What's it worth to you?

How do you determine if a project is worth what you put into it? How do you know if a certain activity in your life is worthy of the energy and time you give to it? Where is the balance, where is the scale where you put your loss of health and family time on one side and your magnum opus, your great work on the other?

P.J O'Rourke once wrote about the gift that Mozart had given to the world. He said we'd never know if his devotion to his work ever cost his family too much; we'll never know if there were negative effects on his kids because he worked himself to death writing the Requiem. We'll never know if Sir Isaac Newton's children grew up sad and neglected, shortchanged because of their father's addiction to being lazy and sitting under fruit trees. O'Rourke was being facetious, of course, and his opinion was that the world's greatest works in science and culture were worth a few neglected kids with father issues. Me, I'm not so sure if that's true.

We see it on TV shows and in books all the time. A cop is devoted, sold out to his (or her) job, never sleeping or going home until the criminal is caught... and he's divorced because he's never home. A woman devotes herself to being on neighborhood watch to rid her community of drug dealers, and loses her job and her family in the process. They're hometown heroes, people with awards of appreciation from their local governments and charity organizations-- but they screwed over their families.

In the book This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti, a man finds himself fighting against some evil things going on in his hometown. It takes more and more of his energy and time, until the following conversation happens with his wife:

"Kate, you've no idea how big this thing is."

She shook her head. She didn't want to hear it. "That's not at issue here. As a matter of fact, I'm sure it is big, it is extremely important, and it probably does warrant the amount of time and energy you've put into it. But what I am coping with now is the detriment that this whole thing has been to this family."

Maybe you have a vision for a charity in your town-- a non-profit daycare for moms, a crisis pregnancy center, a teen center-- and you transform your community, but you lose the respect of your children. Maybe you're a gifted national speaker, a pastor, a teacher, and you travel the world teaching and encouraging others... and your wife barely nods when you return home. Maybe you're a doctor, and you believe you've found the cure for cancer; you work days and weeks and months, sleeping in the clinic, until the answer is found-- and you return home to share the news with an empty house.

Maybe it's nothing that drastic or huge. Maybe you're the one friends always turn to for help; you're often on the phone or in the car, delivering meals or comforting the bereaved. Your family loves you, but your kids know better than to ask you to play a board game because you never have time, and your husband knows to grab fast food on the way home from work; he doesn't even bother to ask what's for dinner anymore. Or you're running a great program at your church (teens, kids, music, discipleship, etc.), but it's taken its toll. You're home most of the time, but you're not really present. People are being blessed and helped because of you, but your family is taking their lumps because of it. Maybe you're a great blogger-- people love your inspirations, your thoughts. You're encouraged and comforted by what people say in response to your writing, you feel connected to others in the world-- but your house is a wreck, you've never met your REAL neighbors, and you're already regretting that you never seemed to have time to teach your kids how to play pat-a-cake or sing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider."

One of the issues here, of course, is that often the desire to excel at work or in a community program is driven by how satisfying it is. Some people work long hours because they need to (most of the people in my grandparents' generation, my father, my friend's brother-in-law). Some people work long hours because they are workaholics (my mother, many of my friends' fathers). The people in this second group derive solid feelings of completion and satisfaction from what they do; their fulfillment on the job is very real for them. The decision to leave work and go home is often a sacrifice for them, even if they have peaceful home lives-- it's tough for them, because they love what they do. It almost seems backwards to them: "Go home and concentrate on your top priorities, even though they don't FEEL like your top priorities and they really don't come that naturally to you and you'll spend the whole evening trying not to think about that business proposal on your desk."

I'm not trying to make an argument for the whole "Brainless Betty" thing from the 50's, where a woman shouldn't find fulfillment anywhere but home, or that men shouldn't be finding ways to connect meaningfully. I'm not saying that God doesn't put ambitions and dreams in us to make our communities better, or that He doesn't call us to outreach. I'm just saying, how much is too much? How many hours of service can you do without making your first commitments suffer? And is that answer the same for every person in the world? And how many great "servants" of this world actually should have been unknowns, unseen heroes that gave more to their families? How many great biographies in this world have been written about people that God would count as huge failures in the spouse/parent department?