Advice On Holy Habits and Juggling Acts

Against a beautiful backdrop of softly falling snow (a treat for this Florida girl), I delighted in the opportunity to speak to the Regent Law faculty and students during their annual spiritual retreat on January 24.

Our panel of three alumni followed an inspiring keynote speech by David Nammo, executive director of Christian Legal Society. He spoke of the importance of developing “holy habits” while in law school – because, believe it or not, kids, life actually gets busier after law school.

 Yep! It’s true. While the pressures of toting highlighters and casebooks into every coffee shop you frequent are blissfully off, other pressures are full on. Swap out study hours for billable hours, final exams for annual reviews, and regularly scheduled homework assignments from your favorite professor for spontaneous, need-it-yesterday research assignments from your not-so-favorite partner, and welcome to a whole new world of chaos.

 And that’s just your work life chaos. We haven’t even scratched the surface of the other daily pressures clamoring for your starved attention. Family members, laundry piles, mail stacks, bills and loans, yards and cars, grocery stores and dentist chairs. What about church? Ministry? Friends? A little quiet time, perhaps? Dare I say exercise?

 Time is precious. Especially when measured in 6-minute increments. This is the first lesson every lawyer learns when released from the ivory white halls of academia.

Here’s a piece of advice dispensed from a well-loved judge I had the privilege to clerk for: Life is not a balancing act. There will always be more than two things you’re balancing – thus, it’s more of a juggling act.

When juggling, she says, be mindful of what’s in front of you at any given point in time. Sometimes, the priorities you’re juggling are like rubber and they’ll “bounce back” if you must drop one to keep others moving. Other times, you’re dealing with crystal – if dropped, it will shatter into a million unrecoverable pieces. The real trick is knowing when your rubber balls sometimes “morph” into crystal ones and vice-versa. A keen awareness of the ever-changing seasons of your life will aid your juggling efforts – is your family right now a crystal ball or rubber ball? Is that weekend work deadline crystal or rubber? Discernment at this level could save you from making a costly mistake.

While we’re on the topic of life-saving advice, I wanted to expand my thoughts on the four types of “holy habits” I shared about in brief on the panel. For the next four blog installments, I will dig a little deeper on these tried and true Biblical concepts: 1) First Fruits, 2) Honoring Authority, 3) Increasing Responsibility, and 4) Reaping and Sowing.

I look forward to journeying deeper with you into the Word on this blog. What I've found in the early stages of my legal career is that taking time to unlock the principles of His Kingdom – and turn them into “holy habits” – seems to unlock some sort of gate from Heaven from which all manner of unimaginable blessing flows.

 And all that juggling? Way more manageable with an extra Helping Hand from above.