Finding Balance
When I was a young mother with an infant at home I was a student of parenthood. I would ask other parents for bits of wisdom wanting to hear their stories of what worked and didn’t work. I would like to hear from you. What kind of changes have you made to bring your life into proper balance? Please leave your answers in the comments below.
When I was a young mother with an infant at home I was a student of parenthood. I would ask other parents for bits of wisdom wanting to hear their stories of what worked and didn’t work.
I remember one mother with grown children telling me that she regretted putting so much time into making her house clean that she missed out on so much with her kids.
She said that her kids had much more respect for her husband because he would come home from work and play with them while she was too busy fussing about getting the house clean.
Her life was out of balance and her children paid the price.
There are many things that demand our attention that can easily pull us off balance.
When I talk about balance I am talking about being socially, spiritually, physically, and emotionally healthy.
When we have a passion for something and it consumes our time, this can throw us off balance.
When we have great demands on us from other people, we can get out of balance.
If a person is more content using social media than spending time in relationship with others, then this could be a social imbalance.
When someone does not dedicate spending time with Jesus every day, this is spiritual imbalance.
A person who eats what they want, whenever they want, showing no restraint. This is physical imbalance. Or the individual who exercises too much or not enough also is out of balance.
What about the person who acts on their emotions and “follows their heart”. Their emotions are leading their actions causing imbalance.
When I find myself leaning to one side or the other. I remind myself of 1 Corinthians 6:12 which says:
12 “I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything.
I must remind myself, that just because something is good, doesn’t mean it is beneficial.
I once found myself leading a weekly woman’s Bible study, leading a youth group, leading Sunday morning worship, homeschooling 2 kids, driving school bus, participating on the local Park and Rec board, leading a mom’s group, doing jail ministry, and leading an after-school kid’s club. All at the same time!
All these things were good. All these things were necessary. However, I was being depleted. My life was tremendously out of balance.
I had the feeling that if I didn’t do these things then they would not get done.
However, being depleted means that I have nothing left to give to my marriage or to my children.
I needed to get back in balance in every area of my life. It took the Lord causing a redirection in my life to bring me to a healthy place again.
I have learned that it is important to regularly reevaluate my life to see if there are any imbalances that need to be corrected. I would like to hear from you. What kind of changes have you made to bring your life into proper balance? Please leave your answers in the comments below.
