Remembering the Combination

I stuffed my pink gym bag into the locker, slipped the combination lock through the door and paused.  I'm paranoid about forgetting the combination to my lock and always take a moment to recite it to myself before securing the clasp.

It's getting easier now that my daughter is in school five mornings a week and I can get to the gym more often.  There was a time when weeks, even months, would go by and I had to sit in the locker room trying to remember the combination while I imagined my daughter's screams echoing through the gym from the nursery room. (Sometimes I wasn't just imagining them.)

Working out is still hard to get in just the right doses. Work out too much and other areas of your life suffer and you can end up more tired than you started or you can get injured. Work out too little and energy flags, sleep patterns get disrupted and overall health is affected. It's just like other aspects of our lives.

Quality time with family versus time spent on "personal infrastructure" – i.e., errands and household management.  Quiet time for reflection and creative inspiration versus work time. There are a lot of moving pieces to our lives and it's difficult at times to get everything in just the right balance.

Sometimes we don't control some of the moving pieces.  Our work can get too demanding and other areas have to be sacrificed as a result.  Or our personal infrastructure can be overwhelming at times.  But it's always important to try to bring things back into the right combination over time.  And it's important to not leave things off balance for so long that you forget what the right combination is.

But there are some things that I never doubt that I have in the right combination.  Like love for my kids.  And the combination that was formed when I married my sweetheart so many years ago.

I remember the combination of the lock, secure the clasp and twist the dial.  I'm off to get in my workout, then cooking one of my husband's favorite dishes for Valentine's Day:  Cornish Game Hens.  Let's just hope it comes with microwave instructions.

Happy Valentine's Day!