Week 3: Finding Balance

As I said in my last entry, this week is our last week of our honeymoon time. So, to round out our week, we decided to go to Puyo and stay for a few days with the in-laws. While we were there, Jairo’s niece (I guess she’s my niece too now!) turned 9. We bought her an ice cream cake and had a family birthday party. We ate dinner and cake together, played cards and laughed a lot. It was a great end to a great three weeks.

It made me think about what is important to me. What are my priorities? I think sometimes we forget, in the middle of doing all that life requires, what it is that we really care about. I can tell that something is important to me when I feel at ease when I’m doing it. For example, spending time with my husband, my family (and his), reading my Bible, praying...these are things that make me feel at ease, that restore balance to my life, and help keep my life peaceful. I’ve found that when these things don’t happen, I get too busy to spend quality time with Jairo, I can’t go see his family in Puyo or my friends in Ibarra, my parents forget to call on Sunday night, I don’t have time or am too tired to spend time with God, I start to flip out a little bit. I lose my equilibrium.

So I have to ask myself, what is the point of living life if we aren’t going to do what really matters? For example, so many people spend so much time working to afford their lifestyle, that it seems they blink and their kids are already in college, and they wonder where the time went. I always tell Jairo, I got married so I could be with my husband. It seems so obvious, but when life’s pace starts picking up, it’s easy to look back and realize you missed a whole section of your life. I don’t want that to happen to me.

I’m going into one of those super-busy, lose-your-equilibrium times of my life as this time off comes to a close and reality starts to sink in. My goal is to be able to focus on those things that are most important to me, even in the craziest of moments. God, my husband, and our families and friends are the ones that make everything else worth while.