A Year of Stewardship – Time
What the Lord is putting on my heart this year.
Read the Introduction here.
Time. We all have the same amount. 24 hours in a day. 8 of them taken up at work. If you’re lucky another 8 sleeping. That supposedly leaves the last 8 hours of a day at your personal disposal. Except that science is now showing that women need 9 to 10 hours of sleep a night, and an extra hour when they are on their cycle. So drop those 8 free hours down to 6.
Now, in those 6 free hours you need to: make dinner, tidy the house, play with your kid, have meaningful conversation with your husband, get the unwilling child into bed (preferably on time), and also don’t forget to read books and make time for your own hobbies and personal enjoyments. Did I forget anything? Oh yeah, exercise. Two to three times a week lifting weights and at least 30 minutes walking every day. Oh, and don’t forget to rest. Yeah right.
If I sound cynical, maybe it’s because I am a little. Just being honest. I get very frustrated with the amount of stuff to do and the amount of time I have to do it. Sometimes; if I’m being truly honest, most of the time most of those things don’t get done. The house is not tidied every night, dishes pile up in the sink, and I read a grand total of 3 books last year.
On a positive note, most of this is because I am prioritizing the things that are more important to me; like spending time with my husband and son, and I do go to exercise classes twice a week. Add to that one evening spent at Bible study and another for choir practice, and that leaves exactly one weeknight free to spend at home.
Now, lest you think I am just here to complain about time, I have considered solutions.
I started with paying more attention to how I used the free time I have. It is unfortunately very easy to just be tired after work and do the bare minimum. Cook dinner, then veg out in front of the TV until it’s time to put the kid to bed. Then veg out some more once he’s asleep or doom scroll until 11:30. There is a saying that is very appropriate here, and I don’t know where it originated or I would give credit.
The first step in finding a solution is admitting you have a problem.
Unknown
A little cliche? Yeah, I know.
I don’t want to be that person. That is not the family culture I want us to have. I want to be the family that gathers at the table for meals. No screens. Just each other, and maybe a candle. I want to be the family that plays games and has fun together. That celebrates holidays with meaningful traditions and invites others along.
One of the books I read recently talked about time (chronos), and how God moves in it to create and sanctify it into kairos, sacred time. Not time wasted, but time treasured and managed for the glory of God. I mentioned in the Introduction that I truly felt Stewardship was my focus for this year. The phrase that went along with it that I also felt was meaningful during this season was “Soli Deo Gloria”. For God’s glory alone. How can I know that I will stand before him one day to give an account of my deeds, and still continue down this slothful path? What will I say? “But Lord, I was tired”? I don’t want to give that answer. And through His grace, for His glory, I will do better.
The Foes
Public Enemy Number One? The phone. It’s a black hole that offers enticing dopamine rushes. You really don’t realize how addicted you are to it (social media) until you try and take a break. Last year for our church fast, I fasted from social media for a week. It amazed me how often I reached for it, just to check Instagram or browse Pinterest. Even now, those two apps are my biggest time suckers when it comes to time spent (wasted).
Public Enemy Number Two? The TV. This one is hard, because there are so many movies and shows I enjoy and I enjoy watching them together with my loved ones. But when it gets to the point where it has to be on, when silence is not an option… that’s too far. And it’s not just movies! It’s YouTube videos! It’s episodes from a myriad of streaming services with endless options and still somehow there is nothing good to watch.
Recently I was talking with my husband about these and I likened it to sipping from a cup you know is poisoned, but you can’t stop yourself from sipping more anyway.
The Plan
I don’t have a 100% concrete plan for this. I have started implementing a no screens, sit at the table for dinner habit. So far it’s going well. I would honestly like to try expanding it to no screens from dinner until bedtime. That would help with the blue light sleep disruption, allow for more conversation, book reading, or heck, even time for a hobby or two. My exception to this would possibly be a Friday night family movie night that we could make a fun and special tradition.
Another concept I am toying with is going to the early morning exercise classes instead of the evening ones. This might not work out because the last time I tried a morning class, I was totally exhausted and wiped out the rest of the day. But I’ve grown a lot since then so maybe not. The biggest obstacle with this idea is that the classes are at 5 am. YUCK! (I am a super night owl, can you tell?) If I decide to try, I will wait until later spring/early summer when it gets light really early and see if I can make it work. I don’t have high hopes but it would free up a lot of time in my evenings so I feel like I should at least try.
Another consideration is that my son will be starting school this fall. We have already discussed that we need to set up a morning routine over the summer before he starts. That will give us an opportunity in the morning to connect together before we all head to our daily tasks.
Daily Rhythms
This is a great place to talk about rhythms. I like rhythms intellectually because they do seem to make great sense. It’s basically a stack of habits you’ve built so you don’t have to think about them anymore. For example: you wake up, go to the bathroom, splash cold water on your face, stumble into the kitchen and make a cup of tea. That is a morning rhythm. It isn’t tied to an exact time, it’s a set of behaviors that is followed one after another without needing complex thought to do. It becomes auto-pilot. Implementing them, however, is another story. I can like something intellectually all I like but getting myself to cooperate with the idea is rather difficult.
My ideal rhythm for the morning would look like:
- Wake up
- Get dressed in workout clothes
- Go to exercise class
- Go home
- Quick rinse in shower
- Make a cup of tea
- Sit down for Bible reading & prayer
- Spend some time writing
- Wake family up
- Eat breakfast together
- Family devotional time
- Get ready for work/school
- Head out the door
Like I mentioned above, unfortunately if I want to start attending morning workout classes I will need to get up by 4:45 a.m. and that is a disgusting thought. We’ll see how it goes however. The thought of going to exercise classes at all was a disgusting thought two years ago, and now I don’t want to miss them. How times change.
My Goals
Ultimately, what you love, what you spend your time doing, is what you worship. So we must learn to worship well, taking care how we spend our time and where we direct our love and desire.
Sacred Seasons by Danielle Hitchens
If I took an honest look at my life right now, I would hate to say that surfing the net is where most of my free time is spent currently. As such, that means I worship it. That is utterly unacceptable.
The fact that I woke up this morning is a gift and the day shouldn’t be wasted on fruitless things. Not that you can’t take time to rest, but I have a tendency to let rest turn into laziness. That is not the family culture I want, and that’s not what I want my son to think is normal or look for in a future wife.
Therefore, my goals this year relating to stewarding my time are:
- Continue no-screen family dinners at the table
- No Instagram or Pinterest after dinner
- Spend intentional time resting. For me, this might look like reserving Sundays for rest and family time as much as possible.
More may become clearer as the year progresses, but I feel like that is a decent starting place.
Next time I will be diving into health. I can’t wait to share it with you. 🙂
Soli Deo Gloria
