People often ask, “What’s it like working with your spouse?” My usual response is that working with my husband is easy; it’s living with my business partner that’s hard.  

We started out as independent of one another as any two married people can be. José was, and still is, a designer—100% creative. Combine that with his ‘Latin-ness’ and you have someone who, as he jokingly says, ‘lives from his heart.’ As much as he lives from his heart, I live from my mind—a true and complete linear thinker. Never would either of us have thought our professional lives would end up so intertwined—running a business together, a non-profit together, and of course, a family together.

How does the merging of our lives in so many ways affect the individual plans and dreams we had/have for our lives? We started out like all couples with grand dreams for the future. Each of our respective careers took off, with José eventually starting a design firm and me following my investment-banking path to Wall Street. All the while we were each becoming more engrossed in our work, and less in our marriage. Thankfully, circumstances changed, José’s firm grew and we wanted children, so I left the Street to work with José, and things have never been the same.

I thought I was most ‘myself’ working in investment banking; it turns out I’m most myself in partnership with my husband. When there is more work to do than time allows, and one of us has to put in extra hours, there’s no animosity; we both know exactly what has to be done in a specific time-frame, and we have grace with each other getting it all done. Conversely, when there isn’t enough work and we are concerned for our economic wellbeing, we’re in it together, submitting our plans to God and trusting Him to provide for us. Or when household tasks fall to the wayside, there is no blame placed, just mutual pitching in to get it all done.

There is also increased opportunity for rescue. Recently, when the Atlanta rains caused a portion of a ceiling in our house to fall in and our daughter came down with H1N1, only to be followed by our son having the same illness the following week, I was at the end of myself. I had not been to work in two weeks, and was not enjoying caring for my family when it seemed work ‘needed me.’ My husband, sensing my stress and fear, stepped up to the plate. He went back to work that evening and stayed until 4 a.m., giving us a jump on projects that helped ease my fears and allow me to focus on caring for our son. He was a modern day rescuer in my hectic world, and I was thankful for a husband that cared about his family and wanted his wife to be able to focus on her child, and I was thankful for a business partner that cared enough about our work to do what it took to get it all done.

This story wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the importance of prayer in our life together. Because we go to work together, we are able to sit in our office each morning and submit the day to God—for efficient and creative solutions to our projects, but more important, that He would be glorified in our relationships with our employees, clients and vendors. We rarely prayed together about work when we did not work together; now it is an integral part of our day.

We are no longer on two separate tracks—we are on one together, where every decision is made together, with an eye toward our future and God’s plan for us and our family. Only now are we seeing the beauty of a ‘greater collective dream.’