Legacy

Your spouse’s dreams may be a key to your halftime calling

Lloyd Reeb is a hard-driving, goal-oriented person. But he hit a point in the mid-1990s where closing the next deal and cutting another ribbon just didn’t have the same appeal. He began to ask himself, “Is there more to life than this?” He knew he needed a break, a “halftime” to refocus and make a game plan for the second half of his life.

By Lloyd Reeb, Halftime

My second half has actually included some of the same activities I had been doing in my first half, like real estate development. But they are a much smaller part of my life. My focus in the second half is centered on pouring into others – through coaching and speaking, but also in my marriage.

Here’s an important discovery I’ve made: If you’re married and want to have the most impact-filled and sustainable second half, a key step must be discovering your spouse’s dreams and passions and thinking about how to get behind them.

What does this look like exactly? Well, it can look different for different people. I’ll share how this played out in my own life and for another halftimer, Adam Laubach, whom I recently caught up with. Adam is making a big move for God’s kingdom after getting behind his wife’s calling.

For me, it started with some intentional conversations with Linda about what her passions were and how I could come alongside her, encourage her to dream, and make those dreams a reality. It required me to be more humble, intentional, and to listen more. I had to learn that my second half wasn’t all about me. But what joy it has brought our entire family to see Linda come alive in new ways as she ministers in her area of passion – mentoring young moms.

Just a few weeks go, I had the joy of reconnecting with Adam Laubach, a halftimer I coached several years ago. Adam is beginning an exciting new chapter, living out a big “Yes!” to God’s call for his family. Adam is a “serial entrepreneur,” with much of his career spent bringing cutting-edge material-science technology out of the lab and into the market to make an impact on the world around us, mostly through innovative medical devices. He spent the first decade of his career at Dow Chemical doing technology development and commercialization, and then received his MBA from the University of Texas. He spun a venture-capital-funded start-up out of Dow and then went on to lead multiple technology companies around the world in the capacities of CTO and CEO.

While leading “hot” technology companies bent on improving life was exhilarating, and expat life was interesting, “leaving it all on the field” every day took a toll on his relationship with his wife, Tricia, and in fact on the entire family.

In 2009, Adam and Tricia had a watershed moment in Switzerland when they realized something needed to change. “Here I was at 40 years old living in a waterfront home on Lake Zurich, driving a Porsche, running a well-funded VC technology company with a beautiful wife and four amazing children…from the outside, everything looked great. But our faith was not solid, and our marriage was falling apart,” Adam recalls.

Read the full story at the Halftime Institute. 
Up Next

The more you know, the greater the impact of your giving

Read Now
Editor's note: Stories appearing on NCF's website from third-party contributors are intended for informational purposes only, and we do not endorse or approve the content, services, products, or theological teachings they contain. Any questions or concerns may be directed to the original publisher of such third-party content.

Sign up for our
Saturday 7 email digest

Join close to 50,000 subscribers who receive our email digest of
the week's top stories from ncfgiving.com. We call it Saturday 7.

Read our privacy policy

×