Fight to Find Time with Your Kids While They’re Home

Show Transcripts:

Voiceover:
Welcome to the Father On Purpose Podcast, featuring author and ministry leader Kent Evans and the impressive and talented Lawson Brown. This is a podcast for you, Dad. You want to be a godly and intentional father. Unfortunately, you’ve turned to these two knuckleheads for help. Let us know how that works out for you. Before we begin, remember this: You are not a father on accident. So go be a father on purpose. Please welcome Kent and that other guy.

Kent Evans:
Welcome to the podcast, men, dads. One of the things that we are going to cover in the podcast are different challenges that dads have told us that they have, and it’s through a lot of our survey work we’ve done with online and so forth where we’ve asked this question, “What is the single greatest challenge you have as a father?” And Lawson, I hear all the time, all the time, I hear the word, “time.” It comes in all kinds of flavors.

Kent Evans:
“I don’t have enough time. I got to wear so many hats. I don’t know how to allocate my time. I feel like I’m running out of time. I feel like time, time, time, time, time.” We hear it all of the time, and part of it is just true. I mean, we don’t have a lot of time every day to do all the things we want to do. My passion and energy, and imagination definitely outstrip the amount of time I have to do all the things that I’d want to do. I’m confident I’ll probably die with some things still on my bucket list because I can make that list faster than I can earn money to go out and do them all. But I think there’s hope here, but we’ve got to address this monster for dads. That’s the time beast. And I have a few ideas, some of which might be a little bit … What’s the right word, Lawson? Challenging-

Lawson Brown:
There you go.

Kent Evans:
… to dads.

Lawson Brown:
I wondered what you were going to land on. 350 … I mean, not that it matters. I like numbers. Out of 2,800 respondents, 300 and almost 50 said time was their challenge to answer that question. Time is like, we all have the same amount. I’ve heard you say before, “Albert Einstein had 24 hours.” There are other ways to put it. I’ve thought about it before. Same with working out. I know that if I wake up early enough and go get in 30 minutes, I’m going to feel better. But what I tell myself is, “Gosh, I’m so busy. I just don’t think that this week or tomorrow I’m going to have time for it.” It’s like, what do you prioritize? And that’s hard. So hard.

Lawson Brown:
And when you’re especially smaller children or a growing family, God, you just are tired. It is a lot of work. You’ve got things that you used to maybe enjoy doing a lot of, golf or jogging or training or fishing or whatever it is. And you’ve got to think like, “Okay, I’m in a different part of life right now, and it’s not going to be this way forever. How do I make more time for things that I know God wants me to prioritize?” And it’s not you can’t from the ministry standpoint saying, with your finger pointed, “You should spend more time on your children.” It’s what everybody’s asking. It’s what 350 people said, “I wish I could handle it better.”

Kent Evans:
Yeah. Well, and the interesting thing about it is, and this may sound just a little bit blunt, but we all know if you’ve ever been diagnosed with an illness, I hope you haven’t been diagnosed with something super life-threatening, but if you get diagnosed with an illness, you go find time for the cure, right? You don’t even have it in your calendar. You don’t have it in your calendar, but man, if you’re diagnosed with that illness-

Lawson Brown:
That’s a good way to think about it.

Kent Evans:
Again, to put it really bluntly-

Lawson Brown:
[crosstalk 00:04:00]. Right.

Kent Evans:
Sadly. If you get diagnosed with some form of cancer, you find time for chemo. You find it. You don’t have it, so to speak, but you do find it. And the reason is because we end up finding time for the things that either we prioritize ourselves, it may be working out or balancing the budget or whatever, or life situations prioritize for us. Maybe a better example would be if your pipes burst in your basement, all of a sudden you’ve got time to do some plumbing work.

Lawson Brown:
Right, right, right.

Kent Evans:
Because you have to, you don’t really have a choice. You can call some professionals, I guess, but that’s the challenge is when the pipes burst or when you have a medical problem, you can outsource some of that time to professionals.

Lawson Brown:
Yes. Don’t wait on a crisis. There are ways to do this.

