Doing For vs. Being With

Jennifer Thomas considers how her tendency to say "yes" to some good things outside the home has meant unexpected sacrifice for her family.

I have a habit of taking on too much which is usually the result of my wanting to help someone in some way. Whether it is a simple “yes” to being asked to volunteer for Vacation Bible School at church or staying after hours at work to help out with an event, my time gets filled rather quickly. As recently as last year, I would look at my Google calendar and see all of the blocks from 8:00 AM. until 7:00 PM filled with these tasks and to do’s. God, being the good father that He is, has been keeping an eye on this aspect of my life for quite some time and has gently been dropping little hints that, as others have said before, “we are human beings, not human doings.”

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When my husband or children would attempt to draw my attention away from these things that I was doing, I would often justify myself by responding that these things I was doing were for them. For example, each year that I have volunteered to help with Vacation Bible School at our church, I convinced myself that I was volunteering so that I could help but also be there with my kids in the same vicinity and see all of the things that they were learning about so that I could talk to them about it at the end of the day.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that, at least in this situation, the thing I was doing for them was actually taking away my ability to be with them. Not because I was a crew leader and they were participants but because I was so focused on what I had volunteered to do that we had to arrive early to help check in children who were part of my crew and stay until the last child was safely picked up.

As this Lent was approaching, our parish was already beginning the planning for this year’s Vacation Bible School and I was asked if I’d be open to volunteering again. My first instinct was to give an emphatic “yes,” but I heard a soft whisper encouraging me to take some time to think about it before I replied.

I thought about not only this opportunity to volunteer, but also all of the times in the past when I was so eager to help others by doing for others and how, sometimes, that cost me time with my family. In my efforts to do for others, I was sacrificing being with my family. God made this abundantly clear and has continued to help me discern the entire concept of who I am doing for.

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Is what I am doing for others, even for my family, costing me time with them? Is my desire to do God’s work by serving others costing me opportunities to serve my family to be with them? These questions have led me to Jesus’ Passion and Crucifixion. His entire life was devoted to doing for others. Yet, in His efforts to do for others, it was so that we could be with Him and Our Father for eternity in Heaven. Everything that He did was a sacrifice, a selfless act that ultimately cost him His earthly life. But the reason He did it was for the sake of being with.

As the commemoration of the end of Jesus’ life here on earth is upon us this year and more opportunities to do for others present themselves, I am taking a different approach by asking myself this question: Is who I’m doing this for costing me time to be with those I love most? Are these things I’m doing that I say are for my family and my children things that will help me be with them on the other side of the veil?

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