Question: What are some ways to intentionally make time for each other when we are both so busy? I work two part-time jobs which have me working at least 6 days a week, and she has a job in which her hours vary week to week, but is also a full-time student. During the week, we often aren’t home together until 6:30 at night and with me working at 4:00 AM and her doing schoolwork, that doesn’t leave us with a whole lot of time in the evenings and has us tired by the weekends. It’s hard for us to take time together and go away for a weekend because I am working at the church and have to be there every Sunday. I don’t want us to get into a lull, but to continue to grow together.

    Remember the TV show Little House on the Prairie?  Evenings would find them sitting on their porch and talking about what really mattered in life.  That’s probably what made us enjoy the show – they had the time we wish we had. I once led a study by Tim Kimmel called “Little House on the Freeway”.  It compared the unhurried life of Little House on the Prairie to the hectic and hurried life we tend to live today.  The question then presents itself: what if our culture doesn’t make us hurried, but our submitting to the hurried lifestyle culture does?

   In her book 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, Laura Vanderkam points out that we all have the same one hundred and sixty-eight hours in our week.  Making time to do the important comes down to managing our time – in other words, our time is like money in that we have a certain amount of it and we get to choose where it goes.  With money, if we budget, we tell our money where to go. If we don’t budget, then our money tells us where to go. Time is no different.

    Something that may be hard to hear is that we often don’t tell ourselves the truth when it comes to our time.  Vanderkam points out that if a person says they work fifty hours a week, they are probably actually working closer to thirty-five hours a week.  We tend to mislead ourselves in where we spend our time.

    If we could see where we really spend our time, we could begin to make changes that will lead us down the path of having more of it.  The best tool that I’ve found is a worksheet with a place to write your activities every fifteen minutes. This worksheet can be found and downloaded at our blog, keepingthevows.com.  If you choose to utilize it, I think you will be surprised at how you spend your time. At the end of the day, if you are on Facebook for an hour but didn’t have time for devotions or prayer, that will be evident.

    I chart my time for a few days every few years just to see where I am.  The last time I did so I was working in a church. Here’s what my day looked like:

• 3 – 5:30 AM: Get up and work on administrative things (without interruptions, I can get a full day’s work done in this time!
• 5:30-7 AM: Go back to bed
• 7-9 AM: Eat breakfast, work out, shower, and have devotions with Kim
• 9 AM: Misc. things to do at home
• 10-12 PM:  Go to church, do my personal devotions, answer emails, phone calls, & texts
• 12-12:15 PM: Eat lunch
• 12:15-3 PM: Meetings, counseling, staff questions, etc.
• 3-3:20 PM: Go for a walk on the grounds or quickly climb a back stairway 10 times
• 3:20-5:30 PM: Staff meetings, counseling, mentor younger staff, work with my team of leaders. If I’m tired, I have a comfortable recliner and I pull the blinds and take a 15-minute nap – usually once a week
• 5:30-8:30 PM: Drive home, eat with Kim, relax from the counseling and do any of the following: Watch something on TV, spend time with Kim, or woodwork in our garage
• 8:30-9 PM: Start thinking about going to bed
• 9 PM: Bed

    You might ask how I have time for a social life – we plan it carefully!  Kim and I don’t want to have something on outside the house more than two nights a week.

Your Children’s Schedule

    I need you to evaluate something.  Did your kids come to live with you or did you go to live with your kids?

    If your kids came to live with you, then you are teaching them how to make good decisions, including the use of their time. You are teaching them not to live a hurried lifestyle for a lifetime.

    If, however, you went to live with your kids, then you will be saying things like, “Well, you know kids these days and how many events they are in.”  Your kids are kids. They’re not adults capable of planning a schedule – that’s your job! Now is the opportunity to set them up for an unhurried lifestyle that will last.  For example, our daughter wanted to be on a summer soccer team. I sat down with her and we figured out the hours of practice, driving, games, etc. I asked her if she wanted to spend her summer that way, and she ended up saying no.  Don’t get me wrong, our kids were in some extra-curricular activities, but it didn’t become a detriment to our family.

   You have probably heard the song Cat’s in the Cradle which tells about how a father didn’t have time for his son.  After the son grew up and the dad wanted to spend time with him, the son, in turn, didn’t have time for his dad.  “He’d grown up just like me” was the realization of the father. Our three children don’t live hurried lifestyles and they have lots of time for Kim and me.  Here are some things you can do to live an unhurried life.

• Reorder priorities

1. 1. If both want to work, fine, but if not, then what could you cut out so one could stay at home?  
      1. Is our house more important than our time?  You will have to decide. A house is nothing more than a box that we live in.  How much do you need and how much is status?
      2. Cars are very expensive.  I read where you can take the cost of your gas times 17 and that’s a ballpark of what your car cost to own.
      3. Are expensive vacations important to us?
   2. It may mean you have to sit down and agree that some things in our lives need to be cut out.  I would strongly recommend Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University small group curriculum. It will pay for itself before you finish the class.
   3. Get creative – have a regular finance meeting.  Kim and I do every month.
   4. You may be married and in college and you just don’t have time.
      1. Realize this is for a limited time and make future plans to have time. Be deliberate in your thinking that this is a temporary thing.  Light at the end of the tunnel is a good thing so you can look forward to not being busy.
      2. This doesn’t mean you can’t schedule some time on your calendars for “us” time.

• Reorder our chores

1. 1. Kim will do things when I’m not home so she will be able to be with me when I am home.
   2. I will help her do chores when I get home so that we are done at the same time and can then relax together.

• Time together

1. 1. We’ve learned that we don’t always have to be doing the same thing to be together.  It is a state of mind. If I’m woodworking and Kim is in the shop reading in her lawn recliner, we are still together.  We might not be communicating, but we are still enjoying being close to each other.
   2. We will often ride with the other on an errand, just to be together.
   3. We go grocery shopping together, just so we can hang out with each other.  Mundane tasks can still be fun and meaningful!

• Plan meaningful events and put them on the calendar

1. 1. Kim and I share a calendar on our electronic devices.  There is a recurring event every Thursday night at 5:00 – “Date with Kim”.  I don’t change this without checking with Kim first.
   2. Don’t stop dating.  I can’t think of an advantage to it and can only see the lack of time together as a force that will pull you apart.

We hope these tips will get you started on spending more time together.  If you have ideas, please leave a comment. We love learning from you.