When you are young, time seems never-ending. You want it to speed up because you can’t wait to get older. When you are older, you want time to slow down because you know your time here on earth is limited. William Penn said, “Time is what we want most, but what, alas! We use worst.”
In marriage and parenting specifically, we often look ahead. We want to get to a future point so much that it is easy to forget to stop and enjoy the moment. The same thing happens in work; when we want to retire so badly so we can finally rest and do the things we want to do, we neglect the fact that decades are going by when we should be enjoying the blessings God has given us.
In Episode 26 of Everyday Discernment on the Charisma Podcast Network, I discuss with Ryan Frederick, co-host of the Fierce Marriage podcast, how being strategic in our visions for our families is critical in achieving our goals. You wouldn’t start a business without a plan and a step-by-step budget and breakdown of what you want to achieve. So it is with our family; we must communicate our needs and desires with our spouse and be unified in our approach on how to parent our children.
Tomorrow is not guaranteed. We need to live with a sense of urgency today and maximize the time we have with our family and those we love. We need to have a marriage that is being led in discernment by the Holy Spirit and let God be the foundation of it.
Time is not a resource we can produce more of. If we have wasted time, we cannot linger on it. We must ask for forgiveness and press on to do the best we can with the remainder of the time we have. {eoa}
Tim Ferrara started the ministry of Discerning Dad to encourage Christians to grow in discernment. Tim’s book, Everyday Discernment: The Importance of Spirit-led Decision Making is available on Amazon and his podcast called Everyday Discernment can be streamed on the Charisma Podcast Network. Tim and his wife of 15 years, Jamie, live in Arizona with their two children.