You Are The G.C.

If you have a little remodel project in your home, chances are pretty good that you can find a jack­of­all­trades who can come in and, by himself, complete the entire project for you. Not so, if you’re building a shopping mall.

If you’re into the shopping mall thing, you will hire a general contractor—a G.C. The G.C. will probably do nothing—and I mean nothing—on the job except coordinate all the sub-contractors and their work and their paperwork. He won’t dig ditches, pour concrete, wire outlets, or install toilets. He just makes sure someone does do all of that.

You are the G.C.—of your life, that is. Some people’s lives are like those small projects, and they can accomplish everything themselves. Other lives are broader in scope, and that’s when being a good G.C. is most important.

You may be a mom who needs to coordinate the various household tasks among the children. You make sure they get paid (“excellent job, Johnny!”) and you make sure they understand that every job needs to be completed properly and on time, and when that time is. And as you go along in your life, there is one thing that you need to always remember: being your own G.C. is your most important job.

Since we’re using moms as our example, I will say that many moms lose sight of this principle—if they ever saw it. They get caught up in digging their own ditches and installing their own toilets (because they can do it better than their subs!) and they completely fail to coordinate their subs or pay them properly. The job winds up taking twice as long, and no one makes a profit (because the longer the job takes, the less money anyone makes) or wants to do this anymore. But it isn’t the fault of the subs, even though the subs almost always get blamed: it’s the G.C.’s job to keeping things going smoothly.

I mention this because I’ve recently noticed an unhappy situation. An acquaintance of mine is very, very busy. Also rather miserable, I might add. And I believe it’s because, rather than subbing out everything, and coordinating it all, he is trying to actually do too much of some things, and has completely given up ownership of others. There are some areas of his life to which he is almost totally oblivious, in fact. Interestingly enough, it doesn’t seem to matter that he’s doing too much of what he likes, and has given up ownership of areas that don’t interest him. God put him in charge of his entire life, yet he’s given parts of it into the keeping of others.

We just ain’t gonna be happy if we’re only doing half of our God-given job.

If you need help in order to accomplish everything that is in your heart, don’t be ashamed of that. But whatever you do, don’t give up your most important job.

You are your life’s only G.C.

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