The Balance of Life.

What is the balance that we seek to maintain? I am an ordained minister. I believe that all the things on this earth are temporal, including this skin we wear. And I have to admit that my life is a balance that I seek to maintain. It is a balance between the here and now and the everlasting that I seek to find. Now without getting overly "religious" in my post, I need to expound a little bit on this idea.

We all live a life of self-imposed limits. Everyone of us. Somewhere in our life and lifestyles exhibit it. Some limits are imposed by governments, societies, or cultural norms, but many of our limits that we live with day to day are not imposed by anything or anyone but ourselves. If you are the free-spirited, "non-heaven-believing" type of person, your first impulse may be to deny that you have self imposed limits. You may say that you do whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want. But is this true? Do you eat as much as you want of things that are bad for you? Do you always sleep as much as you want to, or do you force yourself to get up and feed the animals or clean the stalls? Do you skip milking the cows or goats for a week or so, if the fancy strikes you? I would say probably not, and no one MADE you get those animals, or have those stalls. So we all choose to live with self-imposed limits. Does it seem that I went out of my way to make this point? I don't think I did, but I don't know.

The balance that my wife and I seek is tempered by our self-imposed limit to live within this school district that we minister to. Of course we feel called by God and the limit that is imposed is us choosing to follow that calling. And because of this limit we are also limited as we seek a homestead. We used to own a house, but when I went into the youth ministry full time, we sold that house and moved into an apartment at the church. We have 3 kids and another due in February. It is a small apartment (for a large family) and we are now in the position to go in together with my parents to buy some land and will build a second dwelling on it for either my parents or us. That all depends on what the homestead is like and the house and set up of the land.

We seek to balance our work in the ministry with a healthy physical work around our homestead. We want our kids growing up around the work, the animals, and the lifestyle associated with "making it" on your own. And that is the balance we want to maintain. God is important to us. The most important thing. I am only thankful that He didn't call me to work in the city somewhere. As it is we are right on the edge of suburbia and near enough to all the trappings of it. This doesn't make me unhappy, but it sure makes land a premium. I am sure there are homesteaders out there who would never pay as much for land and a house as we are looking to. And don't think it's because we are rich. It will be a stretch and TWO families will be purchasing this homestead together. My parents and my family. It will be hard work but we are looking forward to it. We have looked at and bid on two separate houses. Funny stories those. Stories for another post.

So what's the balance you seek? What are your self-imposed limits? I would love to hear.


The Modern Homesteader