If you’re focusing too much on earning a paycheck for the sake of your family, keep in mind that your family would rather spend time with you than with your wallet. Make an effort to cut down your hours and increase the amount of face time you get with the people you care most about.
-- Yahoo Horoscope

You’ve got to have enough money to make your bills, the groceries, tithes and offerings, and savings, for when those are fulfilled, things flow pretty smoothly for you and your family. You also want to maintain your home, the family’s wardrobes, pay for the kids’ education, eat out every once in a while, buy your honey nice things, and put even more money away for rainy (and sunny) days. So off to work you go and you’ll return sometimes tonight. Maybe before the late news ends and David Letterman begins.

While you’re away working, working, and doing more work, which, by the way, you thoroughly enjoy, your family is missing you. Your kids miss you not seeing them off to school or taking them to school. They miss you not visiting their school to eat lunch with them, going on field trips, reading to their class, or even knowing what their classroom looks like. Your babies miss you not helping with homework and dinner, playing a quick game of Uno®, chess, Barbies and Bratz, or basketball, and they miss your voice reading a story at bedtime. Sure, your kids appreciate the checks that pay for tuition, after-school activities, food, clothing, and shelter, but they’d gladly give it up to spend more time with you. They miss you.

Your honey misses you, too. Honey admires the way you help provide for the family and lovingly takes on the residual tasks because of the long hours you work. But honey misses your style and brand of calm and unflustered parenting. Honey misses the partnership and camaraderie it takes to raise strong, healthy, responsible, and conscientious children. After the kids have been put to bed, your honey misses catching up on the day with you and making plans for the next day, and as the evening winds down, honey misses pillow-talking with you, cuddling with you, making love with you, then falling asleep next to you. Your honey’s grateful for all you do to help keep food, clothing, and shelter available, but honey would gladly give it up to spend more time with you. Honey misses you.

When you lay your head on the pillow tonight, listening to the quiet in your home and watching your honey-love sleeping next to you, imagine not having your family around. The lump you get just thinking about that is the same lump they get when you’re away from them and they miss you madly. They want face time. They want you. They need you.

Consider cutting back your work schedule and finding the balance between home and work. Family is about harmony, happiness, and being together, and both you and they deserve that.

Sadiqqa © 2007