I describe through my personal testimony my life experiences as a "juggler", trying to balance the demands of a busy and successful career, a growing family and my commitment to God's work.
My Story As I've talked with people about the guidelines to follow, beginning with a summary of my life, testimony, personal experiences and key learning moments helps to both understand the situations I'm in but also help the reader in seeing the parallels in their own life.
Through these experiences, I've developed six guidelines to lead a balanced life of Family, Faith and Work and become a master juggler of priorities in life.
Personal Mission Begin by establishing a game plan, your mission statement. What you want your values to be as a person. Decide what it is you want to accomplish in your life and begin setting a course that gets you there. We have so little of this precious resource called time, use it only in a manner consistent with your goals and values.
As you have a clear picture for where you want to go, need to establish your three priorities for life.
1. Prioritize God Create a unique relationship between yourself and God that is consistently reinforced by the way you use your time to remain in consistent dialogue and relationship with him. Choose routine areas of your life to remind and encourage you to your daily devotion time with God.
Next, firmly establish your second priority;
2. Prioritize Family Establish your family relationships in such a manner that other factors do not squeeze out that precious family time. Put clear boundaries in place and be prepared to make tradeoffs such as those between work and family that will be clear evidence of where your priorities truly reside.
Having both God and family in proper priority:
3. Work Hard Be a great employee. Realize that you are not working for your boss, your president or your company. Instead, you are working for God. Recognizing that he is the singular source of our ultimate reward look past anything that might distract you from being a great employee.
To help keep you on the course you have laid develop
Mentors Create a network of individuals that keep you 'on track'. Look for those who can be mentors, peers and mentoree's of yours. Develop the relationships and accountability with each that will keep you on task to accomplish your personal mission statement.
With God, Family and Work in balance you will be in a position to be a
Clear Witness Having developed a balanced life and a reputation as a great employee you are in a position to be a clear witness at your job. While your witness should never be an excuse to being anything less than a great employee, you will have developed the credibility, which allows you to be a witness and influence to others.
Integrating Work, Faith and Family’s This is the ‘graduate’ program for the life of a juggler. Having made it thus far, you will be challenged with question about how to live as Christian in the workplace. How can you be a witness? Should you be visible about your faith and if so, guidelines for how to do so.
Afterward To complete this work, Linda gives a spouse’s perspective to living with a juggler. She gives insights into how to support both her husband and how to raise the kids with a too oft absent husband.
My prayer is that in writing this book that men and women might become intentional about their lives; leading lives of purpose, lives of balance and lives of conviction.