Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Common Misconceptions Of A WAHF

I think there are a lot of misconceptions out there about families who work from home, specifically in ministry.
Here is a series I'm starting to "debunk" all the myths of THIS "Work At Home Family".


"It Must Be Nice To See Your Husband ALL THE TIME"

This is just NOT the case. Yes, we work together and yes, Josh's office is in the middle of our house, but I beg to differ with this misconception.

I do SEE him a lot ... in passing. We work in shifts in order to get all the work done. When he's not getting set lists ready, writing new music, writing books, answering e-mails, sending e-mails, practicing, returning unending phone calls, having band practice and going to meetings, then I get to snag a few minutes to get my side of the work done while he helps with the kids.

We try to find at least one meal to eat together because we don't know what each week will hold during dinner time, whether it's band practice, meetings, etc. There were a couple days last week that I hardly saw him because of these very things that just happened to fall during dinner time and throughout the day. This is not the norm though and we are really working hard on trying to balance "work time" and "family time" and trying to schedule things during "normal business hours", but this is ministry, not a normal business, so things happen.

We DO get to travel together but just because Josh is right by my side doesn't mean that he is mentally there with me. If he has a huge set list going around in his mind or a lot of details with the band to get straight I might as well forget trying to discuss our weekend plans or my newest money-saving endeavor=)

All this to say, we're not just hanging out together all day.  I do love what we do, though, and there is NOTHING else I'd rather be doing.  Not to mention all the benefits of our type of job, like having Josh right here if I need to just run out for something and setting our own schedule, just to name a few.

I know that EVERY ONE OF YOU can relate, no matter what type of job your family is in, I just thought I'd shed some light to the hopefulls that thought that working at home was the easy way out=)

1 comment:

Joy said...

Very cool! Can't wait to hear more misconceptions debunked!

Daniel doesn't necessarily work at home but his time is so much more flexible, being that he's at his dad's church. He doesn't get anything done if he's home, though. Unless it's practicing worship! Then we all sing and dance together!