Kent Evans:
Exactly. But when your kids need you, you really can’t outsource that. Today, this very day when we’re recording this podcast, earlier today, I had a gentleman here who I had hired through a web service come and dig a four-foot hole in my backyard so we could put in a new basketball goal. It took him about two hours. And I don’t feel one ounce of shame that I went and spent 70 bucks to have him do that because you know what I needed to do? This podcast.

Kent Evans:
And so today, the two hours you and I will spend doing podcast episodes, I could have either done that, or I could have spent the money and had someone dig the hole and do the … for me. Now there have been times in my life; there have been times in my life-

Lawson Brown:
You would’ve taken longer than him. You would’ve taken a lot longer than two hours.

Kent Evans:
Oh my goodness.

Lawson Brown:
Whoever that guy was, that guy that done it in two hours, it would take you three times.

Kent Evans:
Absolutely. Number one, it saved me time. But here’s what I also know. I don’t want a dad to hear this and go, “Well, yeah. If you’ve got money, you just buy time.” Well, kind of. And there have been a lot of times, a lot of times in my life when I didn’t have that 70 bucks, and that’s when I did the toilet repair myself at my house. That’s when I did put in my own tile bathroom floor because I didn’t have the several hundred bucks to hire someone to do it. So I do understand the fact that there’s going to be dads listening to this who go, “Well, yeah. Sure. If I had unlimited money, I’d just buy myself a bunch of time back.” So I don’t want to hear it wrong, but what I have figured out, really when dads are saying they don’t have enough time, one of the things they’re also saying at the same time they’re saying that is they are a bit jumbled or still figuring out their priorities.

Kent Evans:
I’m going to give you a specific example, Lawson, and I want you to react to it. One of the survey responses that we got back from our thousands of dad respondents was from a guy who described his cycling hobby. Oddly, to answer the question, “What’s your single greatest challenge as the father,” he typed in how much of an avid cyclist he was. And he made a couple of sentences about that. I thought, “Well, that’s an odd response.” And then he went on to say, “Therefore, I don’t have enough time to be an engaged dad,” and I thought, “Should I call him? Should I just call him and go, ‘Hey man, I’m not like Nostradamus here, but I think I found you a couple hours a day.'”

Kent Evans:
So react to that because, look, one of the things you guys are going to learn about this podcast is you look at the characters in The Wizard of Oz, right? And they all needed something. The lion needed courage, the scarecrow needed a brain, the tin man needed a heart, and I’m not going to deny sometimes I can come across like the tin man. I just need a heart. I need a heart. But I do want to tell some dads, man, they might need to take their hobbies or hobby and sit it on the shelf for a year or five or 10 while their kids are young. Can I say that on this podcast, Lawson, or am I going to get us in a bunch of trouble?

Lawson Brown:
No. I mean, it’s yours.

Kent Evans:
This is my show. This is my show.

Lawson Brown:
And you said it. And by the way, it’s too late. But listen, here’s my reaction. I think that is a very cut and dry, black and white practical example. Two hours a day on a bicycle or two hours in your backyard digging a hole. I don’t think most people, when they answer that question, have something so specific in their mind. I think it’s more an unorganized, it’s a bit of a … I don’t want to say it’s a feeling, like we just feel so busy because everybody’s so busy. I mean, that’s a fact, but it is not like … Hey, that guy was at least being, first of all, he was being honest. Maybe he had a blind spot, but most of it is probably more like …

Lawson Brown:
I just don’t know. It probably goes with one of the … I think it was the third or fourth one, and he was saying, “I just don’t know where to start. I don’t know how to start. I don’t know what to do.” And so yeah, balancing priorities, time management, some people are better at it than others. Some people overthink it, and they’re forcing time on their kids in a certain way or on their wife in some specific way because they got some idea about something or whatever. I guess what I’m saying is if it were me, and I had this happen, and thankfully I was able to get into a men’s group early enough on in my faith walk to have some guys that have been way farther down the road than me and could speak maybe like the tin man, like, “Yeah. Well, maybe if you didn’t fly for your job every single week for three and four days … Can you not turn that down any?”

