In many things in my life, I get the feeling that I'm cruising around on borrowed time.
Things (big or small) that I fear, linger in the recesses of my mind. My coping mechanism oftentimes is to hit the "ignore" button. But the longer I ignore it, the more I know it will soon manifest into an actual crisis point in my life.
And so I keep reminding myself to do the hard things. Do them now. I can tread as gently as I want at first (as it relates to the amount of fear that I have over it) but I must be firm and persistent in my resolve to do something.
Most things aren't as bad or as hard as we make them out to be, so long as we decide it can't control us into paralyzed inaction or reckless abandonment. And so over and over I have to decide that it's better to go at a snail's pace, fumbling over my inadequacies, than to pretend that a responsibility isn't there or feign a victim when something important seems too impossible for me.
It often looks like the smallest adjustments over time in the way I think about something, and therefore, ultimately in the habits of my life. And many cynics could criticize my modes of lifestyle (or rather, the "uneventfulness" of it), but that's simply because they have failed to realize that no one escapes doing the hard things. Either in a voluntary, joyful way now or by gun point later, when life absolutely necessitates it.
The balance in life isn't a rigid schedule created out of fear or lofty plans that must, at all costs, be met, but is in the small intentions we set in our every day life and our faithfulness to them, that makes all of the difference.
It's about loving people the way they need loved. It's about taking care of the sacred temple that houses our soul- physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And perhaps most of all, finally obeying God's design for things (despite our incomprehension of it) knowing that He is good, all knowing, and has the best intentions laid out for us.