Priorities

The other day someone posed this introspective challenge: Look at your bank account and your calendar and that will tell you what your priorities are. Where you spend your time and money is a direct reflection of your priorities. Not necessarily what your priorities should be, or even what you want them to be, but definitely what they are.

If I'm being really honest, my calendar shows me that my priorities are probably work, television, God, fitness, marriage, family. If I look at my bank account it would probably reflect that my priority is getting out of debt. That is not a reflection of how I want my priorities to line up. Not at all. Those priorities aren't helping me reach my goals. They aren't helping make me a better person. In fact, they are in large part keeping me from reaching my goals.

The easy part is determining what I want my priorities to be. The hard part is aligning my actions with those priorities. Honestly, I don't even know what that looks like. Sure, some things are easy. Watch less tv. Turn off the TV and spend more time with my husband - go to bed earlier so I can get up and work out before work.  Be more diligent about reading my Bible and spending more time in prayer. Other things aren't quite so easy. I work my butt off at work and sometimes I feel like I need my down-time after work - like its the only thing that sustains me through the week. And while I know that is selfish, when is it good to be selfish and when do I just need to get off my butt?

It's easy to avoid spending quality time with my husband because "date nights" often include dinner out or ice cream after a movie and frankly - my "comfort zone" here at home really helps me to stay on track right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah - we could have date nights of things that are "active" but still - its just harder to go out and do things when you're trying really hard to have structure in your life. At least for me. So spare me the suggestions that we go for a walk or some lame crap like that.

I don't have the answers and I don't much feel like coming up with them right now - that's just on my heart so I'm writing about it. But I'm exhausted so I don't have any more to say about that right now.