“If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.” C.S. Lewis
It’s funny that I came across this quote today. I was just thinking that it had been almost a month since my last post here and that my scripture study is suffering and that my prayers have been disappointing at best. So then I was just scrolling along on Instagram and there was this quote. Like a message.
I’ve been trying to find a thing called “balance” between home and family, church work, building my business, and developing my spiritual self. I think balance isn’t a real thing. I think the key might be schedule blocking. My darling has been doing it for his job for years but I have been struggling with how to get it all set up.
In April 2005 General Conference Elder Brent L Top gave a talk called A Balanced life. In it he said:
“Keeping the daily demands of life in balance is one of the great tasks of mortality. All of us may feel pulled in different directions at some time or another. We may even carry to an extreme our efforts to live gospel principles faithfully, thus upsetting the delicate balance of our lives and intruding upon our personal peace and family harmony.
My wife, Wendy, experienced this difficult situation. For years she had nearly exhausted herself, thinking she had to be the perfect wife and mother, the perfect Church member, the perfect neighbor and citizen. Instead of feeling joy, she often felt overwhelmed and discouraged. Her frustration was further exacerbated when well-intentioned leaders and friends seemed to indicate that if she had enough faith, she would be able to accomplish all these things. Only after a personal crisis of depression and anxiety was she able to understand fully the source of her suffering. It was a painful time not only for her but for our entire family. We have grown stronger and learned many lessons as a result. But perhaps we could have been spared much of the pain if we had more clearly perceived the need to maintain temporal and spiritual balance.”
So here’s what I’m going to do to begin to fix things.
- A couple of weeks ago Emily Belle Freeman showed how she does her daily scripture study on Instagram and it was amazing. She has some days where she devotes 45 minutes to an hour and some days she only can spend 10 minutes and she talked about how to do it all,. She also showed how she prepares for a lesson or a talk. The first thing I’m going to do is go back to those IG posts and refresh my memory.
- I am going back to review my goals. Are they what are really important for me this year? I will prayerfully consider each of the 5 goals I set for myself this year and change them if necessary.
- I will come up with a weekly block schedule so that sewing and book keeping and business stuff will get attention each day as well as home keeping, family stuff and attention to my church work also has time.
I’ll get back with you in a few days to show my plan and then I’ll let you know how it’s going. As President Nelson has recently said, “In coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost.” And so I feel like I need to dig deeper and find a way to have time for every important thing and at the same time realize that the less important things should be let go.
Always Choose Charity 