Contributed by Christine Jacobson, Chesterfield, MO. Christine is a student at Washington University, St. Louis, MO. Her husband Lee will graduate in April '95 from the Logan College of Chiropractic. They are planning to practice in Washington state, as a marriage and family therapist and chiropractor, respectively. --VC

At the beginning of the year, the last item on my list of "New Year's Resolutions for 1994" was: "Write something for HeartWing," because I value this soul-connecting publication very much.

It is now October, three-quarters of the year has flown by, and I finally feel ready to write a few lines, with the readers of HeartWing in mind. . . . First I frantically brainstormed a few possible topics which would convey a "slice of my life" . . . . and came up with proverbial titles like: "If you can imagine it, you can achieve it." "If you can dream it, you can become it." Then this little voice murmured: "Relax . . . this is NOT a research paper! This is just a chance to let your heart speak! So, I took a deep breath . . . sat more comfortably in front of my computer, and . . . here I am.

You see, after going back to school full-time and full speed for almost four years, the tendency is to primarily have give-and-take with your left brain! In fact this is what has happened to me. I first set the goal of getting a bachelor's degree in two years instead of four, and now am working on a master's degree in social work (it takes 50 semester hours of academic work and 1000 hours of internship). Also, because my school is rated the second best school of social work in the country (I often wondered why), there is great pressure to excel. To add some extra pressure, I am confronted every day with students 15 years younger than I am, prompting me to be done with graduate school as soon as I can. Like many other baby boomers, I first needed to experience Life before wanting to learn its theories.

Well, I know now that I am NOT Superwoman, because after such a race for the accumulation of knowledge, I am "burned out." However, for the first time since going back to school, I am finally comfortable with an occasional "B".

I painfully realized that you can only go so long neglecting areas of your life, and that there comes a time when balance needs to be reestablished. In my case, I took time: for my studies and my son (always), for my internships (always), for my husband (most of the time), for enriching my spiritual life with group meditations and books of interest (continually), for friends (often), for house chores and cooking (sometimes), and for quiet times to talk and listen to God while still AWAKE (rarely).

The rating of this last statement has recently changed from rarely to daily: a few weeks ago, I felt such a burning desire to sit down alone, light a candle, and sit quietly while my son was napping. Usually I use that time to either study, catch up with laundry, or do whatever demands our lives of "double full-time student/parents" brings. However, this time I had NO choice: I felt such a need to meditate and pray. Since then I have been looking forward to three o'clock in the afternoon . . . like I never have before. I feel that God, our loving parent, has also yearned for me, as parents do for their children when away from them; I would even say that He has missed this special time with me and longed to see me coming back to Him. Because of exams, I had to skip my date with our Creator two days in a row, and I felt something was badly missing: I did not experience the feeling of wholeness which the days before had brought. Now I truly know what this dear friend of mine in St. Louis, a Nichiren Buddhist, told me when I met her three years ago: "Balance is the key!"

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