Let No Busyness Separate

Romance, nurture, and communication take time.  

Unfortunately, time is one of those things that we feel as if we don’t have anymore. Our society is obsessed with obtaining immediate results without long-term investments. We want the best things in life to come quickly and easily, and yet it rarely happens that way.

With increased advancements, society posited years ago that we would have more free time currently than at any other time in history. Due to such rapid progress, most of us wouldn’t have to work as hard or as long, and we would have more opportunities for leisure than we could imagine. The technological revolution continues to increase, and yet it seems as if the opposite is happening. Instead of more time available, we feel as if there is less time to do the things we want or need to do.   

Busyness can cause us to idolize our productivity and tempt us to live a lifestyle that seeks independence from God. Many people wear busyness as a badge of honor, and yet it costs us more than we realize. As we give our minutes, hours, days, months, years, and lives away to different pursuits, we can never take back the time invested. The tragedy of how we spend our time is that it is often our marriages that suffer the most.

The one who deserves your best often gets your worst.

How do you know if busyness is affecting your marriage? If you interact with one another more as business partners managing financial responsibilities, household duties, and children’s schedules, you might be in danger. If you justify why you can’t spend so much time with your spouse due to other relational expectations, your priorities are out of order. If it is a rare occasion for the two of you to carve out time for a simple date, you need to make some changes. If you seem to get agitated with one another easily due to stress, you need to evaluate your existing responsibilities. If you realize that when you actually do find time to spend together, you each live in your own world mentally, emotionally, or technologically, you should be on high alert. Busyness may be robbing your marriage.   

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil .

Ephesians 5:15-16

If the days are evil, that means that we must be on guard against distractions and pursuits that could rob us of time. To be wise, we must do a regular, thorough investigation into how we spend our time. If you have ever sought the will of God, look no further – it is found in investing your time wisely (Eph. 5:17).  

If you allot your time wisely, you will make time for your marriage. We make time for what we love. Ignore the lie that once you get through a particular season of life, you will have time to spend together. Something will always fill your calendar if you let it. If you don’t take time to nurture your relationship now, you won’t have the relationship to nurture later.

Don’t allow the most crucial person in your life to receive the leftovers.

For the sake of your marriage, you must reign in your schedule. Having a controlled calendar might mean lesser hours spent on a hobby, fewer activities for your children, or having to say “no” to good things for the sake of your marriage. Just think about how healthy your marriage could be if you invested more quality time into it.

Don’t prioritize your schedule; schedule your priorities. If you don’t schedule your priorities, someone or something will schedule them for you. When that happens, your spouse invariably will receive the pitiful and insufficient remainder.  

If you discover that busyness is endangering your marriage, what should you do? Schedule a daily connection, a weekly date, and a yearly getaway as recurring calendar commitments. Anticipate, plan, budget, prepare, and enjoy these three events for the sake of your marriage.

Daily Connection

A daily connection provides you with a short yet regularly intentional time to foster togetherness. This time reserves the right to ban technology, exclude children, exhibit eye contact, promote touch, and experience reconnection. Find a time during the day to have undistracted interaction. If you can only find fifteen minutes, take advantage of it. Fifteen minutes a day to connect with your spouse will help cultivate intimacy for the next fifteen years of marriage.

Weekly Date

A weekly date is a commitment to block out larger blocks of time to nurture intimacy. The daily connection is helpful, but that can turn into a dull routine of sharing upcoming plans and recent updates. The weekly date serves as a way to slow down and enjoy one another. Whether it is a great meal, an enjoyable movie, or an outside activity, find the time to date one another throughout your marriage. Dating your spouse doesn’t have to be expensive, but it will prove to be rewarding. If children or responsibilities make this challenging, get innovative regarding how to reclaim some time for one another.  

Yearly Getaway

A yearly getaway seeks to plan a vacation to enjoy one another for an extended period. While this may be difficult to find, attempt to acquire at least a weekend of time with no one else other than your spouse. As you remove yourself from daily responsibilities, you will be able to enjoy one another and also deepen your connection. Sacrifice might be needed, but you don’t have to break the bank. While the cost of having a marriage getaway might be expensive, it is more costly not to have one.  

Plan for a daily connection, a weekly date, and a yearly getaway. If any or all of those three seem impossible to obtain, that reveals how great the need is for your marriage’s sake. Your calendar didn’t get in this mess overnight, and it won’t be fixed overnight, either. Use these three commitments as a goal to hit. Even if it takes time to arrive at this ideal, make these connections a priority.  

What God has joined together, let no busyness separate.