Lawson Brown:
There’s places in your life you can find. You can find time. It’s a matter of putting your energy into it. And I think having some people in your life who can help you be that person that says, “I think that’s a little out of balance.” If you’re rolling down the road and you’ve got a tire that’s about to come loose and somebody behind you notices it, you want them to pull up beside you and go, “Hey, dude. I think you’re right tire is …” Same thing. You want some people, probably guys, definitely your wife, who you can ask. You’ve got to ask and be open-minded and open-hearted to say, “How do you think I’m doing?”

Kent Evans:
Well, man, you’ve hit on something really interesting. I had a friend, Trey, who used to say, “There’s two kinds of people in the world. One kind of person stands out in his front yard and says, ‘Hey, my house is on fire. Will you help me put it out?'” And he goes, “I’ll help that guy all day. I’ll die trying to help that guy. There’s a second person who stands on his front yard and says, ‘Look, my house is burning down. Will you stand here and let me gripe and watch it burn?'”

Lawson Brown:
Right.

Kent Evans:
Trey goes, “No, man. I ain’t up for that.”

Lawson Brown:
Right.

Kent Evans:
And I think, to your point, if we’re honestly seeking the resolution to the problem, and we say something like, “Man, I just don’t feel like I have enough time. Would you look at my calendar and tell me what you think?” Wow. That’s a whole different attitude than, “I don’t have enough time, and don’t you dare tell me how to find any.” Whoa! It’s like Jesus used to always ask people, “Do you want to be well? Do you want to be well?” And I think for those of us who have the time challenge, which is most of us, do you want it to be different? And if you do, we’re going to end up talking more about it because here’s what we can’t do. Here’s what you and I, and all the engineers and all the scientists and all the smart people in the world, none of us can change the pace at which time moves. We cannot manufacture time. We cannot manufacture time. All we can manufacture is what we do with it. The conversation about time ends up being the smokescreen for priorities, for priorities.

Lawson Brown:
And most likely, probably not intentionally. They’re not trying to throw smoke in the room. They feel themselves in a smoke-filled room that they can’t figure their way out of, but God, time. Dude, time is so important. When I lost my job … This is, I don’t know, 18, 20 years ago, babies were young. And then again, during the pandemic, it was like those two periods of times, they were opportunities for stress to be created and a forced pause in time there where in both of those situations, 18 years apart, my wife and I and our two girls were just together more than ever. And I remember those way more than I remember any sweet spot in my career.

Kent Evans:
Wow. Wow. That’s a great point. Yeah. I remember working for a company at one point where I had finally hit a job where, A, I was making pretty good money. I don’t want to deny the fact that it was a good paying gig, for sure. And I was traveling, I had a big expense budget, all that, and to some nice places. I wasn’t traveling to … Oh, man. I almost just set a city name right then, and boy, I was going to-

Lawson Brown:
Yeah, don’t do that.

Kent Evans:
Yeah. Okay.

Lawson Brown:
Jus say some city.

Kent Evans:
Rule number one, some city that rhymes with … No, I’m just kidding. Don’t even do it. We can’t even do … Whatever, man. I remember traveling, and it was to some nice places. I was traveling, Paris, London, fun places. But I remember distinctly realizing I’d finally hit a spot in my career where I aggressively did not want my boss’ job. Every job I’ve had before, I wanted the next one and the next one and the next one.

Lawson Brown:
Right, right, right, right. Yep.

Kent Evans:
Then finally, I hit a spot where I looked at my boss, his name was Alexi. Great guy, French guy, super good dude. I loved working for him. And I remember thinking, “If he moves in the company, gets a different job and they offer me his job, I’m quitting immediately. There’s no way.” Literally 90 or 95% travel, 90 or 95. Now I know some guys, they’re in that job right now. They’re listening to this podcast on an airplane. They’re listening to this podcast on their iPhone in a city where they feel like they are lonely, they’re away from their family, and they’re sad and they feel trapped. And I’m not saying just to hand in your two weeks notice and wreck your finances and go live in a van down by the river so you can get all your time back. What I am saying is maybe it’s time to think about a one or two-year transition or six-month transition so that you can buy back some of your time. And that’s what we’ll talk about, Lawson, on the other side of this really short break.

