Balance

The last few months at our house have been crazy--not in a horrible way, but more in an overwhelming, I can't keep up with my life kind of way. I needed each day to have 30 hours in it.   Looking at our May calendar literally gave me anxiety.  I even stopped writing things on it because it just made me sick to my stomach.  

We are busy.  Sometimes I think we are too busy, but I don't actually know how to be less busy.  We have a lot of permanent commitments that will never go away.  We do a lot of church service, but that is not something we will give up.  The capacity in which we serve may change, but we will always serve.  We also have family activities that we do every week--mainly family home evening, but we do like to fit in family activities too.  Right now Chris and I are both involved in church service that involves a lot of activities, lesson teaching, and meetings.  Chris has a busy job that frequently requires him to be away early in the morning, late at night, and on weekends, but this is his career and until he retires it will always be busy.  The kids have school--this past year with kindergarten we have had 2 different schedules.  Next year we will still have 2 different schedules since Kennedy will be in junior high, and the year after that we will have 3 different schedules when Benson goes to preschool--for the next 16+ years we will always have school.  And school isn't just school.  School means homework, and volunteering in the classroom, PTA, science fairs, book reports, field trips, assemblies, etc.  Then we have the extras.  Kennedy and Spencer both do piano--I am sure they would love to not do piano, but right now we feel it's an important skill and are not ready to eliminate it.  We have scouts and young women--both of which we 100% committed to.  We have also felt it important to encourage our children to participate in activities they are interested in/develop talents in, so in different months we have done dance, baseball, soccer, football, basketball, swimming lessons--etc.  We let each child do 1 extra at a time, but that is still 3 activities--and they often overlap with each other.  During part of April and into May, most Wednesday nights had FIVE activities.  FIVE.  This was typically in a 3 1/2 hour period with 1 driver.  Mathematically speaking, those nights felt impossible.   

This is when I started to realize I am lacking balance--and maybe permanently.  In order to fit everything in, our house is usually messier than I would like, hair is sometimes not combed, we are constantly getting places just in the nick of time, if I want to exercise I have to go to the gym at 5:30 in the morning (or motivate myself to do it at home if Chris is on call), my kids eat a lot of dinners in the car on our way to the next activity, poor Benson lives in his car seat--in general things just feel chaotic, but again, I don't know what to give up. 

In someways I feel like our busy life is good.  Our kids have definitely learned that they have to help.  They support each other in their activities and tell each other good job.  We have had the opportunity to participate in service and hopefully they know that is important.  They have learned and developed new skills and talents.  They have made new friends and have learned to interact with adults and other children in both structured and fun settings.  They have gained confidence with success in their activities.  There ARE good things that come from being busy.  

On the flip side I realize that busy is not always best.  I feel a lot of guilt leaving our kids at home so that I can attend a church meeting or some other thing we have going on.  I often feel like Addie and Benson get the shaft.   In order to support their siblings, or have supervision, they end up staying up way too late at night, or getting ignored while getting dragged from place to place--and some days they spend way too much time with Disney Jr instead of a mother reading them books.  And sometimes our kitchen gets flooded because I need 5 extra minutes of sleep.  There are a lot of nights I get into bed and think, "what was unnecessary today?"

I have a few people that often give me a hard time about how scheduled my life is, and I am not going to lie, when it comes to my schedule I am not super flexible.  I don't like it to change, and if it does, I get anxiety (and ornery) because that generally means conflict.  I will be the first to admit, I am a little OCD about my calendar and my time--mostly because we don't have much time to spare.

So this is where my balance problem comes in.  What do we choose?  What do we give up--besides sleep?  I don't know if there is a good answer.  I remember my family growing up being busy and probably going through the same thoughts I am now--so maybe it's just the phase of life I am in right now.  I turned out okay--mostly (there is that OCD...)  In 20 years I don't want to regret not doing a sport or an activity so that we could have an hour off.  So I guess until I have a better solution, our calendar will continue to look like this.  Busy.  

But for now, instead of dwelling on the crazy, I am going to enjoy summer.  We are going to swim and play and enjoy that we are taking a break from everything this year--no sports, no piano, no summer camps, etc.--at least until I go crazy because we are bored--(maybe I work best unbalanced:))