Balancing Life

Finding a balance is sometimes a bit of a challenge for me. Most people associate balance with work-life balance; the idea of balancing your personal life with your work life so as not to let your work life overtake your personal life. But there are other areas as well.

One of those other areas for me is the spiritual-non spiritual balance when it comes to blogging, facebooking and tweeting. We all know that all three areas are types of social media very prevalent today. As I read through other people's posts through the various methods I notice that they typically have a solid slant, one way or the other. You can pretty much tell who their audience is or who they are trying to reach out to.

For example, I follow a good number of pastors that I have never even met on Twitter. It is amazing to me how many times a day they can come up with something to say that is motivational or inspirational. They often provide links to their blogs where they provide great insights into a God-moment, lessons or thoughts. Their audience is clear. For some, the audience is Christian leaders. For others, the audience is a wide array of pastors. For a smaller group, their audience is their youth group.

The bottom line is that their audience is known and clear - at least in my mind as the reader. Do I feel like those posts aren't for me because I am not a leader, a pastor or a youth? No. Actually, I can usually get quite a bit out of just about any of their posts and I often feel like that nugget was meant just for me. Funny how that works.

So when I sit here and type away at my own blog or update my Twitter or Facebook account, it is interesting that I sometimes struggle to find the balance of who my audience is...who it is that I'm trying to reach out to. You might find it interesting that it is not a rare thing for me to write something out, delete it, reword it, type it out again, delete it and end up with the same thing I started with...or something completely different. Doing all of this out of an effort to not offend someone, not seem to "preachy", not go too far into Bible-thumphood...or on the other hand not be too secular, appear hypocritical, or worldly.

But what would happen if I lived my whole life like that? I'd be a mess! How do I know that? Because I've lived my life like that in the past; trying to figure out just the right thing to do or say for each person that I'm around. Thankfully I don't live in that hell any longer but live only to please One - the God who gave His Son to die on the cross for me, for my sins...and for you and yours.

So while I still catch myself stopping and second guessing what I'm writing, I'm thankful that I'm able to release the anxiety of walking the fine line between too much and not enough, in order to just be myself...the way that God intended it to be. My hope is that by doing so everyone will get something out of it...feel like there is that one piece that was meant just for them to read.

What about you? Where are you trying to find your balance? I encourage you to stay true to who you are, who God made you to be!