Balance; A Changer's Art

Part 1

So last post I talked about change, and I want to share another idea that I have on the subject.  Balance.  Life is all about balance.  We hear that all the time.  What does it really mean?  More to the point I want to make, How can we find balance as we change? 

I think about the routine I get into, the balance I find.  We all have an equilibrium in life.  You can see it in small patterns like how you wake up in the morning and prepare for the day (on my mind a lot as a missionary), or you can see it in an over-all pattern of a month or a year, or the direction you're life is heading 50 years down the road.  The issue I want to speak on is how to change our pattern.  Change is necessary, especially when we are humbling our self and recognizing the need for change in many things.  But our body doesn't like drastic shock.  The old story of the frog in boiling water comes to mind, or trying to quit a bad habit cold turkey.  While it is possible, it's not necessarily the best way for us.  Our system needs to change gradually if it's going to be permanent and healthy.

With that said, I want to illustrate an idea I've had rolling around in my head for some time now, and struggle to find words for.  I like to imagine you are swimming down a stream that is pulling you down a fast current.  To change your course, you'll have to swim for a time against the flow.  This takes work, and even pain if you will.  To make a change, you have to go against the norm, almost to the extreme.  You'll be facing the shore as you swim, but that's not the new direction you want, just a means to get you there.  In real life it shows it self in practicing something (or role-playing).  To get good at a golf swing, you'll work on the grip, then the stance, then addressing the ball, then keeping your head down, etc.  None of these actions you'll actually use in the game, but they prepare you for the real thing, so you've changed the way you swing, or the course you're going.

The other idea that goes along with this is back to the issue of balance.  Say you work real hard for a time.  After a while you're body gets tired, and you balance it with adequate time resting.  If you over-exert yourself, you can actually need extra re-coup time.  In the end, the over exertion wasn't worth it because you did less than you would have if you'd have gone a steady pace for twice the time and not needed extra time to re-coup. The idea here is that if we're going to try to change something, we have to push against the grain, and expect a backlash of the opposite.  I imagine a piece of metal you're trying to bend to a new place.  If you pull it to the place you want it to be, then let go, it will spring back and forth til it's right back to where it started.  If you want to bend it and make it stay, you have to bend it past it's bending point and past where you want it to end up.  Now when you let go, the metal will still spring back and forth, possibly past the old place it was, but once it settles, it will have been adjusted to a new direction.  That's what takes work.  It takes pain, and against-the-grain effort.

This is the idea I'm attempting, with a lot of words, to explain.  To change, we must go against the grain, we must work at it, must go through some pain.  If we only push to what we want to be in the end, we'll bounce back to where we started.  To make a lasting change, we have to push past where we want to end up, then when we balance back out, we'll be where we want to be in the end.

The kicker here is Christ.  He is the one that allows us to push past the bending point, to go through the pain, to go against the grain to the extreme.  He takes upon him the burden.  He makes it possible to change.  If we rely on Him, we can swim against the flow, we can be the only one in our group of friends or family to hold the standards we have.  We can decide to become something new and make a lasting change.  We can decide that our direction is off a little and make adjustments.

I know this is true.  I know life has major and minor changes, and the major changes are just a whole bunch of minor ones. I know that it is truly through Christ and His gospel that we can find the direction and changes we need to make.  I know we can make lasting change in all things from little day to day habits, to life long patterns that direct our course to eternal life.  The pain of change can and will be lessened, or even removed, if we rely on Jesus Christ.  Allow Him to change you.  In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.