Protect your Time

​Here’s a problem that we haven’t been giving enough thought to…
We live in the age of distraction, and your life is full of time vampires.
Your beeping cell phone demands your attention. A loose acquaintance that you don’t really know very well reaches out to you on Facebook and asks to grab coffee/lunch/a leisurely walk with you. Work calls and they want you to fire off a quick email for them.
You say yes to all three of those things and BAM you’ve just lost a day of your life to inconsequential stuff. AN ENTIRE DAY! A thing that you may only get 20,000 of in your entire life, has been carelessly invested. 
If you don’t slow down for a second and think about what is actually important to you and how to fiercely guard it, you will continue to be pulled in every direction and feel progressively exhausted and resentful. 
So, let’s get personal for a few minutes! When we think about protecting our time, the question is what time our we protecting? Is our own personal time, time in our marriage/relationships, time with our kids, and our time with God.  When you think about our personal time we protect it well. Think about it when you set time aside to do things for you its protected hard. If that is going fishing, hunting, or whatever it is for your personal time. But when it comes to God, relationships, or kids we don’t protect it has hard we should? We allow things to get in the way.
I can talk about this because I lived it. I was in a previous marriage for 19 years. During this time, I didn’t protect my time with spouse at all. We both worked, she is a Nurse and worked at night. So, When I was at work she was home sleeping because she worked at night and when she was at work I was home sleeping. When there was time we had together we didn’t protect it. We allowed other things to get in the way so for years we were like two ships passing in the night. Well of course we had kids then our time was spent doing for them which I wouldn’t change that for anything. However, in a relationship the parents need time together. So of course, over years our paths drifted apart. Well we all know where this ended up yes, a divorce. We all can apply to this in our life some way.
When you don’t spend dedicated time in any relationship over years you will drift apart.  This goes the same with God, the difference we are the ones that drift away from him he doesn’t move. And yes, I have been here also, but that story is for another day. So, what are you doing to protect your time where it matters?
I have learned this the hard way for sure. I got remarried over a year ago and we both sat down and put a plan in place to protect our time. Is it easy? No but we have a plan. We both learned that time is important and if it’s not cherished and protected we will both end up where both of our relationships ended up in the past. 
I have done this with God also. If it was important for Jesus to spend time with God, wouldn’t it be important for me to the same. Because how to you build a strong relationship if you’re not spending time with God or the person your building a relationship with. So, I encourage you to sit down and write a plan on how to protect your time in your life with God, spouse, significant other, or kids.