Striking a balance

I'm constantly trying to find balance in my life.

Work, church, family, being a wife and mother, house, meals, laundry, cleaning. Things that everyone deals with on a daily basis!

There's a lot that falls off the plate every week and I'm honestly OK with most of it. There's always tomorrow and while I do work from home, it's not always easy. In fact, many times it makes it that much harder. Don't get me wrong, I feel incredibly blessed to be able to do what I do, but the balance is extremely hard at times.

But there's been something missing in my life: fellowship and study.

Early in our marriage, Craig and I joined a small group Bible study. My church strongly believes that church happens in the living room, so members are highly, highly encouraged to join a small group. They do a fantastic job of splitting up married couples (without children, with children, empty nesters), as well as the men and women. The church also intends for groups to form, grow together for a couple of years and then split and form new groups.  Our old group naturally split because we all started a family (at practically the same time!). Craig and I have not been part of a small group since Madeline was born.

And I've been missing it.

I'm honestly at a loss here. I'm a nursing mother and that doesn't mean that I can pump and give her a bottle. It doesn't work that way around here. My milk has too much of the lipase enzyme and turns incredibly sour within hours of pumping. There honestly have only been a handful of times when I wished I could give Madeline a bottle so I could go out for some reason. I've made it work and while weaning is strongly on my mind, I am taking it a day at a time. I set out to nurse for a year and, well, we're still going.

I recently went to the church to mingle with other couples with the intent of finding a new small group. I mingled, without Craig since he was s-i-c-k (along with Madeline, again). Going without Craig was weird, but I found some people who I think we could grow together with. Two of the couples have never been in a group and one of the couples has been in two. In my mind, the true way to make it work is for us to host weekly so I can still put Madeline down and we won't have the torture of finding childcare (and my church reimburses it - or at least part of it, so finances isn't the issue). I could immediately see that I really didn't think the whole group thing through. I just ripped off the Band-Aid and went to find a group without knowing how we were going to logistically make it work. We've been in a group that rotated weekly and it was difficult. Then, one of the couples had a baby so we all agreed to go to their house. It made everything so much easier to have consistency. But the group is a group and makes decisions together, and I don't think we'll be leading nor will we be hosting. I really want to make this work, but it's really hard to find the balance. And we don't even have the youngest child! I remember someone has a 9 month old.

Time will tell if we can make this work. It's time to find the balance.