The One Thing I’ll Never Be Too Busy For

Our first Easter after we moved back to South Carolina, we walked into my grandma’s house, and my boys stopped in the doorway.

They couldn’t quite process what they were seeing. Cousins everywhere. Aunts and uncles. My brother throwing a football with them in the front yard while the cousins hid Easter eggs out back. Inside, the table was full and loud. Nobody was in a hurry to be anywhere else.

My boys had grown up as a family of four, far from everyone. They had never known what it felt like to belong to something that big, that loud, and that warm.

They talked about it the whole way home. I looked at my husband in the front seat, and I didn’t have to say anything. We both knew. This was why we came home.

They Get What’s Left

Most of us don’t need more people in our lives. We need to give the people we already have more of ourselves.

It’s so easy to let the ones we love most get whatever’s left at the end of the day. The tired version of us. The distracted version, half-listening while we scroll. We tell ourselves we’ll slow down later. Call tomorrow. Plan something next month.

And before we know it, years slip by while the people who matter most are patiently waiting for our attention.

How I Put My People First

None of this is complicated. It just has to be on purpose.

Protect time for them. Sunday is our family day. No work. No errands. Church, home, the beach. I’ve broken that rule once in the past year. And if a good friend wants to get together on a Sunday, she almost always gets a yes, because good friends fill me up too.

Be all the way there. When I’m with my kids, I’m with my kids. My phone goes in another room at dinner. I want my boys to see a mom who looks up when they walk into the room.

Put it on the calendar. A while back, I noticed my husband, Steve, and I only talked about schedules and grocery lists. I missed him. So I started planning one date night a month. Nothing fancy. Just us. At first it felt a little forced. Then we started remembering who we were before life got so full. When the kids are grown and it’s just us again, I still want him to be my favorite person.

Keep showing up for old friends. When my best friend, my sister, and I all turned forty, we took a trip for each of our birthdays. Now we do it every year, because we know how easy it is to let one year turn into two, and two into five.

Don’t underestimate the small things. Call your parents. Visit your grandma just to check in. Sit on the porch with your neighbor while the kids play. Show up when someone needs help, even when it’s inconvenient. These are the moments nobody photographs, and they’re the ones that matter most.

What Really Matters

At the end of the day, it’s not the things you own, the titles you earn, or the accolades you receive that make life meaningful. It’s the people who walk through it with you. The ones who show up when life gets hard and celebrate with you when things get good.

I try to do less in general. But when it comes to the people I love, I try to give more. As I wrote in my book, Living Well, Pure and Simple:

“What really matters isn’t what you have. It’s who you share it with.”

One Simple Step

This week, choose one person you love and give them your full attention. Plan the date night. Call your mom. Take your kid for ice cream, just the two of you.

Put your phone away, and let them have the best of you, not what’s left.