I don’t always do a “Word of the Year” but this year I felt compelled to do so. In planning and preparing goals for 2023, one word kept popping up: BALANCE.
Words like nurture, confidence, and courage kept cropping up as well, but it always came back to balance.
Balance (both noun and verb) is defined as follows:
Noun: an even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady; a condition in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions.
Verb: keep or put (something) in a steady position so that it does not fall; offset or compare the value of (one thing) with another.
I’ve always found it challenging to devote 100% of myself to everything all the time (I mean, it’s impossible) and have always felt guilty when my focus shifts from one hat to another. Which, if I’m honest, has only left me feeling guilty basically 100% of the time and feeling like I will never be good enough at anything if I’m not perfect at everything 100% of the time. Cue my endless irrational fears, anxiety, and OCD about perfectionism.
If I’m away from work and with family, I feel guilty as there is always something else I could cross off my to do list. This is most especially true if I am not present but my team is.
If I have to miss something for my daughter because of work, I feel guilty that I even work at all and can’t be with her 24/7.
It’s a cycle. Same goes for being a wife, a friend, a daughter, a content creator, a PTO member, everything. See why this word really hits hard for me? It’s hard to be everywhere at once and all things to all people – this is why I say I’m a struggling but slowly recovering perfectionist. But the problem here isn’t that there isn’t more than 24 hours in a day – the problem is where my mindset and my heart are when it comes to this topic.
When thinking of the word balance, I have honestly always hated the concept. The idea that you must careful hold all areas of life in equal proportions. However, recently I’ve come across a few ideas that portray balance more in terms of what it’s like to ride a bike without falling over. To stay upright, sometime you lean left, others you lean right. It’s never 50-50%.
This also makes me thing of the paradox of being human (Simon Sinek). In this he speaks to life’s constant conflict between selfishness and selflessness: between “me” and “we.” We spend our lives vacillating between the two perspectives; zigging towards our own wants and zagging towards pleasing others. It also has me thinking about the ebb and flow of these seeming opposites as we give and take in life:
Mystery/Certainty
Lament/Joy
Contentment/Zeal
Mercy/Justice
This year, I really want to focus on balance by leaning into each season as it comes, embracing what the Lord has in store for me, and not punishing myself when my buckets seem less than equally full. To embrace the many facets of my life and listen to the needs of those spaces in the moment rather than trying to achieve perfect to the outside eye.
These are the main verses I will be meditating on this year as I seek to embrace balance:
There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:a time to be born and a time to die,
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline
2 Timothy 1:7
Therefore, dear friends, since you have been forewarned, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of the lawless and fall from your secure position. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.
2 Peter 3:17-18
