The Art of Juggling

In this season, the juggling emoji has become my favorite. It’s the picture of the girl who has on a black cap, a red bowtie and with all three balls in the air, juggles with precision. And for some strange reason, she never drops them! It is a snap shot into my life right now. None of them are in her hands and all are tossed up, to hopefully be caught and not roll away. With the collision of the beginning of a new school year, as well as the not- yet-ended pool season, I find myself constantly juggling the demands of multiple jobs, church involvement, social life (ha) and daily duties as a functioning adult in society. Mix them all up and my day to day life right now is conglomeration of calendar reminders on my phone, so I don’t miss anything.

But it won’t always be like this. The seasons ebb and flow. I prefer a filled schedule and have a hard time saying “no” so I made this bed – and I’ll lay in it. So, alas, I juggle. Figuratively.

This week, I also attempted to juggle, literally. A few extra minutes at my not-yet-ended summer job and three tennis balls. Could be a cool skill to pull out that I can do. It’ll go right up there with loud whistle and color code calendars. Did you even know I had so many skills?!

Another thing to know about me – I don’t like to do things I’m bad at. Let’s just call that what it is – pride.

Back to juggling. It doesn’t look that hard, right? How hard can it really be? Toss a few objects around in a circle and you’ve got it. Not. So. Much. I spent the next twenty minutes chasing tennis balls around the pool deck, getting one in the air, then two, then none; getting the rotation to happen once and since I chose softball to be my main sport in high school and college, you’d think my hand eye coordination would be better!

It takes skill and a little luck and you do have to have some decent hand eye coordination because you know what the most important piece to juggling is?

You look at the highest object.

You never look at your hands.

You never even truly look at the objects as they go around in the circle.

You fix your eyes on the top most point. And for some reason, unbeknownst to me, it triggers in your brain where your hands need to be. It is the very most important part of the skill: keep your eyes up.

I think we can learn something here. Keep our eyes up. Keep our eyes looking toward the One who sends help. Keep our eyes looking at the One who sends help. I’m reminded, “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come?” (Psalm 121:1). My help comes when I lift my eyes up. When I’m juggling all of the good life things and the hard life things, my help comes when I lift my eyes.

I want to be someone who remembers to look up. Someone who remembers when my hands are working on too many things and there’s a very good chance I won’t remember how to keep it all going – I want to be the one who continues to look up.

I want to be the one who fixes my gaze on the face of Jesus (listen to Hillsong’s “O Praise the Name” worship song), the One who is higher than I.

I want to look up.