23/08/2024
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BALANCING YOUR CAREER WITH YOUR FAMILY LIFE (PART 1)
Introduction: Dear parents, being a career oriented person is not a crime but when you can't balance it well with your family life, it's your children that usually suffer the consequences. Before we go further in this discussion, it's important to define some keywords (career, family and family life) in this topic.
Firstly, what is a career? A career is a long-term sequence of work-related experiences, positions, and roles that an individual undertakes to achieve their personal and professional goals.
While family is a group of individuals related by blood, marriage, or adoption who share a common bond and commitment to one another. They often live together, share resources, and provide emotional support and care for each other.
Lastly, family life refers to the experiences, interactions, and relationships within a family unit. It encompasses the daily lives, activities, and dynamics of family members, including relationships, roles and responsibilities, communication, emotional support, conflict resolution, religion etc.
Having defined these keywords, let's look at what the Bible says about career and the family? Genesis 2:15 - "Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.
"Proverbs 22:29 - "Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men.
"Genesis 2:24 - "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
"Mark 10:9 - "What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.
"1 Timothy 5:8 - "But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever."
We can strongly deduce from the above bible verses that God is highly interested in what we do for a living and how we relate with our families. Now let's focus on balancing your career with your family life.
It's good that both husband and wife should be working, I mean having a profession that brings income for them. But irrespective of the kind of profession that you do as couples, your family should be your top priority. It must always come first in any of your decisions in your profession.
Here are some examples of profession that do exhaust our time and reduce our relationships with our family members. For instance, in some educated families, we have both husband and wife working in the same or different field of profession (e.g. the husband can be a doctor while the wife is a doctor as well or a nurse, or a missionary who married a banker etc.). Without mincing words, they can't have quality time for their children.
While in some non or semi educated families, the husband may be a traveller by profession (e.g. driver, trader) while the wife may be a trader that usually travels across the country to buy or sell goods. There's no way for both husband and wife to have enough time for their children. These professions usually demand time and energy, and it demands applying God's wisdom to balance it well with the family life.
I want you to know this truth, being a workaholic doesn't make you a diligent, dedicated or committed person. A workaholic is someone who can't stop working. Workaholics are obsessed with working to an unhealthy degree. Just as an alcoholic has an unhealthy addiction to alcohol, workaholics have an unhealthy addiction to work.
For you to understand whether you're truly achieving the goal of your of profession or not. The characteristics of a healthy occupation was stated by the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity (NAPE) as Job Satisfaction, Career-Family Balance, Occupational Perception, Wage Potential. So if any of these is missing in your profession, there's a need for you to improve your profession.
A lot of families have been destroyed due to workaholic nature of parents, no quality time to adequately monitor or train their children in the way of the Lord. According to research, Forbes Advisor survey reported that "most common fight divorced people had with their exes was not about money or intimacy. It was about work. Almost half, 46%, of respondents said "career choices" was the No. 1 conflict in their marriage.
Why did they have this conflict in their marriage? We shall continue and conclude this topic tomorrow by God's grace. Thanks for being part of this family. God bless you all.
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