By Mary Morrell
Freelance columnist
Give yourself the wonderful gift of balance
Any time one person makes an effort to contact a deeper part of him or herself, balance his or her emotions, and deflect the stress momentum, others benefit. As more individuals learn to maintain their poise and balance and refrain from adding to the incoherence around them, they help to counterbalance the frequency of stress. — Doc Childre and Howard Martin
Today I began the first day of my Christmas vacation but, after spending several hours shopping, quickly began to feel that that the phrase was just one more cultural oxymoron.
Shopping amid preparations for this season of peace and joy can be a danger to both. With Christmas carols and traditional holiday favorites ringing in our ears from store to store, it is disconcerting to say the least when we are confronted with short-fused drivers and surly customers.
Certainly, learning to navigate an American Christmas is an exercise in extremes, dichotomies and paradoxes!
It is, as my father would have observed, a season out of balance.
One of the most important things my father ever taught me was the need for balance in all things. He pointed it out in nature, in the damage done by too much fertilizer, or not enough water; the loss that occurs in over planting a garden or the erosion caused by uprooting too many trees. The wise person will not let the lesson be lost.
In this season of giving, it is often the givers who suffer most — giving themselves away in bits and pieces of time and energy and emotion until there is little or nothing left for themselves, then wondering why Christmas has become devoid of the peace promised in that humble stable so many years ago.
Givers often need to be reminded that it is good to receive, and the person they often need to receive the most from is themselves.
One of our most respected American sopranos, Jessye Norman, put it succinctly, “Problems arise in that one has to find a balance between what people need from you and what you need for yourself.”
It has taken me many life lessons and several years of therapy to be on that road to balance once again.
When we study the life of Jesus after he grew beyond Bethlehem, we find that he was able to give of himself so profoundly because he spent much time in renewing himself, most especially through prayer and time spent away from the crowd. It was his way of achieving balance.
We, too, must do the same, not only to navigate through an American Christmas but to be the healthy givers our world needs.
This Christmas, put yourself on the top of the list and give yourself the gift of prayer and self-care.
Surely, God would expect nothing less.
*The attached/referenced article was originally published in The Catholic Spirit, the official newspaper of the Diocese of Metuchen, and is protected under U.S. and international copyright law