Juggling 102

Be Honest

Photo by Kevin Hessey on Unsplash

Okay, so we’re going to drop balls. Being humble is the right place to start, and we need to stay grounded there — but we still want to get things done! So how do we get from lightly bouncing one ball from hand to hand to a performance worthy of the Clown of God? (If you don’t know the reference, you’re in luck, because you’re about to discover my favorite Tomie De Paola book of all time.)

There is an answer to this conundrum, but it’s not an easy one to like.

Be honest with yourself.

But I am honest! I’m a truthful person! I don’t even want to lie!

These things can all be true, and yet true self-honesty still poses a challenge. It’s instinctive to fudge about my weaknesses, to sugar-coat my mistakes and see myself in a better light. But in order to move forward, I have to know where I am. This means admitting my weaknesses and starting there. Speaking the truth in love is a skill to first develop in the self, for ourselves.

Let me tell you a story.

I had a severe tailbone injury with the birth of my fourth child, and it took a long time to heal. I love being outdoors, but almost a year later, I still had trouble going for long walks or hikes without significant pain afterwards. It felt like every time I tried to “get back on my feet,” I just hurt myself all over again. My older kids were running circles around me, and I was tired of letting them down.

One day I picked up an old step counter and started recording my daily steps. After a week or two of trial and error, I finally figured out my baseline: I could walk 2,800 steps a day without pain the next day. I didn’t want to admit I was in such bad shape; I wanted to be able to just push myself harder and get results faster. (Very American of me, right?) But no matter how I felt about it, if I exceeded that line, I hurt. Sometimes I couldn’t get out of bed or a chair for days. It was truly one step forward, two steps back.

That’s when it hit me. I needed to be honest with myself. If I could do 2,800 steps a day without pain, then that’s what I had to do. There was no point in being upset about it, or trying to hide the truth from myself. It was reality, and I had to stop fighting against it. So that is all I did for a week: 2,800 steps a day, and no pain afterwards. Then I raised my goal by a realistically small amount: 100 more steps a day. Every few days, I’d raise my step count just that tiniest bit higher-- never enough to cause pain.

And that was when things started to get better.

You see, just because we have a bunch of balls in the air doesn’t mean we’ve got it permanently mastered. Circumstances like having a new baby, taking care of an ailing parent, moving to a new place, changing employment — they can all put us in the situation where we have to start again from the beginning. Back to 2,800 steps a day, getting back in the swing of things bit by bit.

We want the quick fix, the magic plan. The very best system that will put our lives back on the rails with a clean house, brilliantly educated children and time to spare for a hobby or two. We want the short cut, fast track to spiritual wisdom, intellectual rigor, and a beach body.

It ain’t gonna happen that way, folks. We’ve got to be honest with ourselves.

Over the next few weeks, I’d like to share with you some of my juggling strategies. Not as ultimate answers for the unique circumstances in your lives, but as helpful idea generators. Thoughts that might give you the inspiration you need to take 100 extra steps a day, to juggle one more ball.

So my first nugget for you is simply this: Be honest with yourself. And the first question to answer honestly is this: “Where am I starting from?”

Don’t make any plans yet. Just look at reality as it is.

Some prompts to help you get started:

What tasks do I do well? Do I have a handle on the basics? Do I still struggle with daily organizational tasks like cooking and cleaning?

How’s my spiritual life? Am I keeping a rule of prayer?

How’s my health, and the health of my family?

What’s working in my homeschool right now? On the other hand, what’s roadkill?

You don’t need to stop there, or even start there if you’ve got something else in mind. Feel free to share thoughts in the comments!