Managing Marriage, Family and Career/Ministry

Definition of keywords

Manage / Succeed

Succeed in surviving or in achieving something despite difficult circumstances; cope.

Marriage

This is a combination or mixture of elements. We need our marriage to be kept in good repair, to keep evolving and flourishing and for the relationship to remain in good condition.
Family: In the context of human society, a family (from Latin: familia) is a group of people affiliated either by consanguinity (by recognized birth), affinity (by marriage or other relationship), or co-residence (as implied by the etymology of the English word “family”[1]) or some combination of these. We all hope to have time for our children, to do what interests them and to take them out for events.

Career

It is an individual’s journey through learning, work and other aspects of life. We all cherish progression on the career ladder, to take more responsibilities and to have a long-lasting career.

Ministry

The service, functions, or profession of a minister of a religion. We want to stay relevant in the ministry, to work in our purpose, to be used by the Holy Spirit and to use our spiritual gift for the benefits of others.

All of the above will require full dedication of our time and resources.

Consequences of poor management

Focusing more on family and career may cause a decline in our devotional life, while focusing on career alone can lead to a loss in the sense of compassion, as well as becoming insensitive to other people’s needs because you are so goal driven that you don’t have time to hang out with your family/children who want a bit of your time.
You may even become so short tempered when church time is becoming longer.
Too much time on Ministerial, Marriage, and Family can lead to low productivity in a career which will affect income and won’t guarantee long-term career path.
Looking at it from human reasoning, Marriage, Family, and Ministry without financial stability might handicap every part of our life.

We need to find the common ground between them all. Finding a common ground doesn’t mean we should not stretch/ or push our boundaries but that we should make sure each area of our calling is involved in our daily activities and we make sure that all areas are assigned with an equal measure of our time.

Things we must try to do

We need to place emphasis and input more of our energy on the activities of highest priorities. Such priorities will be left for you to decide if it’s to:

1. Ensures we engage on regular dates to flourish our marriage or to spend extra time in church
2. Give up the idea of perfectionism on every task which can eat out of the time already assigned to another area of our life. We need to recognise when we’ve become out of balance in our commitments.
3. Get people involved in the form of a delegation which can help free up time for other areas of our lives, such as shopping on our way home from work which can help create family time during the weekend

If we are to mention the necessary ingredients required to succeed in surviving i.e managing marriage, family, and career, noting that they are all different elements of nature that can react positively if the elements are to administer in the right proportion, but as well that can react negatively to destruction if they are mixed wrongly. Kindly take note of the word mix, proportion, react and survive.

Prioritising

I believe in the old saying that “if you fail to plan you plan to fail”. The foremost way to manage our life is to create a daily planner which I called “21/4 blocks or 21 blocks”

The number “21” represents the boxes above and 4 represents the subject matter that we need to manage (Relationship, Family, Career & Ministry). What we must try to do is to ensure that all the four areas are equally or well represented on a daily basis.

Let us ensure that the 4 areas are attended to on a daily basis and avoid the usual way of life where career dominates our Monday to Friday and Ministerial role takes over from Saturday till Sunday Night.

We must consciously make sure we integrate members of our family’s planner into ours. Through this, we can effectively manage and carry along with us our family members and spice up our marriage as well as progressing our career not neglecting our spiritual service to others.

Author: Evang. Gbenga Adelakun

Facebook Linkedin