Week 2 of Margin was a message that was both inspirational and very challenging. He asked us who wished they had more time and then pointed out that most of us probably wouldn’t spend that time resting. I began to remember the point in my life (somewhere during college) when my “time off” really became time that I would try to catch up on work I had missed. Long gone were the days from grade school when a day off meant seeing just how late I could sleep in or spending the day having fun with family and friends. Then, as I finished school and began to work for a nonprofit the demands of our grant from the State of Texas were high. I distinctly remember more than one Friday when I had worked well over 50 hours for the week and still had a long list of things to accomplish. I was left to choose between more time at the office that would shorten that list or go home to enjoy my family that I had seen very little of. When I was able to gain the perspective that there would always be more work (I would never be completely caught up) and that my daughter wasn’t getting any younger the choice was simple. I made the decision (even though it wasn’t always popular with my supervisors) that I would not allow my work to take more time away from my family than I had to.

Two challenges that Craig gave us were to make sure that we guard the time we have with the most important things such as our family time. This reminded me of a song by Brad Paisley called Time Well Wasted in which the singer speaks of how glad he is for the work he didn’t accomplish by spending his time elsewhere. Then Craig spoke of scheduling intentional times of rest and how taking rest as commanded by God blesses the rest of our time (the reason that Chick-Fil-A isn’t open on Sundays).

These were very challenging points for me and I hope that I can have plenty of time well wasted this week, and that I will allow some good things to go undone so that I will have time for the best things. How can you create margin in your schedule to have time for the most important things? What are those most important things?

Here are some links with ideas for families:
http://www.familieswithpurpose.com
http://familyfun.go.com/
http://www.allprodad.com/
http://www.imom.com/
http://www.familyfirst.net/
Feel free to comment your favorite resources!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 at 11:14 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.