Making Time For the Important Things!

I was reading a blog that I read a lot the other day. She had a story on there that really hit me and I wanted to share it with all my readers. She was talking about her pastor's sermon on Sunday. He got up there and in the middle of a sentence, this guy come in who was trying to run in a race and he had a heavy backpack on. The pastor asked him if he could help him and the runner told him that he was trying to run a race but he could not run because he was too weighed down. The pastor asked him what he was carrying and the man started getting stuff out of his backpack. He took out a cell phone, a laptop computer, several e-mails, a tv guide, and many more things. The pastor said I can see why you were so weighed down and could not get direction. This pastor told his congregation that a lot of the worldly things weigh us down and make it harder for us to get to where we are going. We spend so much time on worldly things that we forget about why we are really here and how important it is to spend time doing the "important" things. For example, prayer. We need to take the time in our lives to have personal prayer. That is our special time to talk to our father in heaven and ask for direction. How many of us say to ourselves, I don't have time for that? How are we going to find our way if we don't make time for it? Also, studying our scriptures is our time for our heavenly father to talk to us. He can help us find the direction that we need to go in our lives, but how many of us say we don't have time to study our scriptures, were just too busy. What are we so busy with that we don't take the time to do this? Kids, our house, that's some of my excuses. But how many of us take the time to watch a certain tv show each week? Play a computer game? Read our e-mail? Update our blog? Surf the web? Take a lot of calls on our cell phone? The list could go on forever. We seem to make time for those things we want to do, why not make time to do those things we need to do to find our way in this world? I added a lot of my own thoughts here, but the girl who this story came from said her pastor gave each of them a challenge. He wanted them to give up one of those worldly things that was preventing them from doing the things they needed to do for one week to see how they felt. Personally, I think this is a GREAT idea. I know that when I make time for those important things in my life, and I haven't mentioned this but that includes spending time with family too, I feel so much better. So, starting next Monday, I am going to give up the computer for a week. So, what am I going to do instead? I am going to spend more time playing with my kids and I am going to spend more time talking to my father in heaven (prayer) and listening to my heavenly father talk to me (reading scriptures). My kids and I are also going to go and visit my parents for the week. It will be nice to take a break from blogging and the computer. After the week, I will come back and report on what else I got done and my feelings during that time. Do you want to join me?
Is there something you could give up for one week?