I have always been struck that Mary, the mother of Jesus, after learning that she was pregnant with the one whom many would later call to be the Messiah, somehow found time to “ponder these things in her heart.”

Ponder!

Who has time to ponder, especially in these days of pre-Christmas madness?

It is very hard to keep our center in the midst of chaos, despite all sorts of strategies to find “balance” in one’s life.

It is simply the nature of life to be out-of-balance on more occasions than not: work sometimes demands our attention more than family; relationships sometimes demand our attention more than laundry; self-care sometimes demands our attention more than bills, and so forth.

Could it be that rather than pursuing balance, we would be better served to pursue integration?

The sense of integration is that there is a flow between one facet of our lives and another.  The more integrated our lives are, the more we live our lives with integrity.

Worth a ponder or two, I think.

Now to just integrate some time for it in my unbalanced schedule…..

What do you think?