage wasn’t really the problem. It was just revealing something that needed to be named. Sara and I had to become more intentional about not drifting to our own corners of a house that made it easy to live parallel lives. Conversations that go somewhere, questions that actually mean something, take more effort and more intention than they used to.

Here’s what I think is worth sitting with. You can stumble into direction. Interaction can happen by accident. Connection can even sneak up on you if you’re paying attention. But you cannot stumble into engagement. Somebody has to decide. And in a family, that someone is usually a parent, or in a marriage, it has to be one of you willing to go first.

I actually think this is also the gospel moment inside this whole framework, if you’ll let me take it there for a second. We were the ones moving away from God. He was the one who called us to turn, which is direction. He made himself known, which is interaction. He entered our world in the person of Jesus, which is connection. But at some point, there’s a decision required. Intention is where we surrender to what God is doing rather than just observing it from a safe distance. He didn’t leave it to accident, and neither can we.

So here’s where to start this week. Schedule a one-on-one date with each of your kids before the month is over. Put it on the calendar right now, before you close this tab. You don’t need to know yet what you’ll be doing together. Just telling them “I want to spend time with you” will land harder than you expect.

Pick one regular moment in your week and turn it into a standing conversation time. Same time, every week, protected on the calendar like anything else that matters to you.

And ask your spouse or your kid a version of this question: is there anything going on that I don’t know about? Then create enough silence afterward that they might actually answer it.

Intention isn’t complicated. It just requires someone to decide. Let that someone be you, today, before the moment passes and the house goes quiet again.

This is the fourth of five posts on the steps that move a family from existing to engaged. Next week, we’ll land on what it actually looks like when a family finally gets there.