Folks who know me know I have two positions:
- IT pro working primarily these days in Microsoft SQL Server as a database administrator (DBA)
- Junior high youth pastor and Awana commander
During the summer months, junior high schoolers aren’t in school, so my ministry commitments step up. Plus, lately there are some areas I feel like I’m called to get rolling, and that has added to the amount of time I’ve spent on the ministry side. Given that, something had to give, and it was some of the attention and time I put towards the IT pro side. This is part of the normal ebb and flow of priorities in my life. As I hopefully start establishing these new ministry pushes, I expect to be still kind of quiet on the IT pro side. Things will probably start to shift back over towards October, with the PASS Summit in Seattle, WA. Even that won’t be completely IT pro, though, as I’m staying with a former ministry partner who now works for Microsoft. He and his wife have offered me the spare bedroom of their house for the week I’ll be there and that saves money and allows me to be able to catch up with two wonderful people who have been blessings in my life. I’m really looking forward to that.
Notice I didn’t say I was taking time away my family. I finally understood that hard lesson a few years ago when I sat down and realized that every day with my wife and my children is precious. I was looking at my oldest son, then ten, and realizing we had less than a decade left before he would be moving out on his own with college and then beginning his own life. That immediately spurred the question, “Where did those ten years go?” I still desire for more time with my wife and children, I think we all should, and I have made the conscious decision never to steal time away from them unless it absolutely can’t be helped. These would be emergency situations only. I have learned that trying to do the trade-off doesn’t work out so well and that you never get all the time back. Yes, I put an exception for those “sometimes it can’t be helped.” But when it can be, and most of the time it can be, I’ve got to stick by what I know are the right priorities, regardless of how gleaming an opportunity might seem. If you’re wrestling with these types of questions with respect to family, think about it long and hard until you come to a decision that gives you some peace. Then stick by that decision.
So if you’re on the IT side and been wondering why I’ve not submitting to SQL Saturdays or doing user group presentations and my why article and blog writing has been down, it’s because the time has been allocated to ministry. I’ll be looking to get back involved at a higher clip in the fourth quarter of this year, slowly starting to pick up now with things accelerating even more in late August to where I’ll be back around “normal” in October.
