Balancing It All: My Story of Juggling Priorities and Purpose (4 page)

Finally, we need to keep in mind our role to pour into the lives of those around us—certainly our children, but also our friends, other family members, and those closest to us. Growing and maintaining a healthy balance in our lives is key to that. As I said earlier, we need to ensure we are growing intellectually, physically, spiritually, and socially. We’ve probably all met someone who is very well developed in one of these areas and underdeveloped in another. As you read and think about what it will mean to balance it all in your life, think about how your priorities can help you grow in each of these ways to be all that God has designed you to be!

Chapter 3

A Heart Change

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

—Ezekiel 36:26 (hcsb)

I
f you watched
Make
It or Break It
there is probably one main character that made you mad more times than anyone else: Lauren Tanner. Lauren was often vicious, vindictive, and just flat-out mean to the other gymnasts (including her best friends), the coaches, her parents, and basically anyone else with whom she came into contact. By all accounts, she had a heart of stone. My character, Summer van Horne, dated Lauren’s dad during the first season and became a kind of surrogate mother to Lauren. Summer shared her Christian faith and the principles she knew were effective in her life, and she tried to help Lauren become a better person—a person with a heart of flesh. While Lauren did eventually start treating people a little better thanks to Summer’s influence, viewers always questioned her motives. Why? Because she still often treated people badly and there wasn’t a lot of evidence that Lauren had changed on the inside. When it comes down to it, you can’t really change on the outside until you change on the inside.

So how does this relate to balance and priorities? Well, I’ve found that many times my life is out of balance and my priorities need to change because
I
need to change. The things I do are based on the state of my heart at that time. My heart needs to change so that I can see clearly to make wise choices about how I live my life.

My life often gets thrown out of balance when I start considering what is acceptable to the world—our culture, the media, Hollywood, etc.—instead of what is acceptable to God. Romans 12:2 says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” When I get caught up in what the world deems important, my mind needs to be renewed—something inside me needs to change—in order for me to see and do what God wants for me. When I start to get selfish, focused on material things, or put too much of a focus on work over my family, I need to make an adjustment. Yes, my actions and decisions need to change, but in order for that to happen, my heart needs to change. I need to see my part in the problem and ask God to transform me from the inside so that I can be in His good, acceptable, and perfect will.

I wasn’t always aware of this concept, nor did I look to God when I knew I needed to make adjustments in my life. But I started to get a glimpse of it when my parents separated for a time. You thought my family was perfect? Sorry to disappoint you, but we had our share of problems too.

Family Heartbreak

Mom and Dad were always focused on what was best for us kids. You moms out there might be wondering how they did it all with Kirk and me both working on different TV shows every day. Well, thankfully Kirk turned sixteen soon after
Full House
began, so he was able to drive himself to and from work. That freed Mom up to take me where I needed to be. However, she had two daughters at home, was managing both Kirk and me, and still needed to be involved in the day-to-day details of Kirk’s career, so she would often go back and forth between home and the two sets, and she would leave me under the watchful care and guardianship of our studio teacher when she wasn’t able to be on the
Full House
set.

Meanwhile, Dad was still being Mr. Mom at home with Bridgette and Melissa while Mom was with Kirk and me. Once I started working full-time I missed spending the afternoons with my sisters. On some days I was a little jealous that they were getting to play and hang out and have fun together while I was working. But overall, I was extremely excited and happy to be on the show, and it really helped that I loved my
Full House
family. They weren’t quite as great as the Cameron family, but they were right up there!

Even with all the craziness going on with two kids on two different TV shows, my parents continued to insist on keeping family time a priority, keeping us as grounded as possible, and setting reasonable boundaries for us. Mom and Dad did not want us kids involved in the Hollywood lifestyle. Other teen stars were often featured in the tabloids for various indiscretions, and my parents had no intention of letting us be a part of the party crowd and messing up our lives, careers, and futures. Even though Kirk and I were making much more money than our parents made, they made sure we stayed respectful, realized we were no better than our sisters, and knew who the parents were. All four of us had rules just like any typical teenagers: chores, curfews, dating age, when we could wear makeup, and even when we could start shaving our legs! We didn’t get a different set of rules just because two of us were on TV.

We were taught to treat others with respect, and that meant on the set as well as off it. We were to respect all of the crew on the set, whether they were the producers or the janitors. Also, after a tape day, Mom expected me to hang up my clothes. This was unexpected by the wardrobe people; apparently not everyone bothered to hang their clothes back up. But to me, it was just normal, as was cleaning up my dressing room each day. I had chores at home, and I had chores at work.

While my parents seemed to have it all together when it came to parenting, that was not so much the case with their marriage. I could tell they were often frustrated with each other. Several times a week they would have closed-door meetings in their bedroom, and I knew it wasn’t for anything fun. They were constantly talking through things, being very specific in the way they worded their sentences with one another. They met with friends for counsel several nights a week.

One night Mom was very upset and in tears. She asked me to pack my overnight bag because we were going to spend the night at an inn down the street. Several hours after we arrived at the hotel, Dad knocked on the door. When Mom opened it, he was crying and pleading to talk with her. As a twelve-year-old I couldn’t figure out which one of them had done something bad. Who was to blame for whatever the problem was? Based on the desperate looks on both of their faces that night, I couldn’t come to a conclusion.

I knew things weren’t good, but it did seem as if they were working on things, so it came as a shock when my mom said she was moving out of the house. Thankfully, the possibility of divorce never really entered my mind. I figured Mom and Dad needed a break, but they would work it out.

