A Balanced Life?

Last Thursday and Friday, about 18 pastors in Atlanta all gathered at Calvin Center to hear guidance and instruction on living a balanced life. We are part of a group called "Macedonian Ministries" led by Rev. Dr. Tom Tewell. He is attempting to guide each of us on our journies of Congregational Transformation. Each pastor is different. Each congregation is different. Yet, we all find ourselves stretched totally thin by the demands of doing this with and for God...

Tom, realizing the strains, invited a retired pastor down, who told of his own struggles to maintain some sense of balance in his life as a rising, big steeple pastor, with family, and marriage, and other pulls. He gave us suggestions on prioritizing, delegating, and dropping.
At one point in the presentation, I confessed my desire to try "block scheduling," where each day is blocked off into three sections, morning, afternoon, and night. Each section is given to a priority, and that priority gets my full attention for that time. Since each section is about 4-4.5 hours, I can decide in advance to give the church 12-13 of them, tops, limiting me to no more than about 50 hours a week. Then I can schedule time for marriage, parenting, friends, other family, work around the house, fun, etc... I have tried to shift into this mode twice. But both times, I was attacked by church and family both for not being there enough for either. I came to the conclusion that flexible chaos is better than inflexible order. I set down my hope of living a balanced life.
Now, I'm back to hoping it again, thanks to this stupid retreat. I really don't like hopeless hopes. I find them to be way too much work, totally exhausting. I would prefer to have a few relationships that aren't such projects, and that end up being natural nourishment for me as much as I feel I am putting into them. Maybe that is the pastor curse though. It isn't ever going to be about a balance between serving and being served. It's always going to be about serving first.
What I dislike most about this is the sense in my own heart that I am not effective, let alone proficient, at either church or home. Isn't there some way to be a good guy, a decent visionary, a fair leader of a congregation, an adequate preacher, and at the same time be a present father, and a reliable husband. Why must it become a competition between the two?
Balance is about equal forces on opposite sides. The weights on one side match the weights on the other. But there's a few major problems with this metaphor. On a scale, there is a limit to the total weight. In life, when one side gets too heavy, the other sides screams for more attention, and adds ever more weight. Sure, I am balanced from one side to the other, but the total weight of the two sides combined is simply too much for my little scale. Also, on a scale, the weights are static. They just sit there, and have weight, a gravitational force. But in relationships, and real life, the forces are dynamic, with a pull. I'm not a scale, as much as I am a rope in a tug of war contest. Even if the forces on both sides of the tug of war are in balance, they can still be too much for the rope, and the impending SNAP is not only predicted, but guaranteed.
And what is a rope or scale to do when the forces exceed capacity other than break? The assumption is that a balanced life comes from telling those who would stack more weights, or tug harder, to stop it. Yeah, right. Tell that to the depressed, lonely, grieving 90 year old who has been trained all her life that one prayer from a pastor is worth 30 prayers from friends. Tell that to a wife who needs hours together to figure out what she needs, then additional hours to work on getting getting it. I don't mind doing either mind you. Both are my callings. But I find the tug of war exhausting.
Surely the two sides sense the resistance on the other side. Of course they do. And that's why they pull harder, trying to win, to finally feel the other side let go. What about if both sides eased up together? On the count of three, we will all ease up. Ready? One, two, three. But they wouldn't trust each other. Neither would give up a stone, a pound of pull, an inch. They are both so sure that if they pull harder, one day they will not need to pull any harder to have the whole rope to themselves.
Well, if either pulls much harder, they won't have to pull any more. But they will both end up with one-half of a broken rope in their hands. They would probably then blame the other for pulling so hard.