Kent Evans:
Hey Dad, sometimes being a dad can seem like a very difficult journey for which you and I are ill equipped, and we need gear on this journey. So we built a seven-part framework, and we call it Survival Gear: The Seven Must-Have Tools Every Dad Needs For His Journey. We took these tools, we wrapped them all into an ebook, and that ebook is entirely free. You can download this free ebook at manhoodjourney.org/survival-gear. That’s /survival-gearmanhoodjourney.org. Come snag this free ebook and get equipped for your fatherhood journey.

Kent Evans:
So Lawson, as we talked about before we took the break, there are some guys who, to your point, like the smoke-filled room metaphor, they just feel trapped or stuck. They want to buy back some time. They’re not just chasing a hobby three hours a day. They’re picking it up, laying it down at work. They’re getting maybe promoted. What are a couple things that we could share with that busy professional guy for ways that he could redeem some of the time, and I’ll go first, and then you chime in.

Kent Evans:
One of the ways is guys have asked me, “Hey, do I have to give up all my hobbies,” and I just say maybe. Right? Maybe. So as an example, I was a good golfer back in the day. Now for a couple reasons, one, I had more time and no kids yet, and also was in a sales role where I had an expense report and my golf membership at the club was paid for by my company, so taking customers was actually encouraged. So that’s the greatest accelerant for your golf game, right? If somebody else pays for it and they give you time off to go do it. So I got down to where I was an eight or nine, 10 handicapper. I’d shoot low 80s anywhere on Earth I’d go. I was a good golfer. And then we started having kids.

Kent Evans:
Fast forward, about 20 years plus or minus. The last time I played golf was last year at the request of a board member friend of mine, and we were taking out a ministry friend of ours. And so it was a great event. We had a blast. Great relational time. We were at a ritzy golf club, ritzy, ritzy. Members only, high-ticket golf club that he was paying for, and by the sixth hole, one of the soles of my golf shoes came completely detached from the leather golf shoe. I don’t know if you know much about golf, but they have cleats in them-

Lawson Brown:
Right.

Kent Evans:
… for a reason.

Lawson Brown:
Is that not part of it?

Kent Evans:
Yeah. Well, that’s the whole thing. They have little cleats in the bottom of the shoe so you can have grip. Well, when you’re standing on just a strap of leather like Pocahontas, you’ve basically got this moccasin on now, it doesn’t work as well. By the 13th or 14th hole, the other shoe … I literally finished the day wearing leather golf shoe-like moccasins with two shoe bottoms, complete shoe bottoms in the caddie’s golf cart at this hot-ticket golf club. All that to say the reason was they basically dry rotted because that’s how infrequently [crosstalk 00:18:09] look at my shoes. You see where my priorities have been? I mean, dude, it was both thrilling and validating and embarrassing all at the same time.

Lawson Brown:
Right.

Kent Evans:
But I want to encourage guys, I want to encourage guys in this way and say, yeah, you might have to give up some hobbies, but you know what else we could do? Depending on the hobbies, we can bring our kids, especially as they get older. If you’d like to go shoot clay pigeons, man, once your kid’s nine or 10, go get him a cheap shotgun and take him out shooting clay pigeons with you. Spend some time together. If you like fishing, take your kids fishing. If you like to go throw football, throw a football in the yard with your kids. There are some things we can do that are hobby centric and activity based where we can just pull our kids into the things that we enjoy, and it creates time. It’s like you’re manufacturing time when you do that because you’re getting kid time and you’re also getting wife bonus points for taking the kids out of her hair for half an hour and go throwing some football. So there are some things we can do.

Lawson Brown:
God, you just brought back a memory. You did. You did, dude. I remember because at one point when I worked for GE, I was flying, maybe not every single week, but it was a lot. I was on a big project kind of thing and both girls were young. I remember getting home and Audrey was like, “Tag.” Like, “Here, you’re it.” And she’s gone. And you know what? Rightfully so. But man, did I overdo it back then. We had a wake-up call. And back to the way you were putting earlier on the podcast saying, “If you all of a sudden come down with some life-threatening disease, guess what you’re going to spend time doing?” So avoiding a crisis, if you can do it and you are open-minded enough and honest with yourself enough, ask the right questions, maybe get some folks in your life who are on that same page. Maybe they’re even struggling with it like you. I’m not saying you’ve got to go scour the Earth to try to find four dudes to get in your life that have all the answers. That ain’t going to happen. But people that want the best for you, that understand you, that you can be honest with and get that stuff out in the open, that’s how you start.

