Not the physical kind of balance, but the other kind. The kind where it sometimes feels like you are fighting with everything you have to stay sane. Activity balance. Spiritual balance. These are ever-increasingly difficult areas of life to maintain balance, and at the same time it becomes ever more important to maintain balance in those areas.I have recently been on a quest to find a greater balance in my life. I am by nature a sort of an "all or nothing" character. I tend to dive into things and immerse myself in any new area that I choose to take on. In some ways, this can be a great thing - when I really want to get something done, I can shove other things out of the way and get it done. But more often than not, this is not a good attribute.
In so many areas of my life, I find the need for greater balance. I have a tendency to immerse myself in my school work during the school year/week. I will sometimes spend hours upon hours working on improving the things I do as a teacher in order to help my classes learn better. But what usually happens when I do this is that I get stressed out and frustrated because all of my energy has been on school stuff and my teaching ends up suffering. I forget about taking care of my own needs - to socialize with friend, find quiet time with God, and just relax. Then when I realize that I haven't been addressing my own needs, I sometimes stop doing schoolwork for a while, which usually leaves me in a tight spot where I am forced to do a lot of work in a short amount of time and the cycle repeats itself.
More than just in the day-to-day life things, I also find that I need better balance in the Spiritual realm as well. I often find myself focusing on one area of my faith - be it reading Scripture, prayer, reading devotionals, helping others, etc. In the same way that an unbalanced life leads to a chaotic life, an unbalanced spiritual life leads to a chaotic (and feeble) spiritual life. In the same way that the Apostle talks about us all being parts of one body (each providing unique, yet important qualities), the Spiritual life is lacking when one area of our faith is ignored in preference to another. All of the aspects of faith work together to benefit the believer. No aspect of faith can be allowed to lack.
I recently began reading a book titled "Knowing Christ" by Alister McGrath who is a scientist-turned-theologian (fascinating people they are). He mentions in his book that our greatest strengths often act as our greatest weaknesses as well. This exactly fits with what I am trying to say - my ability to focus solely on one thing at a time and not balance more numerous things, while beneficial at times, often results in a deficiency somewhere in my life.
May you lead a balanced life, filled with peace.
