Lynette Sowell wrote a great article which appears in the latest Christian Fiction Online Magazine about juggling our time. If you say yes to something (I’m paraphrasing here) that means you’re saying no to something else because, let’s face it, we all have the same 24 hours in a day. We can only do so much, even when we’re multi-tasking–something I find myself doing on most days.
If you scroll down to my previous blog posts you can see that I’ve said no to blogging for a good long while. My posts are sporadic over several months. I haven’t even looked–maybe even a year. The time away was time well spent, though. Like the Bible says, there is a season for everything, including blogging. 🙂
But we should never say no to our family, no to our children. I received a newsletter from a dear writing friend today, spotlighting her daughter’s graduation from college. The fact stunned me–it seemed like yesterday she was going off to college. The same is true for a number of my other friends, it’s true for me. My daughter will be entering her senior year of high school next year, then off to college, marriage, children–a life of her own.
How many years have I spent writing while she was here at home with me? How many times have I told her to go away because I was working? True, work has to get done, but I think perhaps the information highway (the Internet) has pulled many us away from the people around us for far too long–and that is wasted time.
I’m in the middle of polishing a book under contract right now. It’s not going as fast as I would like, but I decided months ago to shut down the computer in the evening as often as possible, and shut it off on the weekends completely, to focus one hundred percent of my time on my children who are growing up way too fast for comfort. On my husband whose hair is graying faster than mine (Thank God).
We’ve all heard the old saying that on your deathbed, you’re not going to wish you had worked more. Your only regret will be the time you wasted away from those you love.
Blessings!