Kent Evans:
Oh yeah. Awareness is half the battle, right? I mean, just being able to say, “Man, I don’t know if I’m managing my calendar correctly,” is a huge issue. Here’s the other thing that I found as my kids got a bit older and they started to develop some of their own interests and hobbies. I would just lean into their hobbies, and sometimes that was just listening only. In other words, my oldest son’s a really good guitar player today. He showed a lot of promise early, and I was happy to let him sit down in our basement and play hours of guitar. A good way to burn all that energy when he’s 14 and 16 and he wasn’t on the internet trolling bad images.

Kent Evans:
So I’m like, “Hey, go practice guitar.” But I’ve spent more time, I spent more time listening to him describe guitars to me, fretboards, action, pickups, and music theory that I still don’t totally understand, but I was leaning into his hobby. I was leaning into his hobby and trying to relate to him and just rolling around in conversations about things that he knew a lot about that I didn’t know about, and I used him as my teacher. And I found it was actually kind of interesting. I still can’t play guitar. I really don’t have any interest in playing guitar, but it was a great way for us to connect over something that he loved. And I didn’t sit there pining away how I wish I were out playing golf. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Lawson Brown:
And that’s the priority, is them. Yeah, you’re going to have to pull back on golf or bicycling or video game, whatever it is, and place them above you. I can’t tell you how many hours of sitting, watching singing or gymnastics, oh, and by the way, at least with guitar, you have a little bit like maybe you could participate, or in your case, football or baseball or whatever. Dance, ballet …

Kent Evans:
Oh, come on, man. You’d be an awesome dancer.

Lawson Brown:
I can dance.

Kent Evans:
You have-

Lawson Brown:
I can dance. This is different. You’ve got to understand. This is a little bit different, Ken. You haven’t been … Well, maybe you have.

Kent Evans:
I’m actually just picturing you in a ballet outfit, and I’m not liking what I’m seeing.

Lawson Brown:
Why would you do that?

Kent Evans:
Yeah.

Lawson Brown:
Why would you do that?

Kent Evans:
I know. That’s a huge mistake. I know. That’s a huge mistake.

Lawson Brown:
Or swim meets. What is it? You don’t even know which kid is yours, right? You could just see a little head bobbing.

Kent Evans:
I remember the first time we were going to one of our kids’ swim meets, and it’s a neighborhood, not an all-year-long thing, but an eight weeker, and somebody said, “Hey, bring a flashlight.” And I thought, “Bring a flashlight? It’s like five o’clock. The sun stays up till 9:30,” and they go-

Lawson Brown:
[crosstalk 00:22:48]

Kent Evans:
“Bring a flashlight.” I’m like, “All right.” Well, here it is, 11:30, midnight. The swim meet is ending, and there’s 600 kids going, “Where are my goggles? I can’t find my [inaudible 00:22:59]. And you’re like, “Ah. I wish I’d brought a flashlight.”

Lawson Brown:
Dude, I don’t miss swim meets a bit.

Kent Evans:
I love swimming. I loved it. But buddy, man, whew. Yeah. But you know what? Even that, we would end up in a circle of parents-

Lawson Brown:
In those cases, I couldn’t participate. I’m looking from a distance. You see gymnastics, you see them dancing. But I’m present. You’re there. They know you’re there. You talk on the way there and on the way back.

Kent Evans:
Yeah. You know what I did one time? I did participate in the swim meet, but they threw me out. I don’t know why. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to get in the pool? “Is he doing that again? God, get that guy out of here.” What is Evan’s doing? Actually, it’s funny. One time, it was so hot, like it was 105 plus or whatever. At halftime, they do the break in the middle. They go, “Hey, parents. We don’t normally do this, but if you want to jump in the pool real quick, feel free.” And we did. There was like 50 of us-

Lawson Brown:
That’s great.

Kent Evans:
… jumped in the pool, and I was so grateful. Let me do this, Lawson. As we land the plane a little bit on this idea of time, what I want to acknowledge for the dads listening, if you’re a dad listening to this and you feel trapped by time, I want you to take heart and I want you to, even though I’m a little bit the tin man, I may come across like I don’t care. I really do care. I just want you to know that you have, perhaps, more control over time than you think you do. It just may take some intentional work. It may take some thinking.

