Choice or Balance

For a while a quote from Charles Hummel hung on my bathroom wall.  He wrote about the urgent and the important in his book Tyranny of the Urgent.  Joanna Weaver quoted him in her book Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World which is where I found it.  I hung it on my bathroom wall.  The hope was that I would remember what the urgent was and what the important was.  I wanted to remind myself that God directs my days.  Even my days at home with my kids.  The days that seem insignificant, unorganized, boring, or just plain tiring.

 "We live in constant tension between the urgent and the important," Hummel writes. "The problem is that the important task rarely must be done today or even this week.  Extra hours of prayer and Bible study can wait.  But the urgent tasks call for instant action--endless demands pressure every hour and every day."

My urgent- the list, the house, the laundry, the chores, the computer

My important- time with God, my husband, my boys, myself.

I claim no time for reading my bible or praying.  I claim no time to exercise, yet I can find 30 minutes to be on the computer.  I claim that I can't play with the boys because of the laundry or the bathroom.  It's okay that they watch TV while I'm working on the computer instead of doing the laundry.

I've come to a conclusion though.  It's not a choice.  It's not a choice between the urgent and the important.  It's a balance.  It's taking time to know the difference.  It's putting things in their places.  I can't not do the laundry, I just have to remember what place it takes.  Our house is a mess and my life feels so cluttered and unorganized.  It's because instead of balancing the things in my life I'm trying to make them a choice.

So today it's about a balance.  I will exercise and I will read and I will do my crafting.  I will play with my boys and I will talk with my husband.  But, I will also toss a load of laundry in and race the Boppers to see who can put it away the fastest.  I will pick up the living room but I will read to Chewy.  I will make choices, but I will make the choice to put the urgent and the important back in it's place instead of choosing one over the other.