Who needs balance when you have chocolate cake?

I DO!!! when i did youth ministry for a time, one of the lessons i grabbed from the YFC curriculum was on balance. you took a quiz on four areas of your life: spiritual, social, physical and mental, to see where you stood on each. the goal of the quiz was to fall somewhere in the upper-middle of all of them. if you found you were high on one end and low on another, you could re-organize your priorities accordingly. with my life, i have found that balance seems to be the key for me. usually, i find i am lacking in one area at a time. i attempt to fix it, therefore, neglecting another, and then frantically trying to re-focus my energy on that...........it tends to be a vicious cycle, a vicious cycle that is usually manageable. i can usually tell when something is being neglected because i feel unsettled. i can definitely tell when things are balanced because i begin to get the urge to do something stupid to throw it all out of whack again :) lately i have been feeling unsettled, so, naturally, at two o'clock this morning, i couldn't sleep. i started to think about the different areas of my life to see which one was off-balance with the rest and came to a horrifying realization: THEY ALL ARE!! there is not one area of my life that is balanced or focused or on target with where it should be......not even close. it's a wonder i get through each day. the truth is....i don't. i float through each day like a zombie, doing the bare-minimum to simply survive it. my diet is aweful, i have gained weight and feel extremely uncomfortable with myself physically (not because i'm obsessed with it but because i know how my body should feel and i'm not even close to that right now), i haven't been keeping up on my homework because nothing has been "due", and i keep arriving late and unprepared, i'm letting work stress me out beyond what it should, nothing is a priority right now - i just float to the next thing and sit. i haven't done a devotion in over a week, or been to church in two months, ( i have conversations with God every day, which is how i came to the revelation of my present-day, unbalanced existence). i have not been in touch with close friends for quite some time, or returned calls, or really care much about making or breaking plans. i have grown comfortable with the fact that i have run out of clean clothes and my apartment is a disaster......the list can go on and on, but i'll spare the details. that's just the major stuff. while i understand that some fine-tuning is in order, i can also be realistic and understand that it's not going to be completely different overnight. i know i am capable of going into overdrive and turning everything around by this time tomorrow, but eventually i would grow weary and jump back off the wagon and become lazy again. this is not a quick fix situation. it's a matter of finding the small changes i can make in each area to grow closer to the desired level of balance.........i'm not looking forward to the work involved, i'm sure that's why i continually stall the inevitable, but i will feel better and get more out of the things i am involved in. in addition, i will be a better influence on the lives of those i encounter on a daily basis. i will be better for me, and better for them....most of all, i will be better for Him. looks like i better go, i have to do my laundry, walk a bit on the treadmill, eat a balanced meal, do some kind of homework, call an old friend, make plans with a new one, and go to bible study........sounds like a pretty well-balanced night. hopefully that means this headache will finally go away...... ~PEACE~