“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time for that’s the stuff life is made of.” – Benjamin Franklin.
How do young missionaries view time? A lot of missionaries view 18 months or 24 months as a long time. They become stressed out about what they are missing if they would have stayed in school or moved forward in their sports career or their profession or perfecting their musical talents or regretting the time they will miss with their boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever else it might be.
For senior missionaries, their view of time may be different. 12 or 18 or 23 months is a small fraction of the life they have already lived. Yet they may also wonder what they will be missing back home: baptisms, priesthood ordinations, family reunions, class reunions, etc. They may have left a business, retired from a job, turned over financial and housing concerns to a family member or trusted friend.
After a weekend, when beginning a group therapy session in prison, I’d ask the men, “How was your weekend?” Some would tell about the college courses they were taking. Some would share the job training they did. Some would report about church services. Others would talk about giving service to other inmates. Some would talk about visits from family and friends. And there was one guy who always said “Same old, same old… watching television, eating, sleeping.” He was “doing time.” The others were using time wisely to grow, to progress, to love, and to serve.
How are we doing? I know I have squandered time. I also know that we should serve with “all our heart, might, mind and strength” (D&C 4:2) and not “run faster than we have strength.” (D&C 10:4) How do we achieve a balance?
Some missionaries told me they have seen that those who struggle often have a 730 day calendar and they are counting off the days until they go home. A mission president asked one struggling missionary who had just arrived to simply work and serve for one transfer (six weeks) and see how he felt. The missionary told me that after that visit, he felt great! Not because he learned to “lose himself for My sake,” but because he had a six-week countdown to a ticket home.
The missionaries who stick it out have learned to plan one week at a time and one day at a time. A day might be long. I remember as a young missionary in France when we went door-to-door for 10 hours and not even one person let us in. That was a long day. But the weeks flew by. We focused on the work and time flew by. It has happened to one of our grandsons right now. He exclaimed, “Where has the time gone!?!”
If we take the time to identify what is in our life right now: people, events, places, desires, hopes, dreams, objects, and things. Then write down the hours in a week (168 hours) to see how we use time. This includes sleeping, eating, exercising, preparing for each day, working, attending church, playing sports, leisure activities, etc. Then we can discover how we use our time compared to what matters most. As we do the comparison, how do we feel? What adjustments do we need to make? Are we becoming who we want to be? Who the Lord wants us to be? Or are we just “doing time?”
May the Lord continue to bless and inspire us to use our time wisely to do better and be better as we move forward in this wonderful mortal journey.
