Organizational Differences

“What is this? This does not make sense at all.” said Jeremy, a few days ago while looking at some notes I made for him.

“Why doesn’t it make sense? Everything is right there in order for you.”

“This is not how I would have done it at all,” he said.

The above is a common conversation these days. Either Jeremy telling me something doesn’t make sense or I’m telling him that is not how I would do it.

In working so close together, we are learning even more how the other person thinks.

And, yeah, we think pretty differently.

Our processes and organizational tendencies are way different.

For the most part, we just laugh.

Laugh because we really do think in completely different ways.

Laugh because we’ve known this our entire married lives and have found ways to work together perfectly in ministry so far.

But now, we are learning a new way of life and living a totally new reality and so we are re-learning how to work together.

One afternoon, while traveling, Jeremy handed me his phone and said, “Here, I need you to fill in our trip information.”

He has an app that keeps track of gas mileage and other car related stuff. And, when we are driving, we hand off our phones and give directions to the passenger.

I filled it in and handed back his phone.

Later, when he went back in to his app, I heard, “What is this?”

“I filled in your trip information.”

“No, you made a note. Oh, nevermind.”

I thought what I wrote in the app was perfectly organized.

He did not think so.

He had to fix it.

We just shake our heads sometimes.

Another day, I was driving and needed him to text something to someone.

He did and then handed me back my phone.

I glanced at what he wrote and I said, “That sounds mean!”

“No it doesn’t. I just wrote what you said.”

“But you didn’t put a smiley face so they knew I was happy about it!” I told him.

“I don’t type smiley faces,” was the answer he gave me.

I said, “Well, when you are texting for me, you add smileys.”

You can all imagine what happened the next time he sent a text message for me.

Plenty of faces.

🙂
What organizational differences do you have with your spouse?