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| Billie Silvey |
| Helen Young: Taking Time for the Important |
| When Helen Young and I were working together on our time management book fifteen years ago, I was going out to her house in Malibu every week. It gave me a great opportunity to observe a woman of great spirituality as she responded to the demands of everyday life and the stress of time. I’ve always valued professionalism. My time with Helen was limited, and I was eager to make what I considered at the time the best use of it. To me, that meant being totally focused on the project at hand from the time I hit the front door until I left two or three hours later. Helen was constitutionally opposed to that kind of singlemindedness. She’d stop for phone calls--from widows who needed someone to talk with, from grandchildren who just wanted to say “Hi” to Honey (their name for their grandmother, taken from what their grandfather called her). The name fit. She was sweet as honey, and we all wanted a part of her--discouraged missionaries, homesick foreign students--and me. She may not have seemed professional to me at my most professionally earnest, but she was practicing the lessons we both were writing about in our time management book--taking time for the important things. Helen and I are very different people. She once told me that she’d like to have more of my honesty, while I, realizing how much trouble honesty can get you into, recognized my need for her kindness. We had differing views of a woman’s place. While we both recognized the importance of using our gifts and valued our marriages highly, she used her gifts to support her husband Norvel in his work, while my husband Frank's job wasn't really something we could do together. We also had different approaches to time use. While I was more like Martha, using time in the most practical way, she, like Mary, almost automatically went for the spiritually superior. The older I’ve grown, the more I’ve come to appreciate her approach. I’m learning to slow down and value other people more. Although I may not be able to be as much like her as I'd like, I'm glad we were able to share that time together and that we have always shared a strong desire to yield ourselves to God for his purposes. |
| January 2006 |
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