The Dilemma of Balance

Today's post is all excerpted from 
Waiting for a Miracle: Devotions for Those Who Are Physically Weak by Jan Markell

"Being ill is a full-time job without vacations or other fringe benefits. And it's a balancing act of the greatest magnitude! Balancing activity and anticipation with a daily routine of needed rest and quiet is not an easy assignment. 

Balance is also needed in interpersonal relationships. We wonder if we should keep our dilemma private, or speak too often about it and risk the flight of loved ones. Should we ask for help and risk being a burden, or should we maintain some independence which can bring on isolation and other problems? Should we push ourselves socially in the interest of our mental health, or should we play it safe and virtually vegetate, thus allowing rest therapy a better chance of bringing recovery from our affliction?

Keeping a good balance thus involves a "pick and choose" mind-set. We must keep ourselves maintained for that is our priority. Everything else must be assigned a lower priority and some things just have to be let go for a time. Letting go is one of the most difficult assignments, for it is not just the act of letting go, but embracing the mind-set of acceptance at the same time.

Living among healthy people who have no restrictions offers us overwhelming temptation to depart from a strict recovery program that includes a needed balance. Well people will want us to make commitments, which can be a double-edged sword. With commitment there is anticipation; however, there is also the dread of not being able to follow through with that commitment. Then anticipation turns to stress, stress to anxiety, and anxiety to even poorer health.

Even good stress needs balance. Good stress is an event or opportunity that involves fun, activity, and people we love. It involves fellowship, caring, sharing, and love. But it also may involve too many people, too much talking, and too much activity. Then we're back to square one.

To arrive at a proper level of balance amidst affliction takes the help of Holy Spirit discernment. At the start of each new day, we need to seek God's guidance for the hours before us. We don't want to squander them; rather, we should make every minute count, not just for God, but for our recovery process.

Finding balance in an unbalanced world with the complication of affliction can only be accomplished by surrendering our day to the will of God. He will redeem it and make it count, even if in our eyes it seems but a wasteland. God does all things well, and he specializes in turning ugliness into beauty and wastelands into gardens."

For Further Meditation

Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the LORD (Psalm 31:24).

But now, LORD, what do I look for? My hope is in you (Ps. 39:7).

Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God (Ps. 42:5).

But as for me, I will always have hope; I will praise you more and more (Ps. 71:14).

You were wearied by all your ways, but you would not say, "It is hopeless." You found renewal of your strength, and so you did not faint (Isaiah 57:10).

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful (Hebrews 10:23).

Posts with further excerpts from Jan Markell's book:

Delayed Response 

Acceptance and Celebrations

In Every Season

Waiting Tests Faith