Balance is about keeping things symmetrical—identical on all sides. It’s about things being equal. If we were to draw a picture of balance, we’d probably draw scales and balance beams. Maybe we’d get creative and draw a ballerina or someone riding a bicycle. Or tightrope walker. Can you imagine being a tightrope walker? Just one small mistake and down you go. That’s what trying to find balance in our life can feel like. Just one small mistake and down we go.
We have been told all of our lives, that achieving and maintaining balance should be our goal. That if we eat a balanced diet, we will be healthier. If we learn to balance our time between work and home, everyone will be happier. If we balance our time between childcare, pet care, and the activities and tasks which we need to do in order to have clean clothes, a clean home, and food to eat, everyone in the house will be happier. Achieving mind, body, spirit balance means that all parts of our life are integrated in harmony. Balance can help us stay healthy mentally, physically, and spiritually.
So, what’s the problem? Here’s the problem: Achieving a balanced live is really really hard to do.
Consider this entry posted on Reddit entitled Trying to Live a balanced life is burning me out:
“I am burning myself out trying to fit all of this in a day or even a week: cook, clean, do laundry, work, take care of the baby, exercise, meditate, learn a new language, speak to family and friends, paint, read a book, and spend time with my spouse.
I feel I am running from one task to another. I have tried to schedule all of the necessary tasks — even my meditation is scheduled for a 10 minute slot and the moment that's over I have a million other things to do. I am not sure how to simplify my life, and I feel like I am drowning. There's an endless to do list that I NEED to do to keep my home, body and mind running smoothly. Any advice ?”
I think most of us in this room can relate to the feelings of stress and exhaustion that this mother is expressing. We have all felt the crunch of our time with our responsibilities and our jobs. The demands on our time that cause us to drive through McDonalds just to get some food into our bodies, the times when we couldn’t be there for our children, the reality that we just couldn’t get it all done.
Surprisingly, our reddit writer received a lot of great advice.
I particularly liked this response:
“It might help to look at life as seasons. You are in a season where you can't do it all. Period. You can't and you don't have to. Put learning a new language and painting on the back burner, for now, and get back to those dreams at another time. Or not.
I've been a working mom, a stay at home mom and now I am in my 50s. I am now in a different season of life. Spread it out over seasons.”
As I read and researched this topic this past week, I found many articles that reinforced exactly what this woman’s advice was.
My friends — here is the truth of the matter: living a balanced life is a myth. We can’t do it. We can’t be good at everything all the time. When I was a high school teacher, I fondly remember the extra difficult times right before spring break, or Christmas break, or at the end of the school year when everyone, not just the students, was ready for school to be over. We teachers often found ourselves at the end of those days looking at each other and saying, “We kept the lid on the building, and no one died.” Our finest teaching didn’t happen on those days. We just did our best to get through it.
In order to do things well, we have to prioritize our focus. We need to think of ourselves as jugglers. We will always have more balls in the air than we have hands to catch them. Because of this, as long as we are juggling, there will always be balls in the air.
Balance is learning which ball to focus on. After all, a juggler only catches one ball at a time. Because of this, there will always be balls in the air that we won’t be able to catch. Those extra balls will either have to remain in the air, or fall to the ground for a time, until we can pick them back up again. So, let’s focus on the one ball we need to catch, and take our focus away from the other balls for a time. That’s the looking at our life as seasons part.
When we have a baby, we have a baby. We don’t have a clean house, we don’t have a beautiful yard, we don’t necessarily have clean clothes. But we have a baby whose needs are being tended to. When we have a puppy, we have a puppy. Same as having a baby. When our kids grow up and they play sports, we have kids in sports, we don’t have any free time.
Our lives are not static; they are seasonal. We are constantly transitioning through different season of life. So balance in one season will look much different than balance in another.
The Bible reminds us:
“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” — Ecclesiastes 3:1
There is a time for every matter under heaven. And heaven knows we can’t deal with all of the matters at the same time.
It’s time to be honest with ourselves. We have chaotic weeks. One right after another. And that ideal normal week we have been imagining that we will eventually return to when “things finally slow down” never really comes.
There are no normal weeks.
But — that doesn’t mean we should accept perpetual busyness or constant stress as normal either. Perfect balance is not what we are really after. Instead,
“What we want is this: Appropriate allocation for the present season. Specifically, an appropriate allocation of time, energy, and focus according to our current season of life.” — Reagan Rose
In other words, we give the time we can to the most important priorities of our lives at the time. In the current season. We can’t do it all. However, we can have the priority of the season in our lives, and give to that need for a season. When our season changes, how we spend our time will change right along with it.
So here is the key: Accept it. Be Ok with not being good at all of the things, all of the time. Accept that our life is much more like seasons than we ever knew.
My friends, it’s ok if we can’t achieve the perfect balance. No one can. It’s an impossible goal. Amen.
Oprah Winfrey has stated:
“You can have it all. You just can’t have it all at once.” — Oprah Winfrey
Let’s be comforted by those words whenever someone tells us that we need to strive for perfect balance in our lives.
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