Whatever becomes most ultimate in our lives is in essence a god we worship.

You can look around and clearly see that people’s passion, time, money, belongings all tend to gravitate towards what they worship.  These things can become mini-gods.  They drive us.  Our time, energy, emotions, and hope are poured into them with our hearts hoping that they will bring satisfaction, joy, relief.

But they often don’t.

They often leave us feeling exhausted, still yearning for more, or simply not good enough.

Work/life balance is that for me.

I’m not even talking about perfection here.  I’m talking about simply staying afloat.

I want to feel that even if I barely keep the balls in the air that there won’t be any disappointment from myself and others about how I kept them in the air.  That my children will step back in 30 years and say “how did she DO it? I felt so loved and cared for and had no idea what she was going through”. That those who I work with will always think I did an amazing job.

Gently – God is reminding me this is a pretty shitty god to worship.

Let’s play this out in it’s entirety.  Can there really be a perfect balance achieved in this life?  If I focus in one area and do an amazing job, another is bound to suffer.  And then there are things completely outside my control that pull me in and demand attention because of the nature of this world.

Work/life balance pretends that if I reach this magical equation that I’ll be happy and everything will be right in my life.  The problems with this are endless. First, I don’t know the damn equation. Is it 50% work, 50% life?  How does that work?  Can someone explain how to look at the time spent in a day and divvy it out to sleep, work, eating?

Secondly, it pretends that trying to do everything to the best of my ability will make me happy.  In reality, it makes me pretty tired.  I wonder if I’ve “done enough” so much it hurts.  Even “best of my ability” is pretty subjective and means something different to everyone, and myself depending on the day.

I’ve realized that I’ve had amazing days that I’ve counted as bad days all because of this demanding little god I’ve been worshipping.  It flat out lied to me.

If I look to worship God instead – here’s what happens. He says he loves me.  He sees me as perfect and flawless, through Jesus. He is the one voice (only voice) that reminds me there is nothing I need to do.  He tells me to rest my soul, he is in complete control.  He will make all things right again one day. He will give me dreams and hopes in this life that are based in eternity not this temporary, always changing life. He will encourage me to love myself and others more. He will help me lift my eyes and see joy in nearly every situation this life throws at me.

Whew.  That feels so much better.