What Are Your Markers of Success?

Back in the olden days, there were paper calendars with pretty pictures that hung on our kitchen walls. The one on display in our home tracked our crazy, busy schedule with two children. Looking at that calendar with all its crammed-full squares gave me a sense of worth. How skewed was that?!

But stew on this thought from Greg McKeown:

“What if we stopped celebrating being busy as a measurement of importance? What if instead we celebrated how much time we had spent listening, pondering, meditating, and enjoying time with the most important people in our lives?”

Success for me used to look like filling our calendar and getting as many items checked off my to-do list as possible in a day. The more I accomplished, the more successful I was, right?

But I wonder how God measures success.

If you’re going about the business of life with a job and a home and a family and a mortgage, I think God’s measure of success would look like loving the people he sends across your path in your line of work, making your home a haven for your family, paying your bills on time.

If you’re a creative, success could look like being diligent and faithful to paint, knit, weave, run the pottery wheel, write what God puts on your heart, and if only one person appreciates your art, values the hours you put into making something of beauty, or reads your book … and that one person’s life is blessed, encouraged, changed, then I think our Creator sees you as successful.

As a parent, you loved your kids, directed their lives toward God and integrity, disciplined them when needed. You prayed for them long after they left home, and even though some of them made decisions that were contrary to how you reared them, you did the best you knew with what you had ... well, then, I think God’s measure of success includes all that.

It’s not how busy you are, not how perfect your family is, not how many books you sell. It’s how much you love, how obedient your heart is to follow God’s leading, how much you want to honor him in your family, your craft, your work and ministry.

Someone named Emmie Rae weighed in on this:

“What if your markers of success were how well you slept at night? how many books you read? how easily you laughed? how much time you spent storytelling, feeling warm in the arms and homes of people you adore?”

I’m learning to slow down. To enjoy the sweet pleasure of standing beside my husband at our large windows, hugging a mug of chai latte and counting the trees we planted, noticing the production of the raspberry bushes, considering how tall the sunflowers have grown, talking about what we wanted to do for Friday date night.

Now if I can just learn to manage that darn to-do list.