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Podcast Episode 13 – Your Family Is More Important Than Your Job

This week’s episode builds on Monday’s article of the same name, “Your Family Is More Important Than Your Job.” Here is the transcript of the podcast:

Have you ever struggled with balancing your work aspirations and family obligations? I have, and on today’s episode, that’s the question we are going to explore.  I think most of us want to grow and excel in our work, which requires a level of commitment.  At the same time, we want to invest in our families. It’s been said that no one says on their deathbed, “I wish I would have spent more time at work,” but the struggle is often in figuring out how to find the balance between investing in your career and investing in the people who matter to you.

I told part of this story in the article that I posted earlier this week, but it was really the beginning of when I came to terms with this, early in my experience as a head of school. (if you want to hear the story, you’ll have to listen to the podcast!). 

First of all, work is necessary and can have great value. One of the things God created us to do was work, which was evident in the Garden of Eden when God told Adam and Eve that one of the three things He wanted them to do was to take care of His creation.  At the same time, one of the other of the three things God wanted them to do was to build a family.  (The third was to fill the earth.) The problem comes when we pit those two things against each other, or sacrifice one for the sake of the other.  The other problem comes when we confuse a job with our calling to work.  The end result tends to be that we seek to find greater value in our work than in our family, and our family pays the price. 

If you have a family, part of your calling is that family.  Yes, God has called you to Kingdom work in your career, but He would not sacrifice your family on that altar, no more than He would let Abraham sacrifice Isaac.  In that circumstance, God was asking Abraham for willing obedience to serve Him and did not intend for Abraham’s family to be sacrificed in the process.  He wanted to show Abraham -and, by extension, us – that God is more important than your family.  But your family is also very important to God and functions as a picture of God’s character and nature to the world (again, at Creation, Scripture tells us that man and woman together reflect God’s full image). And so God wants you to protect and care for your family. 

God ordained that we should work at the beginning of creation, but He wants your work to be a calling, not a job, and therefore the content and context of what you do can change to fit the time and circumstances for which He wants to use you.  However, He also established the importance of family from the beginning. He is not a “lesser of two evils” divine being who gives these two things and then forces us to choose which is less damaging; rather, He always has a right and good way of doing all that He has established.  He therefore will not call you to do something that costs your family.  If that is happening, it’s because of expectations that you are placing on yourself, not that God is placing on you. When that happens, it’s time to recalibrate your expectations to align with God’s and to commit your work to His purpose, not your own.

Here’s what you need to take away:  if your job is costing you your family, you have a problem.  I would also say that if your job is a ministry, and it’s costing your family, you are out of alignment with the work God has called you to do.  Yes, God should be the most important thing in your life, but second to that is the ministry that He has called you to carry out through your family.

When I came to this realization in my own path in that first head-of-school role, I made some changes so that my work was not superseding my family.  I started leaving to come home no later than 5:00.  I set limits on what I would say yes to.  And I intentionally protected my family time.  Sure, there were emergencies and exceptions, but that’s what they were – emergencies and exceptions.  During the next 25 years, God moved me to three more schools, and now to a new phase of ministry. By God’s grace, I have preserved and protected my family, and I believe my ministry to my family has had more of an impact on the lives of others than anything else I have done.  So I still say to people: your family is more important than your job.

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Your Family Is More Important than Your Job

I originally shared this post on LinkedIn as an article about 10 years ago, and it’s the article that has far and away had the most views, reactions, and responses.  I have made this statement to many people and to all of my employees in the time since then, but recent events in my life over the last year caused me to introspectively self-reflect on whether I was personally applying this, or if I had drifted from this truth.  The result was a necessary transition in my life, prompted by God working in me and in my circumstances.  It is still true, and in this holiday season, where we often have a stronger focus on family, it seems to be a good time to share this again.

This statement – “Your family is more important than your job” – is one of the most valuable lessons I have learned in my leadership development.  So important, in fact, that over the years it has been one of the more frequent statements that I have shared with others in conversations about job decisions, especially when they have come to me struggling over what the best decision is for their family.  The lesson initially came home to me shortly after I had stepped into my first senior leadership role.

I had been working in an organization where I had been very effective, and had played an important role in helping to bring about valuable and significant change even though not in a senior leadership role.  It seemed that I had been able to have positive influence on the organization and on many people within and connected to the organization.  Looking back, I can see that my ego was being fed, and I was becoming prideful in my perspective.  In the development of my personal work ethic, I had been taught to work in such a way that I would become more important to the organization than the organization was to me, but in my pride, this grew into the sentiment that I was invaluable to the company.  I began to believe that if I were to ever leave, the organization would suffer and would take a noticeable step backward.

And then it happened.  I was given an opportunity to become the leader of another organization, one that was experiencing struggle and decline.  Although I had anxiety about whether or not I was prepared or capable, and about the unknown of this new experience, I was also excited, and anticipating the change to again be an agent of change.  My family was very supportive and excited along with me, encouraged me in this opportunity, and embraced the prospect of this new experience.  So, we loaded a moving truck, packed up our family, and moved a thousand miles away to a new home and a new life.

As I left the previous company, I secretly believed that my loss would hurt, and even had the arrogance to think that it would require two people to replace all that I was doing.  I imagined in my mind that I would soon be hearing about how much they missed me, and how much they realized I had meant to them.  But then, the unthinkable happened – they moved on without me!  They hired someone else with his own set of skills and passion, they adjusted, and they continued to move forward.  Meanwhile, I was struggling to win the support and trust of a skeptical group of people who had no idea what I had accomplished or what I could do. (Side note here: factoring in God’s sovereignty and purposeful plan affects how you view these circumstances, and how He can be trusted to do what’s best for everyone involved – not just you – including those at the place you are leaving.  At that time, I still had a lot to learn in my understanding of this.)

It was then that I began to realize I was not irreplaceable.  I figured out that, other than in my own mind, none of my accomplishments came with me.  Don’t get me wrong here – the experience came with me, which was very valuable in helping me to do the job well.  But this new group of people didn’t know and didn’t care what I had done someplace else.  And all of a sudden, the only thing I had left to support and encourage me was my family.  I realized that I had actually been pouring my energies into accomplishment at work at the expense of my family.   I also realized that at any time I could lose or leave that job, but if that happened and I lost everything that came with my work (including recognition and accomplishment), I would still have my family.  Like switching on a light, I suddenly understood that my family was more important than my job.  Life moves on, jobs and careers change, and although I may have some influence and leave behind an impact, just about he only thing that goes with me moving forward is my family.  So if my job is costing me my family, the job needs to go before my family does.

I believe wholeheartedly that this is one of the most important lessons you could learn.  It is a “meaning and contentment of life” type of statement. No one is irreplaceable.  When you leave an organization or a job, remember that they will move on without you, but your family will be the one thing that goes with you.  Never forget that your family is more important than your job.

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