Is Your Family Too Busy?

One bag for soccer, one bag for baseball. Another bag for swimming, then there’s karate and gymnastics. Our closets and our schedules are bursting. Many families are faced with a unique problem in human history: too much of a good thing. In a society that offers so many genuinely good things for us to do, how do we filter out the good from the vital and keep ourselves from becoming overwhelmed by our schedules?

Our busy schedules can be driven by a number of things. Some find their value in their schedule. The more you’re accomplishing, the busier you are, the more valuable you feel. Some use busyness as a way to try and find value in the world. For some, our busyness is driven by the fear of not mattering much. We’re afraid that if we slow down for one second or opt out of any opportunity given to us, we’ll fall behind the rest of the world and miss out on something important. Here’s the problem with that: our fear of not mattering much can draw us away from what matters most. For some of us, busyness is simply a way to distract us from the sense that we’re not that valuable at all.

However you approach it, the results on our families are drastic: poor eating habits, less unscheduled play time for the kids, less quality time for the parents or family, all piled on the added stress of trying to make another meeting, practice, or game. It’s possible to do more things together and yet grow farther apart at the same time.

The deeper question behind the busyness is the issue of value. Where do you find your value? Do you find your value in your schedule? Do you manufacture a sense of value by how busy you are, how much you accomplish? Or do you find your value in God? Do you trust God enough to take your foot off the accelerator and allow God to fill in the gaps?

This issue is important enough to God that he devoted an inordinate amount of time speaking to this issue in the most conspicuous way. We’ll look at God’s solution in the next blog (Wednesday).

QUESTION: Have you ever allowed your fear of not mattering much to draw you away from what matters most?