So Mom got an apartment close to home and I spent much of my time there, since she was the one who drove me to and from work. I have to admit that it was kind of fun to shop for new furniture, linens, and kitchen items for the apartment. It seemed more like a vacation rental than my mom’s new permanent residence. When I really thought about it, though, I felt like it was a joke that had been taken too far. The apartment didn’t feel like home, and some days I was really sad and just wanted to go back to my real house. I wanted everyone to return to our normal family life.

A Surprise Outing

One evening when I was staying at “Dad’s house,” he told my sisters and me to jump in the car, but he wouldn’t tell us where we were going. It was quite a surprise when we pulled up to a big warehouse-type building and discovered Dad had brought us to church. We sat in the back row with Dad’s friend who had invited us. It was weird being there, but at the same time I knew it was a huge deal because my dad was the last person I ever thought would go to church. This was the man who didn’t want Mom taking us to church, yet here we were! But even at that young age I realized that this was Dad’s way of trying to make changes in his heart and attitude. He was seeking help to revive his marriage. That was a major moment in my life—seeing my dad do something so humble for the sake of his wife and kids.

We started going to church every Sunday, and the more I went the more I liked it. At first I would just go to the service in the main sanctuary, but then I found out about the middle school Sunday school class I could attend with other kids my age. I went a few times, but I didn’t really feel like I fit in because I was so new to anything that had to do with church and the Bible. All of the other kids knew so much more than I did. We would share with each other in small groups, but I mostly sat there quietly listening. I really had no clue what they were talking about, and I didn’t know any of the people in the Bible or their historical accounts. I realized I liked sitting in the main sanctuary and listening to the sermons, even though it sounded so foreign. I preferred to get an overview of what the pastor was talking about instead of trying to figure out the specifics of the Bible at that time.

After we began attending church, I really started to see some changes in my dad. He had always been a good and generous person, but he previously had a negative spirit and wasn’t always encouraging. But he started to change in those areas, and I think Mom saw that. Not long after, Mom said she was coming home. I was so thrilled! I had always felt in my heart that it would happen and I never gave up hope that she would return.

Mom was going to church with us, and it made me so happy to see her smiling when she was there. The people at that church seemed so kind, loving, and friendly, and my family greatly benefited from that. But more than that, we profited from the change God was bringing about in both of my parents. Dad had certainly started doing everything he could to be the kind of man my mom and us kids needed him to be. It was obvious that those changes weren’t just superficial—he was truly changing on the inside. I don’t believe that would have been possible without God’s help.

Spiritual Adjustments

Meanwhile, I enjoyed going to church every week and getting to know a whole new group of people that seemed positive and optimistic—and who loved God. It was only months before I decided to give my heart to Jesus. At the end of one church service, I repeated the pastor’s prayer and then raised my hand to show that I had asked Jesus to be my Savior. At twelve years old, I believed He had died to pay for my sins and saved me from an eternity in hell. A few weeks later, my mom, brother, sister, cousin, and I were all baptized. Dad wasn’t baptized at the time, but it was obvious God was working in him.

If you’ve been around church much, you know that most churches have a youth group, and ours was no exception. I went quite a bit during the summer, but it was hard during the months I was working on the show. However, when I was fourteen I was excited to get to go on my first youth group weekend retreat to Big Bear, California. The rest of the kids went up to the retreat site on the church bus on Friday, but it was during taping season for
Full House,
and we had our live tapings on Fridays. I was so excited about my first retreat, though, that my parents agreed to make the three-hour drive early Saturday morning so I could join my friends at Big Bear. Unfortunately, I got so sick that Saturday afternoon that I wanted to go home immediately. I couldn’t endure the thought of being there another day and then riding the bus back home on Monday when all I could think about was throwing up. So Mom and Dad drove back up to Big Bear early Sunday morning to pick me up. Even though my first “camp” experience didn’t turn out like I’d hoped it would, it showed me how much my parents loved me and how far they were willing to go to help make my life as normal as possible during my teen years.

After a while, Kirk started going to a new church and I joined him. It was much smaller than our previous church, and it didn’t have a youth group, but I had a crush on one of my brother’s friends so I was more than happy to go. Yeah, I know I’m not the only teen who went to church because of a member of the opposite sex! Whoever God uses, right?

We continued to go to church as a family, but as I got into my mid-teen years, church got put on the back burner. I was traveling a lot on the weekends and I was exhausted. Even when we were home on Sundays Mom and Dad didn’t always make me go to church, though they typically went and let me sleep in. Other than my dad’s transformation of attitude and behavior, our home life didn’t change a whole lot because of church. We were still morally guided in a biblical way, but we didn’t read the Bible as a family or pray together. Honestly, we didn’t talk about God much. We all kind of did our own thing. I saw Mom read the Bible a lot, and Dad read a lot of books about the Bible because he was still trying to grasp his understanding of God from a scientific background, but other than going to the occasional Sunday morning service, my life wasn’t much different than before.

A New Beginning

My dad’s life was different, however, and that affected the whole family in a positive way. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Dad started to change at the same time we started going to church. When we want God to change us, He will. When we follow Him, He will transform us. Second Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” God makes us new.

I believe God made my parents’ marriage new. They were very committed to each other, and they put a lot of time and effort into their marriage. They both desperately wanted to make it work, so much that they were both willing to change what needed to be changed. My dad became a different man before our eyes, and my mom became more confident. When things got to a point where they knew they had to change, they sought out God, and He gave them the strength to do it.