Editor’s Note: Rachel Balducci is a new Augusta Press faith columnist. She is a professor at Augusta University and a professional author. She will be writing monthly about women, motherhood and faith.
Introductions first! Hi, I’m Rachel Balducci and I am hanging on by a thread. I’ve been saying this repeatedly over the last few weeks and here’s how I know I don’t (think I) need to be worried.
Faith
For starters, this time of year is always super stressful for me. My two youngest children go back to school after Labor Day which makes for a nice, wonderful old-timey summer. It’s so great! Until it’s not. I mean, it’s all good, we just sort of drag ourselves through the hot, humid Georgia climes to the September finish line. We are gonna make it. It’s all gonna be okay!
The second reason I know I’m okay is that I’m tired in large part because I started back on campus last week. This is always an adjustment. I teach journalism at the local university, and I’ve learned (now that I’m in my fourth year working here full-time) that getting back in the school swing takes a lot of energy. It’s exhausting, frankly, and I absolutely love it.
Now if I’m not careful, I might compare my job situation to someone else’s and say something like, “But I shouldn’t be tired because plenty of mamas work all year round and don’t get summers off…” It’s really tempting to think this way.
But I can only live my life with my reality. I’m the only one living my day-to-day reality with my circumstance and details and personality and family. As the old proverb goes, only the toe knows where the shoe pinches.
As a wife and mama of six (four college boys and two younger children), life is full and wonderful and sometimes crazy. And in the past, comparison has caused real damage for me. I spent many years trying to keep up with the mamas around me, not necessarily in material goods but in my schedule. It’s so easy to look around and see what everyone else is doing, what others seem to be able to manage, and then try and keep up.
When my youngest was in kindergarten, I decided that it was time for me to jump back fully into “life outside the home” and entered the workforce. It was wonderful for a time, and then I got completely burned out. I ignored all the signals in my life that were pointing to exhaustion — anxiety and agitation, wishing for every day to be over. It wasn’t good, but I kept on trucking because I looked around and saw all the other people able to manage the same thing.
I finally learned that I really didn’t know the full story for anyone other than myself. Only I knew where the shoe was pinching and the fruit in my life wasn’t good. Also, my priorities are my husband and children (and taking care of myself), and if I’m giving so much to my job that I have nothing left for my family, that’s not good.
It was in that hard season I learned how much God really cares about our day-to-day circumstances. I started praying for a solution to my exhaustion, and God sent one. In fact, I wrote a whole book about all the lessons I learned in that difficult time. And God was faithful — He led me out of that season and into a new time with deep peace and joy. I’m in a totally different season now, and my job really does energize me (outside of those first few tiring weeks). I have the energy I need to take care of the people in my life, and I love what I do professionally as well.
And I’ve found that truth to be so true — God wants us to enjoy our lives! That doesn’t mean things will always be easy or there will be no suffering. But we can use our wit and intellect to make decisions about our energy and time.
Getting back to what I said before: if I am describing myself as hanging on by a thread but I understand that it’s a short-term issue, that’s one thing. But if I am repeatedly describing myself as hanging on by a thread — long term and with no expected end in sight — that’s a problem. If the day-to-day circumstances of my life are open-ended, white knuckling and exhausting, that’s not good. I realized this truth when that daily life routine of mine caused that chronic stress and anxiety. Something had to give.
Each one of us has the free will to decide how we want to live our life. We get to decide what our life looks like. Even in those circumstances that seem out of our control, there are ways we can have boundaries to find peace.
And I love that God wants to be a part of it. He has a plan for each one of us, but it’s up to us (and sometimes our loved ones) to discern what that is. For me, I made decisions about my time commitments without stopping to consider the fruit. It was good at first, and then I needed to change.
If you feel like you are exhausted and sad and at the end of your rope, consider your reality. Are the actions of my daily life causing this problem? Is this temporary? Can I keep doing this for a week? Two weeks? A month? Anything past that I would say needs assessing. We can’t white-knuckle our way through life. God doesn’t want it.
God uses every opportunity in our lives to draw us closer to Him, sometimes even with something as simple (and complicated!) as our daily calendars.
Rachel Balducci is married to Paul, and they have five sons and one daughter. Rachel is a national speaker and the author of several books. She teaches journalism at Augusta University and is the cohost of The Gist on CatholicTV. She muses about daily living on Instagram, @rachelbalducci.
