Priorities {Balanced Challenge Day 1}

This post is part of the Balanced challenge with Tricia Goyer—and you can join, too!

Get Balanced!

Welcome to Day 1 of the Balanced Challenge! I hope you are joining me in the challenge. Even if you are not reading through Tricia’s book, Balanced, you can still read my blog posts and comment on them, as you feel led.

In the first chapter, Tricia shares how creating and writing down your priorities for your family can help you know how to set your schedule. This really works! When you know what you want out of life, then you know what you can say “yes” to and when you need to say “no.”

My husband and I spent some time last night solidifying our priorities. I would say if we had written these down a few years ago, they would probably look somewhat different. However, now that our kids are older, our priorities have shifted a little bit.

Here is what we came up with:

• To provide our kids a Christian, college-prep education through a local private school
• To encourage our kids to aim high and excel in their school course work
• To have dinner as a family most nights each week to build family unity
• To teach our kids what it means to be a family and to do their part around the house
• To teach our kids how to manage money wisely
• To serve together in our local church and community
• To be open to God’s direction in wherever He may lead our family

I won’t go through each one of them, but I will share why we chose a couple of these priorities and how they are helping us save time and money.

Since it is a priority for us to send our children to a private school, we know that financial resources will be tighter than if we were not paying for school. Knowing this helps us to make better use of our money.

We want to have dinner as a family on a consistent basis, so we must be very careful about what we say “yes” to that would hinder this. Even activities that seem good can easily chip away at the time we have to spend together as a family.

We added the priority of being open to God’s direction because we feel it is important to be in line with His will for our lives. Often we can come up with a great plan for our life, but if it’s not lining up with God’s will, we won’t be very successful or fulfilled.

So, how about you? Have you given any thought to the priorities you have for your family?

Join me tomorrow as I’ll be blogging about my work as a blogger and what I need to do to make my office space more functional.

Leave a comment below and share your family priorities.