The Key to Balance (No, For Real! The Struggle Ends Here)

I write about Balance, not because I am a Balance Expert, but because I am a Balance Struggler. I find Balance and lose Balance constantly. I have days or weeks or months where I find a good life-flow, chugging along happily and all well-balanced-like, only to be derailed by Something.

“It’s always something. If it ain’t one thing, it’s another.”  

~Rosanne Rosannadanna~

A few months ago, I dug out my old journals and began reading from the beginning. I started keeping a regular journal in 1990, around the time I graduated from college. I still lived at home, I worked part time at Kids R Us and I was dating a guy I thought I’d marry. My life circumstances were completely different than they are today. But, you know what was exactly the same? My Balance Struggle.

Always wondering what my priorities should be.
Always wrestling with time-management.
Always feeling stressed and overwhelmed.
Always berating myself for feeling stressed and overwhelmed.
Always striving.
Always trying to fix myself.

You have no idea how badly 46-year-old Sandy wants to sit down with 22-year-old Sandy and say, “Oh honey, please relax. You have so very little to stress about. You have no kids, no husband and practically no responsibility. Additionally, you have no wrinkles, no cellulite, no fashion sense and really awesome, albeit big and long, hair.”

 

As I made my way through a decade of journals, I relived the adventures of getting a real job, and breaking up with the guy I thought I’d marry, and marrying someone else, and moving across the country, and birthing babies, and burying a baby, and quitting my real job to raise babies, and adopting more babies, and moving across the country again.

Within ten years, everything changed. Everything except for this:

Always wondering what my priorities should be.
Always wrestling with time-management.
Always feeling stressed and overwhelmed.
Always berating myself for feeling stressed and overwhelmed.
Always striving.
Always trying to fix myself.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Every once in a while, I’d have a brief season of crystal clarity, where I grasped ahold of something that grounded me and balanced me. Where I had a supernatural level of peace and purpose.

Not overwhelmed.

Not berating.

I’d think, while I was reading, “Yes! You found it, Young Sandy! THIS. You are in such a good place. Stay there. Don’t let it slip!”

Then all of a sudden, I’d lose it again, and resort back to that awful pattern of wondering, wrestling, stressing and striving.

I read through these journals with a mixed sense of amusement and frustration, seeing a younger version of myself circle the exact same mountains, over and over and over. Despite the fact that I walked faithfully with God through all those years, I couldn’t find the key to making Balance stick.

Why was that?

That’s when I had a big, giant, two-part aha moment:

First: Whenever I feel Balance slipping away, I tend to blame circumstances or sleep deprivation or poor time management or bad diet.

And second: None of that matters as much as I think it does. I mean, circumstances and sleep and time management and diet certainly affect quality of life, and all that. It matters. But, amazingly, circumstances do not dictate my Balance levels, good or bad. Neither do my constant attempts at finding more efficient routines or healthier habits.

How I think about my circumstances has a greater impact on Balance than the circumstances themselves.

I was both shocked and encouraged to see that during some of the most difficult seasons of my adult life, I was also the most peaceful. Often in dark times, I had clarity. I moved through certain days confidently and joyfully, even when life was hard and unpredictable. Sometimes, I was able to transcend my ordinary, everyday life, and see things from a godly perspective.

And it was that godly perspective that made all the difference.

I started this year with an intention to go deeper in God. I wasn’t sure what that even meant, exactly. But I knew it involved core changes that would affect me forever. After reading through a fifteen-year documented account of my Balance Struggle (I stopped reading in 2005, because I couldn’t bear to relive the Depression Years and The Middle School Era), I think I have a glimpse of what depth in God might look like, and how it might change my life forever if I go there and STAY there.

So far, in 2015, I’ve devoted a month or longer to these spiritual disciplines:
January—fasting.
February—silence and solitude.
March, April and May—prayer.

After my big, giant, two-part aha moment, it became clear that June’s focus should be the discipline of conquering my thought life.

This is the very core of my Balance Struggle.

And though I haven’t lived your life, I’m stepping out on a limb to declare it’s the very core of your Balance Struggle, too.

It all originates in the mind.

You guys, we could drive ourselves crazy seeking a new method for housework or pursuing a new hobby. We could eat better food and do better workouts. We could work smarter, not harder. We could simplify our homes and our calendars until we are doing little more than sitting in a bare room with only our favorite people doing only meaningful activities—but none of that will eliminate the Balance Struggle.

The Struggle for Balance begins and ends at the thought level.

As you can imagine, addressing your thoughts is hard work. June wasn’t my favorite spiritual discipline month, but it has been the most life-changing, by far.

If this is resonates with you—if you think your Balance Struggle is deeper than a good house-cleaning schedule (and I love me a good house-cleaning schedule!), come back next time, when I will give you some very practical ways I’m learning to think differently.

This is huge.

I’m not exaggerating when I tell you, I truly believe the struggle ends here.