Time Spent Well

My oldest daughter didn’t want to hang out with us. We were at a family retreat center at the Oregon Coast, and it literally pained her to spend the afternoon with us instead of the friends she’d waited all year to see. I felt for her, I really did. I know what it’s like to want to cast off the trappings of childhood and run headlong into the awesomeness that is adulthood; but I am just not ready for her to ditch us yet. Looking three years into the future when she can do the grown up stuff, I want nothing more than to spend every moment with her now making memories. Since that time, I have been thinking a lot about hopes, dreams, love, life, and how to spend time. What I’ve concluded is that time is a commodity. 

Do you ever wonder why people ask, “How do you spend your time?” Spend. How do you spend it, budget it, save it, waste it; it’s a commodity just like money.

With my children, I feel like the number on the clock is ticking down and I am just begging the Lord to give me wisdom with the time I have left to teach, encourage, admonish, and leg wrestle with them. Help me, Lord, I don’t want to squander time and end up with an impoverished relationship! Moses called out to the Lord on this very subject in Psalm 90:12, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” This begs the question: how do I want to spend time? 

Each month, my husband and I sit down and assign our money to specific categories; tithe, savings, food/house-hold, entertainment, etc. Sometimes the money runs out in one category, and  we have to borrow from another category to make sure we don’t run out. We don’t want to carry any debt, so we have to watch our spending very carefully! So what about budgeting time? Do I really need to spend that much time watching Downton Abbey (again), or should I go for a walk around the neighborhood with my family? Do I really need to join another club or ministry when I could invite my neighbors over for coffee and minister to them? 

When my volleyball-playing daughter wanted to do club sports, we had to tell her no. No, it doesn’t fit into the way we want to spend our time or money. When another daughter wanted a fancy-pants phone, we had to say no. No, it doesn’t fit into the way we want you to spend your time or the way we want to spend our money. 

No.

It’s important in this time-starved culture to budget our time with a focus on what’s important. For my family, I desire to be focused on a Christ-centered home that invests in relationships, service, family time, and work/school. I say desire because I am not the picture of someone who is doing it right. I have spent far too many hours staring at Facebook and Pinterest until my eyes go buggy. I have wasted far too many days letting my kids sit in front of the TV because it’s way easier than planning a craft or an outing or a game. So that makes me think again of what I really, really want for my family, my marriage, my children—as that clock keeps ticking down, what do I really want?

I want my kids to love Jesus. I want to use the gifts God gave me to bring him glory. I want to make my husband laugh.

We can get so caught up in thinking we have to do what everyone else is doing. I fell into that line of thinking with this club volleyball thing; all the other parents had their daughters in club volleyball except me. I can’t care about the future of my children. I must not care about scholarships, college, making varsity. 

“‘Teach us to number our days. Grant us “a heart of wisdom.’”

So what can we do to be wiser with our time? How can we add to or subtract from our time-budget without feeling like a failure or taking on too much?

Define Your Priorities

If the priority for your family, your marriage, your singleness is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, then all other things must take their lesser place. Volleyball or youth group? Book club or Bible study? Netflix marathon or inviting neighbors over for dinner. None of those choices are bad, but all of those things take up your time-resource and need to be prioritized.

One of my priorities is to create memories that my children will cherish. I see us 10 years from now sitting around a table and laughing about the time we did that one thing and that happened. How can we make those memories if our time is spent on house projects, traveling tournaments, and obsessive electronics consumption?

Make Hard Changes

Our house was too big, our yard was too big, and our mortgage was too big. That was the conclusion we came to when deciding what our family’s priorities ought to be. We spent far too many summer weekends pulling weeds and cleaning all the toilets instead of going to the lake for a picnic or hiking to that one waterfall. When my husband and I came to that conclusion, we decided to make the hard choice of putting our house on the market; you know, the house I spent the last five years turning into a farmhouse dream? My house can’t share memories with me when I am old, so it had to go. We chose smaller so our family memories and experiences could become bigger. What hard changes can you make? Do you have to let Joey do chess club, soccer, and band? Do you need to work two jobs to support your lifestyle? Do you really have to be at the gym five days a week? Why not three days instead?

Make Peace with Down Time

Our culture tells us that it is a badge of honor to be over-scheduled. Surely I am not the only woman who has one-upped the competition with an “Oh, you think you’re busy? Well I… .” I just don’t think this is what the Lord had in mind for us. He gave us a day of rest as well as the example of spending time with friends and family. All through the Gospels, Jesus was lounging at one dinner table or another while hanging out with friends. Was his life full of ministry and travel? You bet! It was also full of relationships and meaningful conversation and teachable moments. None of those things happen when we drive from one event to another, go to one meeting after another, watch a soccer game and then drive over to a chess tournament. Give yourself permission to have whole hours, evenings, and weekends without the demand of the schedule tugging at your elbow. Give yourself permission to say no to “one more thing.” Give yourself permission to subtract from your schedule rather than adding to it.

Then breathe.

Take some time to breathe.

My Grandma once told me, “Christina, life goes by in the blink of an eye. The days go by slow, but the years go by fast.” She is so right.

Psalm 103:15 says, “The life of mortals is like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.”

Time is short. Spend it well.

~ By Christina Jarvie