A kid's-eye view of a dad's 60-hour work week

The dad worked those 60-hour weeks for 35 years with no vacations. Years later the son wrote that if he had worked eight hours a day instead of ten, the dad would

have had in those years many days amounting to two or three years of time for work of his own choice, for rest, for play and talk with his children and friends, for his accordion and his Bible.  In those added two hours a day across those years his personality would have reached out and down and up, would have struck deeper roots in the good earth and sent higher branches toward the sky.

He never knew his son, Carl Sandburg, grew up to win two Pulitzer Prizes, meet Presidents and become a world-wide celebrity -- he died before those happened.  He never knew the son had any of that kind of thing in him. 

Comments

[Abbie]

This is hard for me right now. My husband is a church planter - long work hours are a must. He gives us so much every minute he is home, but sometimes I wonder if it is enough. We are working hard to make our family time quality (as it isn't quantity) and to move toward shorter hours - and take better advantage of flexible hours - as we get more established as a church and a family. I suppose prayer, God, trust and wisdom all play a part in this, too.

[alyson]

My own husband works 60 hours a week and i am waiting for him to realize he doesn't have to do that anymore. But i think it makes him feel more secure. He also teaches one bible study, attends two more plus church and currently i often can't go with him. It's hard to spend 90% of my time alone or to admit i am jealous of God, but in the end, i know that what he does with his time makes the few hours i get from him more patient, more wise, more loving and he is a better husband in the shorter hours for having spent more time with his savior. i guess i could have more of him, but it might be a lesser him to have. i struggle with being second to God. Silly woman... even when it only benefits me that i am. i guess i'm saying that no one can know what those two hours a day would have done for this man spent elsewhere. It just might have made him an unhappy, resentful person who then might not have been quite who his son imagined. i'm not sure one can really know that kind of thing. He just may have been doing what he needed to do to be the best he could be.