How do you balance family time, time alone with your wife, and time alone with God when work seems to take priority in your life?
My priorities:
1- God
2- wife
3- kids
4- work
5- me
On paper they're in the right order. In life it is backwards. I can't seem to balance this. My job always comes before anything. Not by choice. My family suffers, and I suffer, because WORK consumes me.
Can anyone else relate?
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"If I could just get Obama to hold my glendale for me..."
Here are some things I do to get more family time.
1. Start each day with prayer with your family or at least your wife.
2.Keep TV to the minimum.
3. Make dinners special. I do alot of the cooking. I often cut a rose from our garden and place it in the middle.
My wife likes to be left alone so I'm kind of blessed. She reads a novel a week and loves it when i hunt so she can have time for herself.
4. OH...we also go to beds early and wake up at5:00 AM this gives us a whole hour to discuss. I usually cook a big breakfast and we drink tea or coffee until 6:00 when the oters wake up.
5.. The big blessing. We work at the same place. We are both teachers so we eat together and take all our breaks together.
I can totally relate. I work 12 hour shifts in the middle of the night. I work anywhere from 4 to 6 days a week. Yeah, I make more money this way, but most of the time I would gladly give it up if I could afford it. Chuck is right on with the TV and dinner time. Sometimes I make the TV time special with my kids. A short video, or playing there favorite video games, or better yet, a board game for everyone. I noticed that the kids prefer to have family time everynight, than TV. Who woulda thought! The other thing I noticed made a big difference is dinner time. At the table, all together, talk about fun things, God, the Bible, whatever. Leave your adult life out of conversations that your kids will hear. As for alone time with your wife, well, God blessed you with children, alone time might come infrequently, or at great cost. I give up tons of sleep to spend time with my wife. We set aside time to play cards when the kids go to bed, or just sit and talk, watch a movie, whatever.
One more thing, outside of work, don't prioritize your life. I used to, and I always felt like I was failing. God, family, wife, all weigh in at 100% for me. Work is just a means to an end for me. A way to support the family. When I'm off duty, I'm all about God and Family. "Me time" is not an option or concern. When we were young, we went out and did stuff couples do, but after children that all changed. Yes, we went through a transition period where we missed it, but now we prefer to be with family.
Talk to your wife aboutit, and I'm sure you'll come up with a way to incorporate everything into your time off. I know how you feel, I've been there. I'm still kinda there with the hours I work, but I'm dealing with it much better now.Good luck, God bless.
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While you rest, someone, somewhere, is training. When you meet, you will lose.
I have to confess, this could be my greatest weakness as a christian. I have a good job, with very hectic hours. Certain times of the year, I'm called upon to put in a ton of hours. Right now, I'm looking at a stretch of two weeks where I'll be working 16 hours a day, 5-7 days a week, and the days I don't put in 16 hours,I still have to work at least 8. I have to balance my physical needs...sleep andalone time with my wife, with work and quality time with my 3 children. My wife and I haven't had a date without at least one of our kids in about 10 months or so. We believe that, right now at least, I have to continue to keep the hours I keep, to provide my wife the opportunity to stay at home and raise our children.
I guess, I know with my logical mind that this is the best optionfor my children, but my heart tells me I'm missing lots of important time with them too. To balance this somewhat, we spend time working around our property. Cleaning up brush, fixing fence,raking leaves....typical home stuff. However, we make it fun for the kids. Try this the next time you're raking leaves...make a big pile and before you actually burn them or bag them....JUMP in them! My kids love it! We take time while fixing fence to investigate fuzzy caterpillars, pretty flowers, bigacorns, unusual rocks,turtles ( I believe God made turtles for small children), frogs, snakes, etc. We all love to go fishing. Before I had children,I preferred to fish with my buddies.....now my family are my fishing buddies. I've been completely blessed by the Lord with a great family and a good job. I don't deserve all the blessings I have,but I'm thankful for them just the same.
GH
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I love animals.......they' re delicious!
Everyone eventually has a wake up call from God as to thier priorities in life, mine came about 6 or 7 years ago.
I was beyond dedicated to my job, I had not hunted in quite a few years due to work and except for vacation spent little time dedicated to God or my family. The wife and I had been going through some personal issues and work was really stressing me out also. Well things seemed to have come to a head both at home and work, I was beyond upset, I felt I was on the verge of loosing it!
Well my chest started to get real tight and hurt pretty darn bad, then I had pain shooting down my left arm!!! I told my wife to call 911 because I was having a heart attack. Long story short, I was very lucky (BLESSED), it turned out it was not a heart attack but instead was the main artery supplying blood to my heart had gone into a spasm, I had no damage to my heart nor any heart disease.
This woke me up, I realized I was not immortal and needed to get my life in order! Due to this God comes first, family next, friends next, then me, then work! I am a much happer man.
Brother do not wait for a wake up call, pretend like what I went through happened to you and adjust your life accordingly.
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The Tazman aka Martin Price
Proud father of a Devil Dog
Elgallo, Grasshopper, Taz and Chuck,
Sounds like you guys know where I'm coming from.
Chuck7, brother you got it goin' on! How blessed you are! Get to work with your wife, how awesaome is that!
Grasshopper-- I work like I do so my wife can stay at home and raise our children too. We are a dying breed these days. I admire the fact you guys are doing that.
Taz- I hear ya man. My problem is I get all wound up at work and stressed then get home after a long day and I'm in a bad mood and it reflects in the way I respond to my family. I can't stand the fact that when I leave for work the kids are sleeping, and when I get home usually they're getting ready for bed! I might not recognize my kids in the daylight or in anything other than pajamas!!
Elgallo-- We have started the boardgame idea with my oldest 2 when the baby is down for the night.You're exactly right-- they prefer that time together over the boob tube anytime. It's a fun time for all of us actually. You would not believe how competetive my 6 yr old is!!
We can sometimes squeeze 1 game in before bedtime some nights. Just seems like they're growing up without me.
I appreciate all of your replies. There is a lot of wisdom in this site.
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"If I could just get Obama to hold my glendale for me..."
Abe,
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. My wife home schooled our kids until they graduated. After that she got a teaching degree.. Last year we were praying thatmy principalwould hire her.About 2 days latermy Christian principal told me God told her to hire my wife in a dream. However; there was no openings. 2 months later God made a way thus... she is working with me. God is wonderful.
Chuck7
Aw c'mon, the rut is happening here right now and I took 3 weeks off work exclusively for hunting!
I am spending a lot of time hunting these days - beginning next week I'll be doing dark to dark stints in various trees. It's paying off though - I added 3 more to my freezer this week in 4 days. The big bucks are now targetted.
Back to the question . . .
When my children were much younger, we used to have a family Bible study time right after dinner each night. I would read a passage and then ask questions followed by discussion. My wife and I have also had Bible studies with just she and I reading and praying together. These days, the kids are older --2 in college and one 14 going on 20! With the family involved in so many other activities, it's rare when we're all in the house at the same time and organizing anything with everyone there is difficult unless it's a special holiday or one of us is having a birthday--and then there's my sons' girlfriends' families to consider too!
My job has me at work all night when I'm on duty and I also teach PT classes at the academy.
It's hectic at times, but we all respect each others responsibilities and have a pretty good family relationship. Four of us make it to church together each week -except my oldest son who usually is at work then.
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Today' s small bucks are tomorrow' s trophies.
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Can anybody relate?
Ti-Chi ?
