Tick-tock, Tick-tock
During my military career, I was stationed in Washington, D.C., which is well known for its horrendous traffic, especially during morning and evening rush hours. Fortunately, I worked and lived in central D.C and I only had to travel five or ten minutes to and from work. However, most of my fellow-workers spent one to two hours commuting to and from their jobs. In a twenty-five-year career, that means they will have expended at least 780 sixteen-hour days wasted in traffic. Unfortunately, that is the reality for many who live and work in our larger metropolitan areas.
Whether you spend hours commuting every day, or work at home, you will have limited time to expend in your lifetime. As I grow older, I have come to treasure my time, and appreciate each day with its opportunities to serve God, and to love my wife, family, and friends. My former twenty-eight-year career as a Naval Officer and my ten years of work as a project manager seem so insignificant and distant now. For those of you, the vast majority, I know life has gotten busier and busier, but it is that busyness, if not handled properly, that will damage what is most important in your life, namely relationships.
To be frank, our culture and our lifestyle in the twenty-first century have gotten ridiculous. Not only do we work harder and longer, we now stuff so much into our lives and our loved one’s lives that it almost leaves us no time to breath, much less relate. We need to wake up and realize how important the gift of time is and trim out of our lives that which is not really important
I have come to see that the most important assignment that God has given me is to give my all to be the best husband I can be. If you read my book, or honestly search the Scriptures, you will see why your spouse requires you to demonstrate continuously that they are much more important than all else. There are two basic ways you can demonstrate that, one by cutting back significantly on time-consuming activities that do not enhance your role as spouse or parent, and by putting your spouse and children ahead of yourself.
As an illustration, let’s discuss briefly the time spent on social media. According to Social Media Today, “Astonishingly, the average person will spend nearly two hours (approximately 116 minutes) on social media every day, which translates to a total of 5 years and 4 months spent over a lifetime.”
I don’t have a problem with social media, as obviously you’re reading this on the internet. My hope is that it is worthwhile and “shows a profit” in your life. But there is a lack of reality, escapism and sense of inferiority that flow electronically back and forth weaving in and out of our lives.
If you have one hundred or two hundred friends, are they really friends? Do they really know you, are you posting all the bad things you do in your life, or are you sharing only those things that make you look good and more important? Don’t stop entirely but try to not only limit the time you spend on social media, but while there, be truthful, and try to uplift those that you are communicating with. Make your time be truly worthwhile, but limit time so you have lots of time to grow your relationship with your husband or wife.
One of the exercises I have in The Fulfilled Marriage: The Three Doors is to stop reading and just look at your watch or timer on your cell phone for one minute, nothing else. Do that now!
That moment you just expended will never come back, and all the opportunities we miss because we spend our time doing the non-essential “things” instead of the so important loving things that we should be doing, adds nothing to our lives nor the lives of our loved ones.
Take your valuable time, and honestly evaluate what changes you need to make!
Love you all, Ted
