No Balance Wanted

I'm in paradise.  Mountains all around. The sky is clear.  The air is crisp.  I have no responsibilities before me except to be the best husband I can be to my wife.  For the next six days we will live idyllically in the Canadian Rockies.

We just left behind six months of increasing intensity, shot through with the occasional absurdity and/or insanity.  The last three months were fairly unrelenting. And we ended up exhausted. Spent. Emptied.

There is no balance in our lives.  We live in an increasingly impossible situation with an unreasonable neighbour who may or may not be a violent narcissist - frankly, we hope not to find out.  We work for two wildly different organizations/organisms that, objectively, are patently insane.  We will move our belongings for a third time in less than three years - and likely again within the same time frame.

And I am becoming OK with that.  I am releasing the unrealistic desire for "balance" and being taught to embrace the intensity that is our life.  I am pretty sure I don't want "balance" anymore.  If I achieved it, I wouldn't be in a beautiful getaway resort, with the woman who completes me, writing for fun, planning on reading for fun, and expecting a week of indulgent relaxation and recreation.  A totally "un-balanced" lifestyle if you were to do it for weeks, months, years even (some do, you know).

I read the Bible.  I know that the text omits much more about the lives of the people who were front and center on the work God was doing (and still is doing).  But, the gist of it is that life can be filled with high drama, life and death decisions, daring exploits and breathtaking rewards.  There is a time for everything under heaven, but stasis is not anything.  Balance entrenched is unbeing.  It is not LIFE.

So go look for your "balance" if you must.  I'll take the moments that come as God provides them.  Oh, you'll hear me complain.  I am given permission by the Psalmist to declare my discontent - not to mutter it under my breath, mind you.  But I am not given permission to disengage from struggle, life, adventure and wild exploits.  I know my exploits don't seem so wild, but try living totally honestly around other people and see if you don't end up in a few unsolvable conundrums of your own.  It may not be world war, but it can be as intense as anything. I all does make a time like this so much sweeter.

Balance - phah!

I want life! Life to the full!