Love is spelled T-I-M-E.

Chapter 4

I Was Often Too Busy

Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.

Ephesians 5:15–16 niv

Our mobile society has been described as a “rat race” or “traveling in the fast lane.” We are abuzz with activity. If we are not moving our bodies or our automobiles, we think we must be doing something wrong! When my husband and I were raising our children in the seventies and eighties, life wasn’t quite as hectic, but it was still easy to get too involved in activities and adventures.

A Busy Stay-at-Home Mom

I was a stay-at-home mom, but I was always a busy mom! I found that you do not have to work outside the home to live in the “fast lane.” Yet one day, while traveling at breakneck speed down life’s highway,I came to a screeching halt because of some wise words from a very wise woman—my mother.

Melanie was twenty-one months old at the time, and I was pregnant with our son. I was running from one activity to another. My projects and Bible studies were excellent, praiseworthy endeavors, and much of my other work was Christ oriented also. However, I was so busy trying to balance all those good things with being a good mother and wife that I was exhausted! (We all know about that Super Mom business!) Ironically, guess who was suffering the most—my family!

Amidst all this activity came Mother’s words:

“Sarah, those activities you are engaged in will be there to go back to; those children never will. They will grow up and be gone before you know it.”1

Her words stung! I knew my focus was not really on my children. In fact, it was everywhere else but at home. Something was not right. I realized that I must stop and do a major evaluation of my priorities. The Lord Jesus was first on my priority list, and my husband and my children came next—not my activities , projects, and committees. It was time to change my lifestyle accordingly.

A short time later when I was sharing my mother’s words with a dear friend, this friend told me about a lady she saw while visiting her aunt at a nearby nursing home. Nearly every week, just inside the front door of the retirement home, this elderly woman was seated in a wheelchair. Always perfectly groomed and attired in a beautiful outfit, she seemed to be waiting to go somewhere special. Sadly, this lady was not really going anywhere; she just thought she was. In her state of dementia, she believed she was young again, living the active life of her past.

After my friend shared that story, I asked myself a probing question: Will my children look back on their childhood and remember a mother who was always dressed up and going somewhere, doing ‘important’ work? That was not the way I wanted to be remembered. Nothing was more important than raising my children. I needed to make sure nothing interfered with that awesome task!

A Change in Plans

For several years, I did slow down, and my ­priorities were in the right order. When my second child was in kindergarten, however, God had to get my attention again. By this time I was a small-group leader in a citywide Bible study in Memphis. It was a wonderful study. I loved being a group leader. The fellowship was marvelous, but it required two mornings a week plus a day of calling the women in my group. It was taking a lot of my time and energy.

For some reason, I did not pray much before taking this leadership role for a third year. I just assumed this was still God’s plan for my life. (Mistake number one: don’t ever assume something is God’s plan for you—check it out with him first to be sure.) When August rolled around that year, I dutifully went to the first group leaders’ meeting being held at a church in midtown Memphis. As I sat in the chapel of that beautiful church, all of a sudden a feeling of uncertainty came over me.

Am I not supposed to be doing this? I asked myself. Is this not God’s plan for me for this year? I pondered. The longer I sat there, the more uncomfortable I became.I had no peace about being a group leader. I realized at that moment that I had not sought God’s face—I had not asked him if his plans for me included this Bible study assignment. As I sat there in misery, it dawned on me that this would be the last year my son would be in school for only a half day. He needed his mom’s full attention every afternoon. My mother’s words came back to me: Those activities will be there to go back to; those children never will. If I missed spending that time with Alan, I would never have the opportunity to make it up to him. I had not received God’s permission and had made a mistake. I knew then that I must correct it. There was a problem, however. In this particular study the guidelines were firm: if you accepted a responsibility, you were expected to fulfill your commitment for the entire year.

My heart was heavy. I was in agony. How could I tell our Bible study teacher what I knew God was telling me? As I prayed, I realized I must humble myself and call her. That afternoon I reluctantly telephoned her. When I explained what had happened, she agreed that I should not be a leader and graciously allowed me to get out of leadership. Immediately I was flooded with peace—the peace God gives you when you are in the center of his will. I would stay at home with Alan, seeking to give him the attention he needed. He was definitely a higher priority than my ministry.

I missed being with those ladies that year. I missed that ministry. But I shall never regret the time I spent with my son. I would not have missed that privilege for anything! That citywide Bible study and those other good things were there to go back to; my son was never in school for just a half day again. Until his graduation from high school, he was in school all day long every weekday except for holidays and summer vacations. That year had been a God-appointed time for both of us.

