"...his priorities for that period of time."

I was watching Cold Pizza this morning. One of the news items was on Philadelphia Eagles head coach Andy Reid. It's been pretty well-documented that Coach Reid has had some heavy-duty family issues to deal with lately. One of his sons tested positive for heroin, another son was arraigned on drug and weapons charges.

So Coach Reid took a five-week leave of absence from the Eagles in order to attend to his family. That's good and all, but I just can't help but wonder if some of these problems with his boys could have been avoided if Coach had taken more time away from the Eagles prior to the arrests. Like waaaay prior, and waaaay often.

Now, I don't know Andy Reid personally, and I don't know what kind of father he is. But I do know that most NFL coaches are work-a-holic, job maniacs who sometimes sleep in their offices so they can spend more time at work. Again, I don't know if that's the case with Andy Reid but it is the case with many NFL coaches.

Now, for those coaches who don't have families, I guess I'm okay with that. But if you have a family...well, that's just no good.

The thing that caught my attention on Cold Pizza today was when Skip Bayless was asked if Coach Reid did the right thing by taking five weeks off--away from his team. Skip had a good answer. He said, "Yes, absolutely he did the right thing. If a guy can't lead his own kids, how's he going to lead an NFL team?"

Skip's right. My question is, has Andy been leading his kids well all along? Or has he been primarily leading his NFL team at the expense of his family?

I think about this stuff all the time. Andy Stanley wrote a book called Choosing To Cheat. The premise of the book is this: as leaders in our family, we have to choose where to cheat and where to not cheat with our time. He says, basically, that inevitably, with all that we have going on in our lives, something is going to get overlooked. And then he says that cheating home is never the right choice. When we cheat our family, we say, you are important, but work [or football, or shopping, or whatever occupies your time] is more important. We end up, in a sense, devaluing each other. "Cheating" will express security and worth to your family.

So I have to evaluate: where am I going to cheat. Because the reality is, something or somebody is going to get cheated sometime in my day/week/life. So my challenge is that if I'm going to err by spending too much time somewhere, I need to err on the side of my family.

I just wonder how this all played out for Coach Reid.

I read an article on MSNBC that quote Eagles' president, Joe Banner. At the time of Coach Reid taking the leave of absence, Mr. Banner said, “(Andy's) not going to come into the office. His priorities will be his family for that period of time."

For that period of time, huh?

My goal, my challenge, is to make my family my priority for every period of time.

I hope it all works out for Coach Reid and his family. Maybe his perspective on all this is different now.