PILLAR TWO: TIME

Time: Build relationships that last.

A childhood is shorter than it feels. This pillar is about spending the time you have on purpose.

WHY IT MATTERS

The Family Time Challenge

Every kid gets about 936 weeks from birth to high school graduation. Picture a jar of marbles on your dresser: every Saturday one marble comes out, because that week has passed. Week after week, the marbles disappear until the jar is empty the week your child graduates.

It's not meant to raise your blood pressure...though it might, the first time you do the math on your own kids. It's meant to do one thing: help you see that the time you have isn't unlimited, so it's worth being intentional with it now, not "someday."

If you are ready to live intentionally and redeem time, download this free guide, "The 935 Weeks Family Time Guide." You will receive a total of 8 emails stemming from this resource, spread over 4 weeks, so you may be continually reminded to make the most of your time.

KEY CONCEPT

You don't have a time problem.

You have a margin problem.

Most families don't lack the desire for more time together. They lack the margin to make it happen. God built limits into everything: our finances, our schedules, our attention. Relationships thrive inside those limits, not when we're pushing against them. When a life is packed to capacity, good intentions about family time don't survive contact with the actual calendar.

That's not a guilt trip, but a wake-up call that leads to a change. If "spend more quality time with your kids" hasn't worked for your family, the problem isn't your intentions, it's that there's no margin left for it to happen.

And quality time is a myth.

A mentor of mine, Ron Kopicko, told me something more than twenty years ago that's stuck with me ever since:

"Quality time is a myth. Quality time is an accident that happens in the context of quantity time."

— Ron Kopicko

You can't schedule a meaningful moment. You can sit your kids down, announce that this is going to be special, and occasionally it works, but usually the real moments happen by surprise, in the middle of something else.

Our family went to Canada a few years back. The trip had the big stuff: mountains, a Hallmark movie set the girls loved, hikes we'll remember for years. But what my kids actually talk about is the four hours we spent stuck in the van waiting for a ferry, and the fact that my daughter Megan made everyone PB&J sandwiches using hand sanitizer because there was no sink. We still call that rental van "Megan's Food Van." None of it was on the itinerary. It happened because we were together long enough for it to happen.

The takeaway isn't "plan less." It's this: you can't manufacture quality time out of thin air, but you can make room for quantity time, and quality time shows up as a by-product. What gets scheduled is what gets done. If family time isn't on the calendar, something else will take its place.

HOW TO REDEEM TIME

Take the Family Time Challenge

If you'd like to download the entire challenge, rather than spread throughout the 8 emails as decried above, you may download all the resources by clicking the button to the right.

Each individual document is provided below, if you would like to download a single item.