Taking Care of Our Boys

Children desperately need our time and attention as they grow up. Dr. James Dobson, noted child psychologist and Christian leader, stated this principle well in Bringing Up Boys: “Boys are like automobiles that need a driver at the steering wheel every moment of the journey, gently turning a half inch here and a quarter inch there. They will need this guidance for at least sixteen or eighteen years, or even longer. When left to their own devices, they tend to drift toward the center divider or into the ditch, toward misbehavior or danger. Yet 59 percent of today’s kids come home to an empty house. It is an invitation to mischief or disaster for rambunctious males, and the older they get, the more opportunities they have to get into trouble. Today, when the culture is in a tug-of-war with ­families for control of our children, we can’t afford to be casual about their care and training.”2

“God Doesn’t Push, He Leads”

I wish I could state that as my children grew older, I was never again too busy, but that would not be the truth. Those years were filled with bustling activity. If I had it to do over, I would not fill my life with so much “going” and “doing.” I would seek to lower my stress level for my own good and the good of my ­family. A friend of mine and fellow leader in our Bible study, Carolyn Campbell, once told me: “God doesn’t push, He leads. If you feel ‘pushed,’ it is not God.” What a timely admonition. I have since thoughtof her words of caution many times when I felt “pushed.” It was my desire to be led of the Lord, not to be pushed by my own or someone else’s agenda.

When asked what she thought was one of the biggest mistakes today’s mothers make, Ruth Ann VanderSteeg answered: “Selfishness in planning their lives around their plans rather than God’s purpose for them. Failing to realize that in all of life there are ­seasons, and raising children is a season of life.” Then she added: “The greatest opportunity I have ever had to please my Lord was raising my children to know and love him.”3 What a beautiful testimony!

An Evaluation

I cannot go back and live my life over, but I can advise mothers everywhere to periodically stop and evaluate their priorities, their activities, their schedule. Perhaps it would be beneficial to ask these questions: “Is the plan I am following during this season of my life God-ordained or self-ordained?” “Am I putting my family first or am I preoccupied with my own agenda or career?” “Am I allowing others (school and daycare) to raise my children?” “Am I permitting my children to be too busy with their activities?” “Have I consulted God before agreeing to do something, before accepting a position?”

Quality Time vs. Quantity Time

The age-old answer is often, “I am very busy, but I spend ‘quality time’ with my children.” Is quality time really enough? It was interesting to read what George Barna had to say about quality time in his book The Future of the American Family: “There is no research that supports the view that the quality of the time parents and their offspring spend together is an acceptable substitute for the quantity of time committed to that relationship. Most studies have indicated that the quality-time/quantity-time debate is ill founded; the issue is not truly an ‘either/or’ choice, but a ‘both/and’ proposition. The children that grow up best adjusted and happiest in life are those whose parents spent considerable amounts of quality time with them.”4

Statistics tell us that a century ago it was estimated that parents spent half their waking hours in activities which had to do with their children. In the late eighties, it was less than 20 percent.5 I wonder what percentage of their waking hours parents will spend with their children in the twenty-first century?

Listen again to the wise words of Dr. James Dobson: “The harried lifestyle that characterizes most Westerners leads not only to the isolation of people from each other in the wider community, it is also the primary reason for the breakdown of the family. Husbands and wives have no time for each other, and many of them hardly know their children. They don’t get together with relatives, friends, or neighbors because they are tyrannized by a never-ending ‘to do’ list. Repeatedly during my research in writing this book [Bringing Up Boys] . . . I came face-to-face with the same sad phenomenon. Parents were simply too distracted and exhausted to protect and care for their children.”6

We dare not live such harried, busy lives! This is most assuredly not God’s plan for the Christian family!

My counsel is to periodically

STOP,

LOOK,

and LISTEN!

Stop what you are doing long enough to take a look at your life. Then really listen to what God is saying to you through his Word. In Psalm 46:10 God declares: “Be still, and know that I am God” (niv). Stop for a while. Be still before God. In his daily devotional A Psalm in My Heart, Leroy Brownlow says: “This command [to be still] was not just for country folk who lived in a slow time and passive pace. Even today it is necessary to ‘be still’ to make progress.”7

WHO’S IN CHARGE?

You and I are not in charge. God is. He is the Potter; we are the clay. He calls us aside to reflect upon this fact. He admonishes us: “Be still, and know that I am God.” He calls us to stillness—to quietness and reflection so that we can know him better. Noted theologian John Phillips says: “We cannot know God if we are rushing here and there, with countless calls pulling us in various directions. We must learn to say an emphatic ‘no’ to some of the demands upon us. One of Satan’s traps is to get us so involved in activity that we have no time to be still in the presence of God.”8

This Scripture does not stop, however, with the admonition to “be still, and know that [he] is God.” Psalm 46:10 goes on to echo God’s resounding words: “I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth” (niv). God wants to be exalted through our lives—in our very lifestyles. His plan is for us to live God-directed, not self-directed, lives; God-honoring, not self-honoring, lives. He wants to be Lord of our lives!

Stop . . . Be still . . . Write out all that you are doing. Then listen to his voice. Ask for his divine directions. “A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps” (Prov. 16:9 nkjv). Pray about everything you believe you are to do. Evaluate your plans in the light of God’s Word. (If need be, for more objectivity, enlist a family member or close friend to aid you in this task.) Listen to what God is saying to you about each activity, position, or project. “The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord” (Prov. 16:1 nasb). In Psalm 32:8 we are given a wonderful promise from our heavenly Father: “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go” (niv).

Don’t get ahead of the Lord; it is not a safe place to travel. Get his instructions first, then proceed with caution. Stop, look, and listen to the Lord. It’s the only way to go!

If I had it to do over, I would not be so busy!