Are you driven? Do you work hard? Do you find yourself pushing yourself, your family, to hard? Did you forget to allow yourself time to breathe this week? If so, this blog post is for you.
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| Nancy Bates Photography |
It's 8am at the Bates house. It's Saturday. We're sitting at the breakfast table. Two minute into our conversation and the clash happens. If you're married, dating, or have lived longer than two minutes: you know the clash. The class is when two people have different expectations on how things will go. Could be a proposal at work, a school test, a date that went wrong. Our clash is regarding the day's events.
Here's my view: It's 8am. We have a premarital counseling session at 10:30am. I'm going to head to a coffee shop to get some writing done, fire off a bunch of emails, and make some phone calls. After counseling I'll head back to the office in Lake Oswego (30mins away) to prepare for the next week. I'll be home for dinner and night with the family. (Great, right?...no, not great.)
Here's Nancy's view: I've been gone all week. The house is a wreck. We have people coming to our home in a couple of hours (counseling session is at our home). She's had absolutely no alone time or solid family time lately. She's emotionally and energy-wise utterly drained. And I'm about to leaver her home alone again almost the entire day.
Awkward Breakfast
Needless to say, this makes for an awkward breakfast. It's evident as you look down our breakfast table something is wrong. Our energy screams tension. This are awesome breakfast's. You may have had a meal like this? Let's be honest, what happened here?
Excuses
I could tell you about the "next actions" task lists in my "things" folder. I could tell you of my incredibly busy schedule coming up next week. I could give you a long list off the top of my head about the people I need to connect with and important things I need to do...blah, blah, blah...excuses.
I should tell you about the 15-12 hour work days I've already put in this week. Between Wednesday and Friday alone I've worked almost a 35 hour work week. The problem is I'm about to keep going all the way through the weekend...more excuses.
Problem = No Planing
The problem is not the long hours. The problem is that I have not planned well. I have not given my family room to breathe during a busy week's schedule. I've pushed too hard. Great family time does not come easy. If we are not careful it can slip through our finger tips so quickly.
No Planing = Mocking
Jesus taught, "For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ (Luke 14:28-30)."
There is nothing more pitiful, humiliating, and painful than kids who grow up to reject their parents. What's commonly ironic is when kids grow up rejecting their parent like a knee jerk reaction, never quite realizing that it was their parents who first rejected them by not including them in their schedule.
What Are You Planning For?
This is true of so many things, but in moments like these I feel it for my family. What is your plan? What are you planning for?
I've learned that I can drag my wife through a long week. She is an incredibly gracious and forgiving woman. What I can't do: I can't ask of her the impossible. I cannot be absent from the home for almost an entire week and plan to throw another two days on top of it. If I do this I will end up with the very thing I've (unconsciously) planned for: a wife and family burnt out and bitter at not having a husband and dad present. Not planning is just as much of a plan as anything else.
Change
So I realize my sin. I head to the basement and answer emails with the speed and efficiently they were originally invented in the first place. I help clean the house and prepare to host our friends coming over to walk through a Biblical view of marriage (this is ironic, I know). Then in the afternoon instead of heading to the office we pause as a family to make homemade bread and read a good book.
Productivity Without Purpose = Pointless
If your like me, then productivity is high on your list of values. However, productivity without purpose is pointless. Too often our schedule's place family under our work, our hobbies, our passions. We think: I'll work hard to provide for my family, they'll be taken care of, and every will go well. No, this is not the way it works. Our spouses and kids deserve the best parts of our weeks, our days, our energy levels. Our productivity is not meant to be despite our families, but birthed out of our healthy families.
It's All Grace
It is God's grace that forgives us of our past and gives us the strength to begin again tomorrow.
"By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me." 1 Corinthians 15:10
AB.
*written by Abraham Bates - photos by Nancy Bates Photography - Copyright AbrahamBates.com
