prioritization

This week, Matt spent a few days at a staff retreat. At one of my favorite places on earth. With strict orders to rest.

This week, I wrangled kids and treated patients. And rest was not a priority on my schedule.

Matt came back yesterday, and today I peaced. out.

And so, here I sit at Starbucks as I avoid catching up on two weeks of grocery shopping. So I shall blog.

Life lately has been a constant balancing act in our house. Balancing between work and family and school and kids and rest. Sometimes, we get it right. All too often, we have failed miserably. We constantly pile countless other responsibilities on our already overloaded calenders before we consider the need to nurture our marriage. Because we’ll always be there for each other, right? Dangerous territory, I know, but I am convinced that we’re not alone.

Right now, Matt and I are holding our breaths until he finishes up with seminary in December. At this point, that seems to be the light at the end of the tunnel. But you know, we did this same thing when I was finishing up grad school. We thought we would reach the promised land on my graduation day. But as Matt was reminded by a wise friend this week on his retreat, there will always be something to compete for our time and attention.

While we stumble through this dance of marriage and parenting and adoption and ministry and eduction and careers, it becomes blatantly obvious that we need to be way more intentional about carefully prioritizing our lives. This recent “we can’t even pinpoint a slot on our calenders to schedule a date night” phenomenon is ridiculous, embarrassing, and flat out wrong. Especially realizing that, school or no school, we will always be balancing a certain level of busyness, we really must continue to reevaluate our schedules.

The staff of our church were encouraged this week to make a “stop doing” list. In other words, they were urged to jot down commitments- even those that might be very positive in nature- that they would completely remove from their schedules as to make time for more important priorities (i.e. their families). I think this would be an excellent exercise for all of us, especially those of us who love a good list. I think I will call mine an un-do list.

One slight problem, though… I can’t seem to think of anything to add to my un-do list. My type A brain stubbornly refuses to believe that anything can be cut out of my daily schedule. As they say, old habits really do die hard. I never claimed to be a finished product, y’all.