“Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a LIFE,”
QUOTEDIARY.ME
I’m not sure what your conversations with God are like, but I’m pretty sure they are not just like mine. I ask a lot of questions. Some of my questions are not that divine, or elevated in introspection. Some of them go like this: Lord, in your kingdom will cheese make me fat? God, will I hate watermelon after I’m dead as much as I do now? I love to sleep and I love pajamas, can I still wear pajamas all day in a world where the sun may never sets?
I was thinking about marriages in the military. That’s another thing I do a lot of at times. I was thinking about how some Soldiers are married to the military and then they go home to their marriage that has become work. Their relationship is upside down instead of right side up. When a marriage becomes work it soon become unwanted love. Not that one does not want to be loved and work at cultivating that love, only that the love within the marriage has had to step aside for the military one too many times.
Then, when the Soldier leaves the military or deploys for long durations one often comes home to an empty house where love has given up waiting and moved on to another. Somehow, a line needs to be drawn between one’s career and one’s relationships with people so that the two do not compete for all of the time in one’s day, but instead shares. Shares in a way that rights the balance, and work stays at work, and home becomes a marriage that is desired and endures long after one ceases work or being a Soldier.
I was wondering, I do that too, about love and love of work can the two be married at the sometime? Sometimes we love in a way that becomes unwanted love to another. We don’t purposefully start out with the goal in mind to be in a place where we don’t want love or allow our lives to drift until we wake up one morning and discover that we spend most of our waking hours consumed by our work, and home has become a stranger.
“So ask yourself, do the hours I’m putting in at the office harm my relationships? Is my health suffering? Is my mental health declining? Those are just a few signs you might be a workaholic,” (INC. by Amy Morin@AMYMORINLCSW).
If we knew the date of our birth and the date of our death, I wonder if we would do work differently? Would we love more, value our marriages and relationships more, and keep work balanced in order to do the first two well?
How much time in this life do I have to do everything I desire to do? If I had the answer to that question I would probably not have to work anymore because people would pay me for the answer, but none of us have that answer, especially in this Covid-19 environment. Love and marriage and relationships and work takes up a lot of our time in this seemingly short span that is called: Life. Yet, it is a good or great life that we all strive for and desire to preserve even when what we do destroys it.
“It’s amazing to me people are willing to work so hard so that one day they can have more time with their family at the actual expense of their family,” Richie Norton.
Which makes me think, again. What is the message that Covid-19 might be saying to some of us, not all, as the world has come to a stand-still? Perhaps it is saying: Work less and live more!
My prayer for today: Lord help us to value with wisdom and balance the things in life that create and breathe life within us and outside of us. Open our eyes to see what is around us before we lose what gives us reason and purpose to love and live, amen.
CH (MAJ) Dawn Siebold
Here is the direct email and phone number for anyone requesting support From
the 63d RD Chaplain office,
usarmy.usarc.63-rsc.list.chaplain-all-users@mail.mil
650-526-9668