Time Management

I’m guessing mothers, as a collective group, share a unique time management technique. Tell me if I’m wrong. For instance… if someone asks me, “What year did you move to Wyoming?” I do some quick and simple math. Daniel started into kindergarten that fall at 5, he was born in 1979, add five and there you have it, 1984.” This works well unless you can’t remember the years your children were born and that’s not a typical mothering trait. We may on occasion forget to pick them up from school or forget to wash their gym clothes, or even forget they don’t like tuna anywhere close to their lunch bag, but we don’t forget the year of their birth.

Our lives are made up of all different types of measurements of time. We understand everything from seconds to centuries and all that’s in between. As we age, our perspective on these different dimensions of time change. As a child, a year seems to drag on like winter in Siberia. When one birthday passed, we knew it would take forever for the next one to come. But now….well, let’s just say they pass by faster than a horse headed for home.

There are times when we are going through a difficult season that we wonder how we are going to survive to the next week or the next month. But here’s the good news – we weren’t designed to take on the cares of a week or a month. All we have to do is make it through one day. ( Matthew 6:34) Author and Pastor Max Lucado says it this way, “Days are the bite-size portions of life, the God designed segments of life management.” That shines a new and welcoming light on things. It’s like conquering a page instead of the entire book.

I used to live a lot in the future. “What’s my life going to look like in a week or a month, or even years down the road.” But I try not to micro-manage these increments so much anymore. No matter what we try to micro-manage – if it doesn’t turn forth the results we wanted, it leaves us frustrated and feeling incompetent. It works much better for me to trust in the Father’s wisdom to manage what’s ahead. Proverbs 16:9 says, A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. Knowing that God, in His infinite wisdom, oversees any plans I make is comforting to me. I will embrace His direction to the best of my ability, for He not only knows the future, but holds it in His hands.

Until next month, keep on readin’ and I’ll keep on writin’.