Help
With Your Rule
Balancing Work Time / Personal Time / Husband Time?
Dear Holly
How do you balance work time / personal time / husband time? I am a homeschooling mother who also works from home. I find that in the evening hours when the children are sleeping, I sometimes feel pulled in a number of different directions. Of course my husband wants my attention and we do have precious little 'grown up time' together. But then there's the problem of my needing to get work done during those hours, as well as my very real need for time to myself. I feel like I might have some free time during the day, but when the kids are in bed, then I have 'real' free time, and there's a huge demand and not enough hours. I have somewhat solved this by scheduling certain evenings for work and others for my husband, but I still feeling pulled in too many directions during this time. I was interested in what you and other mothers might have to offer here.
Labels: 5th P Provider, About a Rule of Life
posted by Holly at 1:13 PM
2 Comments:
Before I began my Mother's Rule, I was overwhelmed with what I called my 3 full-time jobs: mothering, housework and homeschooling. You have an additional one: work. No wonder you feel pulled in many directions at once.
While you will have to discern for yourself what you are called to do, I will share with you 2 things I learned. First, I learned that my vocation, my very calling from God, had a series of priorities, in a hierarchical order, which he expected me to fulfill. There are the 5 Ps talked about in MROL. I worked my way through them in order, and implemented my rule based on them. Prayer, personal needs, husband and children all came before housework, other work, and volunteer work.
Secondly, I was almost forced to 'turn my heart to my vocation' in that, by the time I fulfilled all my responsibilities, I had precious little time for doing other things. Quite frankly, I had a lot of projects and employment ideas that I really wanted to work on, but with my other responsibilities, I couldn't find the time, reasonably, to do this. I took this as an indication of God's Will for me that I was to omit the extra work, or at least have it confined to a certain time frame.
This situation rose it's head again this month when I began my website, and was planning to get into writing a bit more for some magazines. After about three weeks of feeling really frenzied, I realized that I was putting in an extra 2-3 hours a day on computer when I hadn't altered my rule to accomodate it. So I sat down and went through my 5 Ps again, figuring I could squeeze those 3 hours a day in somewhere.
But this time, I couldn't! I was a bit surprised. At most, I could only add one and a half hours a day on website and writing, while still maintaining my other priorities. Hhmmm. "We sure could use that money!" I groaned about it. But I took it as an indication of where God wanted me to spend my time. Once again, as I had done before, I had to let these things go -- to focus on where I believe God is leading me - my home.
Your situation might be different, so I would encourage you to go through the 5 Ps again , in order, from your perspective and circumstances, and discern what God Himself is calling you to. If he wants you to do all you are doing, He will show you where you can fit it in.
But if you can't 'fit it all in' and still find yourself scattered and pulled in all directions, He might be calling you to drop something. Only you and God and your husband can discern this.
A couple of years later now, I can suggest as well that you look at re-assigning home tasks and spreading them out more... Do what only YOU can do, have the children take on more of what THEY can do, and give yourself some room. At this point, my children, ages 7-15 do all the dishes, kitchen cleaning, home cleaning and fix most of the meals so that I can attend to teaching my homeschool, dealing with the finances and home management, and doing my work re: working with mothers, writing and speaking and earning needed income for growing mouths to feed.
The secret has been delegation of common tasks to the growing children who need to learn these things, so my time is available more for the relationships in the family than the basic maintenance chores.
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