I Don’t Have Time For This

Probably the most common reason people give for not having a regular quiet time is, “I just don’t have time!” But, have you ever stopped to think about what you’re really saying when you give that excuse? You’re saying that you have filled your life with other activities and you’ve pushed out God. Each of us has the same amount of time. We all have 24 hours in our day.

How you spend your time is an indication of what really matters in your life.

“What we love to do we find time to do.” ~ John L. Spalding

Of course, there are seasons of life when others control how you spend your life to a large degree. If you are a mother to several small children, there are many legitimate demands on your time throughout the day. However, even in those times, you often have more control than you may think. You have control over whether and when they nap. You have control of when you get up in the morning and when you go to bed. You determine whether you take the time to establish a routine, or whether you just let the day happen…day after day.

If your children are older, and you still feel that others are controlling how you spend your time, you may need to stop, reevaluate, and take control. It is easy to become a slave to what others consider important.

One thing that has helped me is to understand the difference between urgent and not urgent; important and not important.

Urgent means something that needs to be done RIGHT NOW. For example, when your six day old baby needs to be fed, that’s urgent. A six day old baby must be fed often. However, it’s not as urgent that your six month old baby be fed the moment he cries. By that time, he is able to go longer between feedings. And, your six year old can wait an hour until dinner. He may just be bored instead of truly hungry. At any age, though, their cries of hunger smack of urgency.

Urgent tasks can be important, or not important. When your telephone rings, it is urgent. The telephone screams to be answered. However, the importance of the phone call is directly related to the person on the other end of the line. If it’s your sister calling to tell you she just had her baby, that’s pretty important. If it’s a telemarketer calling to tell you about the latest home equity loan you qualify for, that may not be as important.

Tasks that are not urgent are those things that don’t call out to us for our immediate attention. For example, quality time with God, or your husband, or your children. Non urgent tasks can be very important, but they don’t contain the urgency.

These things can become urgent when your marriage begins to fall apart, or your child is troubled. You should strive to take care of the non-urgent and important tasks before they become urgent.

Spend as much time as possible performing tasks that are important. These are the stuff that life is made of. If you spend the day performing tasks that are important, you have a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day that is worth all the hard work and planning.

Urgent Not Urgent Important Needs of small children Emergencies Quiet Time/Prayer Quality Time with Spouse/Child Exercise Learning a New Skill Journal Not Important Many Phone Calls Some E-mails TV Mindless computer surfing

I’d like to leave you with one last thought:

“The bad news is times flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.” ~ Michael Althsuler

Time is the currency of life and you can determine how you spend it.

God Bless You on Your Journey!