Balance is a Beautiful Thing!

Writing takes diligence and willingness to carve out a place for yourself among all the distractions of life. People who rely on you seem to suddenly have more emergencies than ever. And your kids, even the grown ones, suddenly hang themselves off a cliff and you're the only one who notices. You need to develop an acute sense of balance, but balance in itself is a beautiful thing. In God's world everything is balanced. A balanced life is a godly life. I'm still learning about balance. Here at the apartment building we have dryers downstairs but I save tons of quarters by hanging clothes outside. I put up clothes lines behind the building and I had to stretch them across 50 feet of open space. I use sticks to prop them up in the center. It’s a slap-shod system but I like it because it’s mine. I can have it all perfect until Jackson, a 6 year old hurricane, comes along and uses it for his monkey bars. I love my neighbors and there isn't much for kids to do in an apartment building, so I'm not going to tell him not to climb on the old gas lines and hang form my clothes lines. Jackson likes to help me with everything he sees me doing. We have an understanding. Instead of telling him to leave my stuff alone and behave, I put him in charge of security, so to speak, and he watches to make sure things like outside doors don't get left open and drain-spouts don't mysteriously fall off the building. hey! It's all part of balance like hanging the clothes, which need to be evenly distributed on both sides of the sticks with just the right amount of weight between the old gas lines and a big old oak tree so as not to have things such as white T-shirts touching the ground at any time. But when I've hanged up 3 or 4 loads of laundry and I have everything all propped up correctly, and the wind is picking up the garments and they are all blowing nicely in the breeze, it is truly a beautiful sight! I see God as the wind in my sails! And this is what I've learned: balance is worth the effort it takes to achieve and it is really the only way many things can be accomplished. Hallelujah!

Lord, you are the wind in my sails!