Have you ever found yourself rationalizing, “I’m too busy to do something that will build my marriage?” If so, your marriage is probably fallen prey to the marital monster, busy-r-us. Let’s take some time to see how we can keep this marital monster from devastating your life. Is it any wonder why our quality time as couples have been relegated to sitting exhausted together in front of the TV after the kids have gone to bed? We’ve fallen for the lie that the key to happiness in life is busyness. Too many of us are bringing our work home with us, not only on weeknights, but over the weekends. Overscheduling not only harms your marriage, it hurts you, leading to fatigue, depression and other illnesses. So I think most of us would agree that we’re too busy. Now the good news is we can change. But how do we do that? It starts by reexamining and rearranging our priorities. Our marriage relationships rarely make it to the top of our priority list. Yet Genesis 2:23-25 tells us that they should be the number one priority in our lives.
So let’s begin our priority audit by asking some hard questions. The root question is this one… “Why am I choosing busyness over my spouse and family?” Maybe it’s related to the second question, “Am I busy because I have the disease to please and can’t say no?” Busyness is trying to do too much in too short of a time frame, and that gets worse when you add other people’s to do list to yours. So work together as a couple to build some boundaries that will keep you out of other people’s busyness.
Here’s another question, “Do I get more gratification and satisfaction from my work, children, hobbies, or something else that I do from being a husband or wife? Hey, I’m good at my job, but I’m not so great at being a spouse. Next question would be, “Do I keep myself busy because I don’t want to deal with the marital parenting, financial or other family issues that are demanding my time and attention?” If so, again, you’re falling for the lie that these troubles will somehow disappear if you just stay busy. And then probably the last question, the most soul searching question for all of us to ask is, “Are these things that have crept into the top priority spots in my life worth losing my marriage over?”
So how do you combat busyness? Once you’ve reestablished your marriage as a top priority, it’s time to take a hard look at your schedule and see what you can offload. Make a list of everything that’s currently on your plate that you would like to say no to, discuss this list together as a couple and agree together on what you can say no to and what you’re going to hold on to. Then strip away those nonessential urgent demands until your schedule truly reflects the value of your marriage. And once you’ve made time for each other, be sure to spend that time constructively. Don’t be surfing the Internet or spending time reading by yourself. Look for something to do together as a couple that will help you enjoy each other. Once you’ve come up with these solutions, remember, the monster of busyness is not easily defeated. It’s an ongoing challenge to commit yourselves to battling the busyness monster together every day.
