Attempts at Balancing Life

My girlfriends and I meet weekly for Bible study. Lately, every week that we meet I find myself saying time and time again that I just feel overwhelmed will all the things on my to-do list. I wake up in the morning with fantastic intentions of doing everything on my list and more, only to find that, by the end of the day, I’ve scratched one thing off and added at least five more.

Maybe you can relate to that, and maybe not (I’m a little jealous if you can’t). But, I felt the need to sit down today after being absent from this platform for so long, to just jot down a few ways I’ve learned to attempt the balancing act, but also to crowdsource and see what tips and tricks this little corner of the universe has to share.

So here it is first - Reevaluate your schedule. Mind-bending, right? I found this to be the hardest and so I figured it should go first. Humans seem to have a tendency to want to be involved in lots of things, lots of good things. I’ve learned the hard way that just because something is good, doesn’t mean it’s good for you in your current season. That doesn’t mean that you can’t return to it later, just that right now it needs to take the back burner.

Second - Write out everything you have to do in a week, down to the minute little details (ie - dropping off return packages, going to the grocery store, prepping snacks). Once you’ve done that, write out a rough draft of sorts, setting each of those solid must-do things into time slots. Once your must-do things are sorted, then sort out the little things, finding a day and a time for them, when it makes the most sense. If you’re an excel genius and made an incredible little excel sheet to do this, please help a girl out and share that thing.

Third - Make a weekly/biweekly meal plan and grocery list. This is a hard one for a lot of people, so if you have food commitment issues then start with only one week at a time. Be realistic, are you really going to have time to cook that massive pot roast in the oven with a side of homemade bread on a Tuesday when you have to pick up and drop off your crew of kids from dance/gymnastics/soccer/karate/baseball, etc? No, you’re not. Save it for a weekend, sister, or a day when you have nothing on your schedule. *Special note - if you’re on a budget, this tip is especially important. Considering the rising costs of groceries, some of our financial stress can be curbed (even a tiny bit) by making a thorough meal plan & grocery list and then sticking to it.*

Fourth - Be proactive and intentional with your daily to-do's. At one of my Bible study meetups, my friend Jess said that a few years back, she created a daily chores list and posted it in her house. Every day, she did the chores on her daily list for that day only, and then she stopped. Stopping once she finished her chores for the day, enabled her to focus on other things she wanted and needed to do. This seemed like such an AHA! moment to me. I’m guilty of doing what is on my list for the day, and then borrowing things from tomorrow’s list. I used to feel like it was all for the sake of being accomplished, but my friend’s comment made me realize - what if I’m just obsessed with feeling busy?

That leads me to the fifth and final way that I’ve been attempting to balance life - Give yourself a reality check. Are you obsessed with being busy? Do you lack some personal boundaries and agree to do all the things for all the people? Have you let cultural norms and opinions that we always need to be busy to be successful permeate your thinking? When was the last time you shut off your phone and focused on doing something you enjoyed? When was the last time you admired the sunset, or a bird sitting on a tree outside your house, or went for a quiet walk (or a loud one if you brought your kids along)? When was the last time you set aside quiet time to read your Bible, other than as you’re falling asleep at night in bed? These can be hard questions because they force us to re-examine our priorities and sometimes that can be painful, especially if our priorities aren’t necessarily in the order we want them to be in.

When I first sat down to write this today, I was going to call it “Attempts at Balancing Life from the Perspective of a Special Needs Parent”, but you know what - whether you have a child with special needs or not, we all sometimes struggle to balance life. I’m absolutely no exception to this and 100% am a work in progress here. BUT I’m going to attempt to make some of your lives easier by helping out a bit with tip three. If you’re one of those people who hates to meal plan, take heart - I love it and so I’m going to share some of our family meal plans with you. Take from it what you like and what suites your family and hopefully you’ll find a good meal planning groove as you go along.

Let me know if you have any other tips or tricks, I’d love to try implementing them! Until next time, I’m praying for peace in your schedule and in your day, my friends.