Life Balance

From September 12-14 Deacon Dayna and I attended the Fall Clergy Conference, “Planning for Wellness” held at Todd Hall Conference Center in Columbia, Illinois. Representatives from the Church Pension Group led the conference which centered on finances, health, and life.  It isn’t often that we clergy have the opportunity to be ministered to and that is exactly what the representatives from the Pension Fund Group did.
 
In addition to the conference sessions Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer and Holy Eucharist were celebrated incorporating a wide variety of liturgical styles and music. Our prayer time was holy and uplifting. Social time, meals, prayer celebrations and conference sessions made for a jam-packed time that was invigorating and enjoyable. It’s good to be able to spend time with colleagues and just talk about what is going on with each other. For the most part we avoided “church talk” and concentrated instead on family life, children in school, vacations, sports, etc.
 
Personal wellness was the theme for one of our sessions.  “Life Happens” was the title for this part of the conference. Did you know that most clergy tend to be over achievers? Balancing work and leisure time, healthy diet, regular exercise and others were part of the agenda. For many of us it was a wake-up call to self-care. We explored “work/life balance” among other topics. Each participant was given a workbook and at the end of each of our sessions we wrote action plans for continued implementation.
 
“Life Balance” is something most of us understand but often only give lip service to achieving it. We were reminded to work toward meaningful daily achievements and enjoyment in each of one’s four life quadrants: work, family, friends and self. If you can visualize a large circle and at its center the words “life balance” and joined with that circle are four smaller circles named “family”, “career”, “health” and “friends”.  We were reminded that life is a balance of holding on and letting go and willing allowing such to happen.
 
I share this with you as a reminder that all of us benefit from being reminded that there has to be balance in each of our lives and without that balance our lives become frustrating and unfulfilled.
Deacon Dayna and I certainly plan to continue working on maintaining a healthy balance in our lives and my hope and prayer is that you are able to do the same.
                                          ~ Fr. Al Jewson