Make the Time to Love Her

Many a time on this blog I’ve talked about the difficulty many of us have in finding enough time for our wives. Modern society puts a lot of strain on our schedules, making it hard to have time for anything but work and sleep. If anything, the current prolonged financial crisis that the country has been facing has made it worse. Employers are demanding more of their workforce, taking advantage of the fact that people can’t afford to leave their jobs.

I feel the pinch just as much as any of you do. I’m running a business and a ministry as well. That’s about like holding down two jobs, and still I try and make sure that I have time for my wife and kids. It’s a challenge, but I’ve never heard a man lament on his deathbed that he didn’t spend enough time at work. No, they all lament that they didn’t spend enough time with the people that mattered to them.

Finding time for your wife requires two things: creativity and determination. That’s it. If you have those two ingredients, you can surely find ways of spending time with your wife. Creativity is necessary because you might have to come up with some unusual ways to spend time together, something more original that Saturday night date night. Determination is important to make you put other things aside, in favor of the more important act of spending time with your wife. Without determination, there are a million things which will come along to steal that time.

What brought this subject to mind for me once again is thinking about preparations for another trip. When I travel for the ministry, the week before is one of hectic preparations. Not only do I have to try and work ahead in my business, so that I take care of my clients before leaving town, but I need to make books, CDs and DVDs to take with me. So, once again it’s like working two jobs, but instead of working normal hours, working overtime in both.

In the midst of all that activity it can be easy to ignore my wife and kids. But, they need me just as much before I leave on a trip as they do when I’m home. Actually, if anything, they need me more. So, I have to make a special effort to be there for them.

If you were to leave on a business trip and something happened to you while you were gone, what type of memories would you want to leave in the minds of your wife and kids? Would you want them to remember that at that last minute, you didn’t have time for them? Or, would you want to leave them with one last happy memory of the time you spent together? Okay, the answer to that is obvious.

Well, what about the trip you take to work every day? Isn’t there just as much a chance of an accident on that trip as there is traveling across the country? Couldn’t you die of a massive heart attack any day of your life? So, what type of memory are you leaving in their minds when you head off for work every day? What was the last time you spent together like? Will it create a lifetime of happiness for them, or will it leave a bitter taste in their mouths?

I can’t forget the testimony of a woman who told her husband she wanted a divorce over the breakfast table one morning. Her husband never made it home from work that day. The last memory she has of him, was telling him that she wanted a divorce. What a sad memory to have the rest of her life.

If there’s one memory which we should leave in the hearts and minds of our wives and of our kids, it’s the strong memory that we love them. Every time we head out the door, we need to make sure that’s the memory we leave them with. That way, we will have nothing to regret.