One of our own church family shares how her family is choosing rest…
I’ve been going to Pulpit Rock for almost two years. I’ve really been blessed by the current sermon series on rest. I wanted to share my experience choosing to live a less busy life.
My husband and I don’t like being busy, and I have a low stress threshold, so we’ve made many choices so we can live our lives accordingly.
Many people think they don’t have a choice but to be busy. There are choices, they may just be hard ones!
Five years ago, I decided to change jobs so that I would be able to work from home with my children and so that I could have less responsibility at work (to be less busy and stressed!). It meant taking a substantial pay cut and moving from a manager position to an entry level position. I’ve always been (or at least used to be) ambitious and out to prove myself, so this was a difficult choice for me.
My family relies on my salary, as my husband and I own a small business, so quitting my job when we started a family was not an option. When we started our business, everyone warned us that my husband would be working 100 hours a week. And he could definitely make that choice. There’s always more you could do as a small business owner.
But he’s always made the choice to work less so that he can have a healthy work-life balance and spend a lot of time with our family. We would take home more money if he worked more (though not enough that I could quit my job).
But we’ve decided that we prefer our time to our money. We live frugally, but we’re still able to live a good life.
The outcome of our choices is that we have plenty of time for rest (we get eight to nine hours sleep a night) and for each other. We are able to do unique things like take hikes together as a family on week days and are able to be fully present in each other’s lives.
I know not everyone can have (or is called to) our unique situation, and God has blessed us immensely. (And, incidentally, I absolutely love my current job, so the pay cut and decrease of prestige were completely worth it.)
But God knew our needs and our desires, and He graciously has blessed our choices.