White balance is a photography term used to describe the color setting on your camera. Simply put, do the whites in your picture appear white? Our eyes naturally adjust, but when it comes to taking pictures you have to manually set it lest the color tones turn out more blue or warmer. I always found this fascinating our eyes have this amazing feature built in (a testament to our creator). Right now I feel like I’m the camera and God is trying to set my white balance. I’m honestly struggling with pressing in to my spiritual walk before launch, but there is this constant urge in my spirit to build up some more good habits that I believe will carry over into the race. I’ve come to a point I was fearful of a few months ago. Complacency. I think it’s too incredibly easy for us in our Western culture to kick it into automatic setting when everything is falling into place. Being a photographer, and spending 4 years studying it in school has taught me that you never, EVER want to use automatic settings. Our professors pounded that into us because it’s viewed as lazy, and you’re not using the camera to it’s fullest potential. I use a lot of analogies so bear with me…
In my spiritual life right now I’m using the automatic settings. Do a devotional, pray, maybe journal. If photography has taught me anything, it’s you need to work at getting that perfect shot. You work at your style, you try different settings, do your research, be aware of what’s going on, and of course have fun! What happened to my fun with my God time?! Uh, I lost it. I lost what made my devotional time unique to me and kept my heart in it fully. This is my mini dry spell. I need to readjust my white balance. Instead of trying a slew of new things and forcing it to work, I decided lets try something new and just ask the Holy Spirit what it is I need to change. Profound I know, but sometimes when your eye gets stuck on the viewfinder you lose sight of the bigger picture (pun intended 
). I need to pull back, get a new angle, and refocus.
Something that has been an ongoing lesson for me is taking baby steps in order to change things. All too often I go from one extreme to another, and 9 times out of 10 it pretty much ends in failure and frustration. I’m learning now that baby steps get me where I need to be much faster and efficiently. Amazing what happens when you listen to the Holy Spirit…I’m starting to have fun and gain intrigue again. It’s nice. I’m enjoying getting to understand how to communicate with Holy Spirit better. I’m definitely going to bank on that more than ever when I’m on the race.
Until then, I’ll keep an open mind and heart. Pray for my squad as we all learn to press in and tie up some loose ends before we leave. It’s been a battle for many, myself included.
