The Battle For Home

A couple of weeks ago I got "the look".

You know that look. It is that spine shuddering gaze that's somewhere in between "I'm so aggravated with you" and "I'm going to be disappointed in you until you are disappointed with yourself". The one your wife gives you when you do something stupid, but that's not funny. Yeah, that one.

What had happened was that it was Wednesday (one of the most hectic days of our week) and we were trying to eat a quick dinner before we took our daughter to her gymnastics class which would be followed by my high school small group. I told my wife that I had just gotten word of a funeral for a family member of one of our youth, that (I'm not making this up) started at 7:30 that night. What was more absurd than the time of the service was that I had told me wife I wanted to go...

And cue "the look"...

Now before I go on I will say that my wife was in no way a nag or in any way acting selfish, in fact she calmly gave me the option to do whatever I wanted. After weighing things though I decided it was best to come straight home after such a long day and help my wife put the kids to bed.

Of course this situation isn't unique to me, we all have been there...not spousal trouble, but over-commitment issues. It is easy to feel pressured (either by overbearing members of your congregation or your own desire to succeed) into adding one more thing to your "to do" list. The problem we find ourselves in is that we can't do everything and then we have to sacrifice our rest, time with family, even time with God in order to accommodate to the overcommitment monster.

It reminds me of a story from Doug Fields' book "What Matters Most (When NO is Better Than YES)" (which I highly recommend picking up) where he admitted in his younger days to being continually late to dinner for the sake of ministry. It took some choice words from his wife and some flying cutlery, but he realized that sometimes you have to turn down some "good" things to keep a healthy life.

For me, last Friday was packed to the seams and I had the opportunity to take a beautiful little girl to a Daddy Daughter Dance. I looked at all the "good" things that I could fill my time with and said to myself, "You can miss today's blog. There is always time for that tomorrow, but not this."

My encouragement to you today is to fight for those in your home instead of fighting to impress others. It's bad enough they have to share your attention with so many people, at least respect the time when it should be solely on them. Unless you like getting that look, which if you do I have news for you, "Your spouse is more likely to kill you than the stress of full time ministry".