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Take time ... spend it with family

  • Published
  • By Chaplain (Capt.) James Danford
  • 315th AW/HC
Charleston Air Force Base, S.C. --  Summer is upon us and I'll bet that many people already have the entire summer planned out - vacations, trips, yard work, etc. There is a commercial on TV now talking about the importance of taking our children fishing. In one part of the commercial a child tells their parent "Take me fishing - because I will not be this age forever". Although there is a business perspective to the commercial, there is also an underlying truth - the time we have with our family is important. 

Time is a funny thing. It is not something that we can hold, save, transfer or buy, but we all understand it's important. What we do understand is that time is fleeting, and we do all we can to keep up. Even though in reality we know we can't; we still try to "buy time", "maximize time" and make sure we are having "quality time". 

We in the reserves truly understand the scarceness of time. In addition to our civilian jobs we also, at the very least, give up one weekend a month. This is not counting all the additional time that is required to complete our various missions. 

Your duty requirements are probably such that you cannot spend all the time that you would like with your family. We may talk about "quality time" verses "quantity time", but we understand that the more time we spend with people is important. In today's world of busy schedules we need to be as creative as we can to look for meaningful moments that we can spend time together. 

One idea of creating time together would be to take advantage of the holidays. We can celebrate and reflect on them as a family. The summer months offer two holidays that are great for reflection. Memorial Day was just a few days ago - traditionally this day is the start of summer with a lot of out door activities. While the actual day is already past one idea would be to take some time as a family to remember the men and women who died in service to our country. You may even have someone in your family who paid the ultimate sacrifice in service to our country. This would be exceptional time to remember their service - to retell their story. Say a prayer as a family and talk about the cost and benefits of freedom. 

The Fourth of July is another holiday that is coming real soon. We spend so much time with the glorious firework displays and picnics that we forget about the wonderful gift of America. The history of our nation is a wonderful history - we may have made mistakes in the past - but we are always striving to be great. Say a prayer of thanks for the independence and the freedoms that we experience. 

You do not have to wait for holidays to spend those precious moments together. Strive to carve out family time each day - maybe a meal that everyone can sit down and eat together. Be creative here as well, the meal that you have together may not be supper - maybe you could all have breakfast together. If the weekdays are just completely packed - put this on your calendar for the weekend. Take the time to sit down, talk and listen to each other - take advantage of that precious time that is given. 

In an ideal world - we would all have enough time, but we need to take the time and moments we have and make them count. May God be with all of us this summer.