Faithfully yours - Balancing life’s demands

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Published on Sunday, March 18, 2018

Neil Strohschein
Neepawa Banner & Press

Every so often, I have one of those days. They don’t come as often as they did 25 years ago, but they still come and now, since I am that much older, they are that much harder to cope with. I jokingly tell people that on those days, my time and resources are spread so thin that I feel like a pound of butter spread on a ton of dry rye bread. That’s a little extreme, I know—but I think you get the point, especially if you’ve had a few of those days recently.

I marvel at the number of different activities in which some people are involved.

Let’s start with their jobs. Most work at least eight hours per day; unless they’re farmers. For them, the long days began about two weeks ago (first calves arrive, equipment pulled out and repaired prior to seeding) and won’t end until the first snow falls next November.

When we aren’t at work, other equally important things demand our time and energy.

Most of us have a home that needs constant maintenance and care. Living in that home is a family—our family—those we love and whose needs we are to meet. This means driving children to hockey practice and games in the winter and doing the same for baseball in the summer. It may also involve 4-H, swimming lessons, gymnastics and a myriad of other activities that children enjoy but to which someone (usually a parent) must take them.

If you are a member of a local service club or community agency, you may be asked to take on specific responsibilities for that group. Those who offer you the position tell you that it will only take “two or three hours a month of your time.” What’s the first thing you discover? They forgot to tell you that the 2-3 hours a month only applied to the first month. After that, as the work load increases (which it always does), so do the number of hours you spend each month doing it.

Most of us can handle the load as long as everything goes well. But let something go wrong—a break-down in seed time or harvest, illness of a family member or an emergency somewhere in the community, and the demands on our time will increase significantly. And that is when the pressure can become more than any of us can handle; and we’d like to run away and hide.

But we know we can’t, so we don’t. Still, the intense fatigue we feel in those moments will stay with us for a long time and in some cases, it may never fully go away.

So how do we keep things in balance? In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus offers us the following advice: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things (including the strength to meet the demands that are placed on us from time to time) will be given to you.”

Using that verse as a guide, I have developed the following motto that helps me keep my life in balance. I don’t always follow it as well as I should, but it certainly helps. The first half is a saying we’ve heard before. The second half is my own addition.

“I can please some of the people some of the time. I can’t please all of the people all of the time. Therefore, I make it my goal to please God in everything I do. That way, I’ll please most of the people most of the time.”