About Balance

Yesterday was easily the most beautiful day of the year.  After days of rain, the sun was out, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and it felt like you could see for miles.  Most importantly, (in my little world,) it is the Fall.  There were trees lighting up all over my neighborhood in orange and gold, and the air had that crisp leafy smell.  For a person like me, who lives for autumn weather, life was good.

On the drive to work, I found myself thanking God for everything.  For the blue sky, for the colors all around me, for the fact that my car runs, (sort of!), for the fact that I was safe and for the fact that God has allowed me to have children. There’s never anything in my checkbook, but I had a roof over my head and I wasn’t hungry.  For reasons known only to God, I was bursting with happiness.

By two-o-clock that afternoon, I was leaving work and I was hot, tired and depressed.  My work was piling up, but it was plain that the check I had just gotten for it was not going to make it through the month.  I began to experience the cold, ever-present pain that comes with being scared, angry and underemployed.  And I felt myself being pulled under.

So what changed?  Not much.  Basically nothing between the time I drove to work and the time I drove home.

Except my focus.

So, what am I saying here?  Don’t worry, be happy? 

Not a chance.

If you feel badly, you feel badly.  I believe God works with that and honors it.  However, I also believe we can quickly fall into an all or nothing mentality.  It doesn’t look like I have made enough money for the month, so, therefore, the facts that I live in a breathtakingly beautiful place, that it is my favorite time of the year, that I have a roof over my head and a (slightly compromised,) car to drive, just don’t matter any more?  It’s not that simple.

It seems to me that my job---my real job---is to find a way to hold all of those things together in my hands.  To acknowledge that they can all co-exist.

It was an indescribably beautiful day and I wasn’t going hungry and I was grateful that God allowed me to have children...and I also was probably going to run out of money before the month was over.  It was okay to be happy for some things and sad for others., but, the one thing I couldn’t do was to act like my life was a complete and utter shambles because I had one problem.  I can't throw away the joy and let myself get sucked into the abyss because something in my life is wrong.

Yeah, not having enough work and not having enough money to get by are very big problems, but if my life is to have the balance that God intends it to have, I believe I have to embrace everything.  I have to cry about the bad stuff and rejoice over what is good, and acknowledge that they happen daily at the same time. To do anything less is dishonest.