The thing about Chinese Christians is that they insist on a church wedding AND a Chinese wedding dinner, which inadvertently means that you are forced to drag your ass out of bed in the wee hours of the morning — 8 am — for the church wedding.
This particular morning, I was running on caffeine, observing the vows through bleary eyes.
“I promise to always prioritise us,” my buddy told his shiny-new wife at the altar. What an honourable oath, I thought. Not to mention completely unrealistic.
Because it just doesn’t work that way, especially when you have kids — says she (me!) who has been a mother for a grand total of five months.
But it really doesn’t. You don’t prioritise one aspect of your life over another. Instead, you catch balls.
Balls are falling all the time. There’s the work ball, the child ball, the husband ball, the leisure ball, etc.
And those balls? They are falling, and falling, and falling…
Me? I’m catching, and catching, and catching…
Sometimes, I catch the work ball, sometimes I catch the child ball.
There are times when I catch the leisure ball and the child ball at the same time.
I don’t prioritise one ball over another; I catch the ball that’s closest to the ground.
On occasion, I have to let the child ball come dangerously close to touching the floor because I’m busy with a work ball. Otherwise, I ignore the falling child ball and work ball, because I choose to catch the husband ball instead.
Once in a while, I let the work ball and husband ball slam into the ground because I’m busy with the child ball, but I can’t let that happen too often. There are times when it’s the child ball that rams into the ground too.
In a perfect world, the balls fall slowly, one at a time, with long intervals in between. But it’s not a perfect world. In this real, complex world, they fall fast, hard, and consecutively.
You dive around catching balls. And sometimes, one will hit the ground. The trick is not to let the same one hit the ground too often.
Disclaimer: I found this analogy somewhere, but I can’t remember where. Full credits to the original author.