Kent Evans:
You might be on a volunteer committee at your church, and for a season, you go, “You know what? Man, I do want to volunteer at church, but there’s also another guy on this committee who really needs to step into the leadership of this committee, and I’m going to vacate my seat so he can step up. And I’m just going to spend this time with my kids.” And I’m not saying, “Don’t go volunteer church.” Don’t hear me wrong. What I am saying is there may be pockets, pockets where you can find five and 10, 30 minutes here and there.

Kent Evans:
I love how Steve Farrar shared it in the book, Point Man, which it’s 2021 when we’re recording this episode, and that book came out probably in the ’80s, maybe mid to late ’80s. I forget. It’s been around a long time. And at the time he wrote it, there was this thing in American culture about the notion of quality time. Quality time. And I love how he positioned quality time in the book. He goes, “You can’t create quality time on purpose. You don’t know when time with your family is going to morph into quality time.” The only way you can find quality time is create as much quantity time as you possibly can, and then accidentally, in the midst of that quantity time, there will be moments of quality.” And I remembered that very clearly from the book, Point Man by Steve Farrar. If you haven’t read it, Dad, go read it. It’s great book.

Lawson Brown:
Yeah, it’s really good.

Kent Evans:
It’s really good. And it’s just this idea, this idea that we could take them to the grocery. So if I’m running an errand, the other night, I had to go run an errand and I just grabbed one of my kids. I said, “Hey, come with me.” We didn’t do anything. We didn’t talk about anything deep or spiritual, but I created a 30-minute moment where I took my six-year-old to the grocery store and we get out of the grocery store and he’d just gotten glasses, and we were walking in the parking lot, and he goes, “Dad, dad, stop. Look.”

Lawson Brown:
Yeah, that’s fantastic.

Kent Evans:
And I said, “What?” And he goes, “When I’m walking, it’s like I’m walking up a mountain.” It was just because he was looking down, and his new glasses, he’d just gotten glasses, it made the concrete move weird.

Lawson Brown:
That’s fantastic.

Kent Evans:
That was a moment.

Lawson Brown:
Right.

Kent Evans:
That was a 10-second moment-

Lawson Brown:
Totally. Yeah.

Kent Evans:
… that I couldn’t have created if I hadn’t read the book, Point Man, 20 years ago and just decided to grab my kid on the way to the grocery store. So what’s a closing idea, Lawson, you would say [crosstalk 00:26:43].

Lawson Brown:
Here’s what I’ve been writing as we’ve been talking. It is there. You’ve got to make an intentional effort to make time. It exists. You can do it. Get honest feedback. Before you start, have some people check you out, talking to your life, and then adjust, gauge, readjust, gauge, adjust. It is not an overnight thing. And then the last thing I would just say is just pray about it. God’s going to lead you to how to prioritize what’s most important. How is he going to be a part of your family in a new and better way? So that’s what I wrote down.

Kent Evans:
Good word, brother. Hope this has been encouraging to you guys. We’ll see you on the next episode. God bless.

Kent Evans:
Hey, Dad. Thank you for listening to today’s show. If you found this episode helpful, remember you can get all the content and show notes at manhoodjourney.org/podcast. And if you really liked it, please consider doing three things. Number one, share this podcast with someone. You can hit the share button in your app, wherever you listen to podcasts, or just call the person up and tell them to listen in.

Kent Evans:
Number two, subscribe to this podcast so you get episodes automatically. That helps us as well to help dads find the show. You can do that through your favorite listening app, whatever that is. And finally, review this podcast. Leave us a review, good or bad, wherever you listen. Those reviews also help other dads find the show. You can always learn more about what we’re up to at manhoodjourney.org or fatheronpurpose.org. We will see you next week.

Voiceover:
You’ve been dozing off to the Father On Purpose Podcast, featuring Kant Evans and Lawson Brown. Now, wake up. Head over to fatheronpurpose.org for more tools that can help you be a godly, intentional, and not completely horrible Dad. Remember, you are not a father on accident. So go be a father on purpose.