Recovering Life #5: Balance- Finding our Feet

Laughter really can be the best medicine.  

I was laughing with the physiotherapist in the hospital as we were doing exercises to improve my balance.  The bleed on my brain had occurred in my cerebellum: which is responsible for balance and co-ordination.  So, it would be fair to say I was pretty shaky on my feet.  Truth is balance has never been my strong suit.  So we were laughing at the irony that it was here I was weakened.  The physio assured me that to gain my balance again I would need to challenge it.  I had already given one student nurse a scare with a wobbly moment on my travels!  It seemed there would be some more near misses ahead on the road to recovering balance.

The same unsettling dizziness was felt by many as coronavirus arrived and our world was shaken.  Amidst the storm, however, we were not all in the same boat, but certainly facing the same conditions being ‘all at sea.’  

- Those who were front line workers found themselves swept off their feet with busyness and trying to find a way of staying safe in the middle of it all.  
-  For others a prolonged time at home was accompanied with work to do and even children to do schooling with.  Work had already been encroaching on home, but now had fully imposed itself on that place we look to rest and recharge. Boundaries would have to be established for balance to be found.  
-  Maybe for others there was time aside from work and very little structure to their day.  The welcome break giving way to a lack of purpose and loss of routine. 

Whatever our circumstances we were all trying to find our feet.  
As I considered the personal challenges that lay ahead with the intial lockdown in Spring 2020 the question that occurred was, 
“How can we live in a way that we still be standing when this all passes?”  

With the bleed around my cerebellum, in Summer 2020, I was sat down for a period to recover and rest.  Finding my feet would take some time. 

Covid had shaken all of us from our illusion of control and maybe even shaken us awake.  The world we live in is unsafe and uncertain.  It’s a world in which we are looking for security. 

Finding our way through this unsettling time of change has challenged us to keep up to date with information on the progress of the virus, how to keep ourselves safe and the updates to restrictions.  As if this wasn’t overwhelming enough we had to digest all this information and make decisions on what we felt was safe as the landscape changed along the way.  

We needed wisdom more than ever before.  
Where would we find it? 

We were already swimming in information.  We now have instant inroads to information on anything we need to know at the touch of a button.  Just ask Google or watch a short youtube video to learn the latest skill we need.  Never mind the constant news cycles and updates. Whilst information can help chart our way, is it making us any wiser?  
For all the data we know are we any the steadier for it?  

Edwin Friedman,  who was a family therapist and leadership consultant, coined the phrase, “non-anxious presence” describing how someone could bring calm and change to a stressful environment.  He described our imbalance, in the West, of overthinking as the fallacy of expertise, insisting we have become data junkies.  He predicted, “As long as leaders- parents, healers, managers- base their confidence on how much data they have acquired, they are doomed to feeling inadequate, forever.  They will never catch up.”  

In the West we have become imbalanced.  We overthink and so we rely on our heads (thinking) over our hearts (feeling) or our hands and feet (habits).  

In the wisdom book of Proverbs, in the Bible, the imbalanced view of the world which has no place for God and is shaky under our feet is the way of foolisness.  This is to live without God in the picture, doing our own thing.  With all our information and knowledge, without Him we are wise in our own eyes.  The result is an unsteadied and insecure existence.  A way that will be exposed when stormy times come.  

There is another path to walk which helps us find our feet in a world that is unsafe and uncertain.  This is the way of wisdom.  When it is prized and sought after there is a beauty to life and also safety.  

“Then you will go on your way in safety, 

and your foot will not stumble.” 

Proverbs 3.21-23

It is no guarantee to a trouble free life, but rather a sure way of living freely in midst of trouble.  

So, our view of the world is rebalanced.   To be wise is to live with integrity.  This is to live in a way that is true to the world, to others, to ourselves and also to the One who made it.  To live before His face and under His watch  is the key to wisdom: to live in the fear of the Lord.  To live like this is to find our feet in living the right way up.  Here is a wisdom that works.  This way of life is shown strong when storms come in.  

Jesus develops this wisdom when teaching His followers what it would mean to live in His Kingdom: to walk in His ways.  This is found in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel chapters 5-7.  It concludes with the picture of the wise man, who is the one who hears Jesus words and puts them into practice. He is like a man who builds his house on the Rock.  His life has strong foundations which stand storm and flood.  

The foolish man builds his house on the sand: it’s easy to build yet shallow and so when challenged it comes crashing down.  

Jesus is speaking to those he has called disciples.  Those who are His followers, or pupils, or even better apprentices.  Their wisdom was found in not just knowing information but practising Jesus words.  To be His disciple was not only to listen to His teaching, but to be with Him and see Him in action and to be entrusted with doing work for Him.  It was a learned wisdom in real life. 

So, as we seek wisdom to find our feet in the world, Jesus does not leave us short.  
The Sermon on the Mount matches the wisdom of Proverbs in being rounded in its understanding of who we are: more than heads full of knowledge, but hearts which love and hands which work.  We are more than just ourselves, but live in the round in God’s world as we encounter friends and foes, family and neighbours and most of all God himself.  So we are in conversation with the world, others, God and ourselves: so there is wisdom for listening and speaking, for spending and saving, for working and resting.  

Such wisdom is hard to simply summarise, as it covers the messy complexity of our lives.  As well as being rounded, it is firmly grounded and practical.  

I may have been sat down for a number of months to regain my balance physically, but this process was God’s way of making me more steadfast in my faith.  In my most unsteady moments I was held by Him.  

At the end I was still standing.   

It was also God’s way of making me more balanced in my living. To learn new skills and the wisdom of learning to be honest with nature, friends, my body and heart and with God himself.  To be more present and more conscious of what is real.  
I was more than standing: 
I was also walking securely with Him.