Four Areas to Find Work, Life, and Home School Balance

If you’re like me, you find yourself chasing a promise held out continuously by best selling authors, Christian and non-Christian alike. The promise is almost within my grasp. But to really have it dialed in, I need this book, or I need to go to this seminar, or I need this app. Balancing work, life, and in our case home schooling, is a never-ending quest.

Deep down we may suspect something’s off, but it’s hard to admit it when we’re in the middle of a journey traveling lopsided down a path. Eventually pain is a corrective. It can come in the form of broken health, mental or physical. It might be the threat of separation or divorce. It could take the form of estrangement from our children. Maybe it shows up as excessive church hopping. And honestly, whatever is occurring may not be our fault at all.  And God knows there’s enough well-meaning friends and family who believe they have 20-20 vision into our problem and have the perfect solution for us. They mean well…

A few months ago I went up into our attic. That’s where I stored dozens of boxes full of things that at one time were important—old tax records, our kids’ toys, stuffed animals, home school work, projects, records, and used text books. The 40 or so boxes I brought down were mostly filled with home school stuff. My wife and I went through everything together and sorted out some memories and condensed them into one box each for our three children. With my two children now married and my youngest daughter engaged and getting married in September, the timing to declutter and toss stuff out was right.

I had done a similar clean-out of stuff from my room and our family attic when I was 20 years old. Both the timing and what I did was wrong. I was a new Christian at the time, a repentant, but mentally-unstable hippie experiencing the after effects of a lot of bad decisions. I was living in a region of Southern California where rapture enthusiasts and end-times cartographers gathered expectantly hoping for the end of the world. I got caught up in this.  I figured that with the rapture being imminent, I wouldn’t be needing my stuff. When my mother found out that my purge included several scrapbooks and photo albums that she had spent years lovingly putting together, she was simultaneously incensed and distraught. I immediately went to the dumpster at the shopping mall where I had thrown everything but it was too late. It had been emptied. Regardless, I had “decided to follow Jesus” and there was no turning back. Sorry mom…  What a complete idiot I was. I still can’t believe I did this and acted this way!

But, she graciously and eventually forgave me.

When I think about being balanced, there are four common areas that need our attention and need to be re-calibrated regularly. Health books like Total Health identify these areas as physical, mental, social, and spiritual.

We can become unbalanced in any of these areas if we’re not careful and start to hyper-focus on any one of them.

• Physical: Becoming preoccupied with exercise and nutrition. Eating right and exercising, as important as they are no guarantee of health. There are other factors, hereditary and environmental, and others out of our control and understanding that impact our health. Beware of books that turn the Bible into some sort of Biblical cookbook.
• Mental: Over emphasizing academic accomplishments.
• Social: Seeking acceptance in some form. Shows like The Bachelor, 90 day Fiancé, American Idol, The Voice, and Dancing with the Stars attract a loyal following. Viewers want to see how things are going to work out. That is, who is embraced, and who is rejected.
• Spiritual: Obsessing on the Bible. That was my problem (among others) in my example. While most wives want their husbands to be in God’s Word, often what they really need is for their husband to help out around the house a little more.

As you start this new school year, I encourage you to think about these four areas. Discuss them as a family. Does something need to be recalibrated? Making a change for you will not necessarily look the same for another family member. And, achieving some sort of “balance” will not look the same for all of us.

Thanks for reading!

Curt Bumcrot, MRE

One day left to take advantage of our $15 book credit when you sign up for high school classes by August 22, 2018. Click to find out how!