Wow. Just… wow. This summer I was quite busy with trips to here, there and yonder. I was busy with school, vacation, family and the church, and moving in several different directions at once. Busy. So very busy that I have failed to keep up with my blog since the July 18 posting below. Yikes! But… but… I was busy.
“Busy” is one of those bothersome words- one of those words that is used far too easily as an excuse, and becomes our justification for not doing the very things which we know we should be doing. “How have you been doing?” the question that moves in tandem with questions about someone’s absence, is often met with the reply, “Oh, I’ve been so busy with ________ (insert event/activity here).”
Even though being “busy” is a pet peeve of mine, you see here that I still managed to explain away my bloglessness with my being “busy.” But I HAVE been… busy… ya know. Truth is that we are all pretty… busy… going and coming, doing and being, and before you know it, you look up and realize that you have “busied” yourself into a corner.
All the “doing” we do has a purpose. Yes? But when we fill up our lives on too much busy-ness, we are setting ourselves up to miss out on the reasons that we first chose to be “busy”. For instance, soccer mom takes the kids to practice after school, 2 days a week. The reason the kids are in soccer are because they enjoy the sport. Mom and dad want to support the kids in their enjoyment of soccer. But the kids also want to be in Scouts, dance, and the band, so the schedules are created, and the routes are driven daily. Following the after-school activities is home and homework, chores, and maybe even a family meal together… maybe.
What many families end up confessing is that in the midst of all that activity, they find that at the end of the week, they have spend a quantity of time together, in transit from one activity to another, but no quality time actually talking to each other. The things that they have loaded their calendars with are the very things that are preventing them from having face to face time with each other.
This doesn’t even take into account of the weariness and then guilt that parents feel because their own duties at home don’t begin till late at night. When do you work on your own projects or do the bills or care for the house? Something is defiantly going to suffer from lack of time and energy.
Reading back over this, it could sound as though I am urging people to refrain from sports or band rehearsals. Not so. There is no magic formula for how to raise a family or how to budget your time, energy and money. But I believe that it is so important to be purposeful in taking on that “one more thing” into your schedule. Perhaps we need to schedule in things like “spend 2 hours with Susie after school”, “play Guitar Hero with Bobby”, “take Annie to restaurant of her choice, just to chat” and so on. My daughter was a busy (there it is again) kid who loved being involved with church, school and friends, but to this day, we will both tell you that some of our favorite times were spend cuddled up on the couch on a lazy Saturday, reading aloud to each other for hours, and the long talks about important things and even the “nothing” things.
So just be intentional with creating time with those you say are important to you. Those moments are so precious. I’m going to have to schedule a trip with my daughter this week. I’d have called her earlier, but I’ve been so busy…. oops.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment