Business Genesis

As a wife of a traveling businessman, I look forward to weekends. Weekend days give our family some undivided time of being "normal"-- even if we have to travel to a soccer game an hour away or run errands as part of it. Not having to share those hours with anything work-related makes those days fulfilling. I have a husband for two whole days, living and breathing in the same area code, and keeping me safe and close all night.

But not always.

You'll Be Where? WHEN?

This weekend won't turn out that way. My husband will spend those weekend days more than a thousand miles away, leaving those of us at home to go on with life as usual. Except it won't be usual. We will miss him. Having children home from school with lots of free time to spend will feel unusual because their dad won't share it with them. Preparing dough and toppings for our traditional Saturday homemade pizza will feel incomplete. No will request green peppers and hot sausage and we will have too much room in the refrigerator with fewer leftover slices. Three of us will go to bed with the uncomfortable "someone is missing" feeling in our hearts.

Our two cats will act strangely, entering areas of the house at times they never usually do, looking for the Tall Human with the Deep Voice.

In short, the man's absence throws all of us off and has us yearning for "normal" in and acting in abnormal ways. You just don't take away part of our equation and have us balance.

We are a four-person show and one of our cast members will go missing. And we miss him, as well as all he brings to our act.

Is Nothing Sacred?

Business travel does not hold off for family plans. It doesn't stand aside for birthdays, though my husband tries to adjust his schedule to be here for family dinners and birthday cake. He has missed a child's birthday just once. He has missed mine, once, too, which I okayed when he asked and then wanted to renege. Live and learn.

So far, Christmas and Thanksgiving remain untouched, travel-wise, but Easter doesn't count in most of the world. Halloween, though we aren't particularly fans of it, falls to the evident whims of business travel. The customer can make the time, so the vendor must make an appearance, no matter how cute his children will look in their chosen costumes on October 31. A bitty Buzz Lightyear can't grind the gears of business to a halt even when he employs every space-age foil in his four-year old repertoire to attempt it. He saves Daddy some of his favorite candy and hopes next year will turn out better.

Weekends have taken a clipping on either end for cheaper plane fares, late Friday meetings or early Monday meetings. Who are these thoughtless people planning these meetings?
Vacation plans have changed for business travel overrides.
Family celebrations have come up one person short.
Campfires and bike rides have happened with the Fearless Family Leader on guard from afar and included in the only ways possible -- via text messages, phone calls and shared photos.

Very little, it seems, goes into the "special" column when the call of the customer comes, or when management decides a meeting makes sense.

We Manage Because We Must

My husband doesn't want to have to choose. I know that, and one of my jobs entails supporting what he needs to do and thanking him for his sacrifice. Most definitely, business travel requires more sacrifice and suffering than it offers peace or enjoyment. I also have the call to buffer the fall-out from children who will never understand why their dad takes off at what looks to them like "whenever he feels like it". They grow used to having less of their dad in their lives, but they never grow to like it.

Tolerance, it seems to me, makes the best choice. I certainly can't fight my husband's job description, can I? I can tolerate his absence and make better choices with the time we have him at home.

What can I do? I can pray for peace and understanding in myself. I can pray for our children to understand and to take a stand for their dad -- his job pays their way in the world and activities they enjoy, as well as for our needs in this life. I can pray for my husband's well-being and safety at every take-off and landing as well as in flight, and on every inch of pavement between us. Prayer is big, and when I focus on it I feel God's protective hand on all of us. He has supported us through all these years and has no plans to stop now.

It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.” ~Deuteronomy 31:8

With a business traveler for a husband, I can either accept and manage with dignity and perseverance, or I can resist and mismanage with lackluster behavior and a negative attitude. The choice seems clear!

Every Day Is Special and Important

When it comes right down to it, the days my husband has to miss cannot break our spirits, turn our attitudes south, or break our family to bits -- unless one of us allows it.

Every day is a new day in this life, a box on the calendar that we can fill with purpose, joy and love, or with complaining, aimlessness and disgust. Our family has learned to get through the days of a "Missing Dad" and missing dad, and come out on the other side of his itinerary looking forward to his return and what we will do together on whatever day we can find to do it.

We make special days out of any day. Sure, sometimes it feels very hard to give up a fun plan or an exciting event, but we will have others. We can't go out for Trick or Treat on any day but October 31, but we can share the candy afterward. We might miss sharing a soccer goal, a great hit in softball, or a school music concert in person, but we have learned the joy of sharing the video and making use of "instant replay" to rewind and watch the spectacular scenes again and again.

I will not stop missing the man I love when he flies the friendly skies or traces a trip through the screen of his GPS, but I have learned enough to know that special days happen every day. How we celebrate them comes right down to our choice of when, why and how.

After all ...

This is the day that the Lord has made;

let us rejoice and be glad in it. ~Psalm 118:24 (emphasis added)

Other Articles in This Series:

Less is more.
Simplify.
Down-size.
Cut back.
Streamline.
Unscramble.
Cut the frills.
Disentangle.
Reduce.

All of these words or phrases mean the same thing to me. Do less.

I used to be the wife and mom who did more. Every weekend, with other people's kids and my own, always on the go. I filled the yearly weekend schedule with fun things. Purposeful, educational, enticing, don't-want-to-miss activity. Unless I had a full schedule and planned late into the night and all day for that schedule, I felt I missed the mark.

In the drive to give new experiences to my children, I took away the opportunity to have any experience at all with our family. Volunteer work or engagement in "field trip learning" on the weekends moved to the front of my mind. The mark I tried to hit came by way of The Deceiver.

Busyness = Fruitfulness? BAH! Live and learn, but if you can, learn from someone else's experience. Here's mine.

My purpose in engaging in these activities felt like a God-inspired assignment. After all, I helped others have opportunities to do things they wouldn't ordinarily do, like try cross-country skiing and learn how to make real maple syrup. For years, I found new things to learn, new places to visit, new horizons to open. I took pictures along the way to document the wonder that filled my world.

And in learning, visiting and discovering those horizons, I managed to forget, miss seeing and lose focus on the importance of doing what's important, of learning about my own family, of growing my marriage and of being God-rooted.
My children enjoyed doing, seeing and learning, but since we've streamlined our approach to home and family, they do, see and learn more in the way God intended for them to do. They do these things within the safety of our family, under the guidance of two like-minded parents, rather than under the arbitrary decision-making done for whole-group ease of management.

They learn self-control in a parent-controlled environment.
They learn positive self-esteem by having a place to spread their wings without a crowd to watch and possibly judge their attempts at flying into new realms.
They see new things through a lens which we guide them to use. They see through a filter of love and nurturing, rather than through a worldly, "get what you can and get it first" view.
They approach a values system we have set and can monitor, and then give them more freedoms as they learn and grow and earn more independence. The world would give them the independence immediately, and learn the pitfalls later.
They think about God's view of their lives, rather than about what other people think about them. This does not mean they have overcome the world -- that's Christ's work, accomplished for us. But, they do have a divinely-inspired basis for their thinking, rather than a worldy-inspired one.

As for my husband and me, we have learned to lean on each other. We used to book-end. One of us held up one end of life, the other took up the opposite end.

We were distant. We lost sight of each other and of our contribution to the whole. Focus on the parts came easier. Focus on "I" came even easier than that.

To have a whole marriage, a couple needs contact. Purposeful, focused, real contact on real, and sometimes difficult issues. Trying to work from opposite sides finds a couple at odds, in turmoil and without clarity and unity of thought, vision and purpose.

Many families experience this, all in the name of making the most of the weekend, and in furthering their lives here on earth with eternity in Heaven seeming like a distant dream. It stands closer than we think, and our lives here, according to our Maker, require that we work toward that end, not toward a fulfilling life in the world. We can live in the world just fine, and enjoy the beauty and resources it offers -- from the One who created it. But we need to refocus, redirect, and simplify our efforts, rather than fanning out individually, trying to cover all, do all, be all.

Do your family a favor. Do your marriage a great justice.

Do less.

If you have a minute, share with us how you hope to accomplish it.

Business Genesis

Tales of a Business Traveler's Wife: Missing Special Days

Friday Challenge: Do Less

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