Balancing It All: My Story of Juggling Priorities and Purpose (15 page)

While I’ve loved every aspect of my RooMag ministry, in early 2013 I realized that I once again needed to reevaluate my priorities and that there wasn’t enough room for Roo to continue in the same manner. The decision was made more difficult because I truly believed God had initially steered me in this direction, but I realized I couldn’t work at it the way I intended to while keeping everything else in my life balanced. While Roo ministered to thousands of women, my ministry at home was suffering. So once again, I had to make the decision to either forge ahead, causing something more important to suffer, or to close up my investment and scrap the time and energy I had expended so diligently. So I made the decision to transfer Roo and my blog over to my personal website and manage it on a much smaller level until God showed me something different.

Accepting God’s Grace in Failure

After reading so far you may think I either have it all figured out all the time or I’m a huge imposter. I’m actually neither one. I do strive to keep my priorities straight and keep my life and my family members’ lives in balance and much of the time God gives me the strength, wisdom, and grace to do so, but there are times when my focus goes off Him and I experience my share of failure. The trick is to trust in God to bring me back to where I need to be.

I’m going to end this chapter by being very transparent and giving you a little glimpse into one of my journal entries. I can look back now and chuckle at the intensity of my feelings, because I was in a pretty low spot and was physically sick on top of it. But I was being truly honest with myself, even though not all of my thoughts were true.

January 21, 2011

I’m in Santa Fe filming
Truth Be Told
and I’ve never been more physically sick. I’m nauseous, dehydrated, over-medicated, stressed out, feeling the pressure, tired, homesick, and above all, spiritually dry. Dry probably isn’t the right word. Empty? Abandoned? And no, God hasn’t abandoned me. I’ve abandoned Him.

I’m not the person I want to be. I’m so overwhelmed with my life that it’s killing me. I feel like I’m on a high-speed train taking me to wonderland, except all I want to do is get off. And I can’t! It’s moving too fast. And what if I jump? Will I break? Will I ever catch another train again? I know the answer but I’m too afraid to leap.

I never intended to work this much. I never intended to be away from my kids this much.
MIOBI
’s schedule increased, the book has been released, and a wonderful movie has been offered. It’s everything I’ve been hoping for. And yet God convicted me of something I shouldn’t do and I did it anyway. I don’t know if I’m really sick or just sick of myself and my decisions. I feel like a failure.

I talk about being the best wife and mom I can be. I say work should be third place, but clearly it has become number one. It’s not that I even want it to be, but I can’t stop it. I don’t know how to say no. I’ve wanted to return to acting and a career for more than ten years and it’s finally here, but I can’t enjoy it the way I was hoping to. That’s what’s so hard. I love being on set and acting and being an author. I love being one of those Hollywood moms who seems to have it all together, and it’s killing me that I seem to! I actually take pride in being humble. And after examining myself these past few months, I’m anything but humble. I’m full of pride and self-absorption. I don’t love the Lord the way I want to or have professed during the past year.

I’m so weak. I’m out of control. I can’t balance a thing. Who am I kidding? Who am I fooling? Everyone but God, apparently.

Today has been awful, yet I’ve read the first chapter of Nancy Leigh DeMoss’s book
Brokenness
, and I think that is where God is trying to bring me. I think I’m so worn out my body has failed because God is trying to get hold of my heart. Break me, break me, break me. I want to be undone. I want to do what is right. I want to feel so low I can only look up. I don’t want to live in this state of mind anymore. I think I’m hopeless, but Lord, I don’t want to be!

Things have slowed down for me since this journal entry. I’ve reconnected and am back in the place I want to be. I just took some time to get there. I believe we all need to learn to give ourselves grace each day and take a deep breath, especially when we just can’t do it all. I’m still learning to accept God’s grace on a daily basis and recognize the pressure of high expectations I put on myself. I don’t always keep it all balanced, and I have my moments of self-doubt. But ultimately I know I can do all things through Christ who breaks and then strengthens me.

Chapter 13

For Better or for Worse

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

—Genesis 2:24

I
want you take a moment to stick your finger in this page, close the book, and look at the front cover. What do you think? Can you relate to that picture? I totally felt like I was in an episode of
I Love Lucy
when we took that photo, and for good reason . . . because my life often seems like a comedy of errors! I may have been hamming it up for the camera, but life sure can get a bit overwhelming. There are so many things going on at once that it’s no wonder sometimes I’m not quite sure what’s happening. What I’ve realized is that when things get too crazy in my life, the first thing to suffer is often my relationship with Val.

Once you have kids, marriage can easily be the first thing that goes out the window. It’s easy (relatively!) when it’s just the two of you, but once you throw in some crying babies, hectic job schedules, and eventually some rebellious teenagers, things definitely change. You become a full-time taxi driver, chef, housekeeper, tutor, stylist, craft expert, errand runner, and anything else that your family needs you to be. Not only that, but with each growing child, the needs of your family change, and you have less and less free time.
And
on top of that, you are supposed to amicably agree about everything with your spouse!

That can definitely cause tension or put a distance between you that you swore would never happen. This has happened to Val and me, without a doubt. After seventeen years, it’s bound to! But I’ve learned that we have to make a conscious effort to keep things going and moving forward, together, in a positive direction.

Changing Gears

During all the years of having a relatively predictable lifestyle while Val was playing hockey and I was staying home with the kids, we figured out how to keep our marriage on a pretty even keel. But that all changed once Val retired from hockey, I started working again, and we moved to L.A. Once again, everything in our lives changed, and our marriage needed to change with it.

Val made the transition out of hockey very well. Many times professional athletes struggle with the change of lifestyle. They spend their whole lives preparing for and then competing in a strenuous, high-profile, elite career, only to have that career end before they’re forty years old. It’s understandable that most people would have a difficult transition. But I think the key for Val was that he already had his second career in mind and was starting to put it in place. He was eager to start his new job as proprietor of a wine label.

Early on in Val’s childhood in the Soviet Union, food wasn’t always readily available. Times were tough, and his parents did their best to feed their children, but there wasn’t always enough to go around. So when Val came to North America at age seventeen to start his professional hockey career in Montreal, he dove straight into the mecca of fine dining and became an instant foodie. With great food often comes great wine, and many of Val’s veteran teammates showed him how to pair them together. Val started learning the nuances of wine and he grew an appreciation, passion, and love for it. He knew that when he retired from hockey, he wanted to go into the food and wine business by opening a restaurant and/or having his own wine label.

A few years before Val retired from hockey, we went on our first trip to Napa Valley, and I have to tell you it rivals Tuscany any day of the year. We fell in love with the gorgeous scenery and the wine, and Val started making connections to learn the trade, farming skills, and business of making wine. By the time he hung up his skates for good, he was all set for his second career. Bure Family Wines was born.

I’m very grateful that Val was on top of making sure his transition from hockey to his new passion of the wine label went smoothly. I know many ex-hockey wives who have to kick their husbands out of the house just to get them to go do something, because they’re not used to having them home so much. But I didn’t need to help with Val’s shift except to support his new dream. I’ve always been his biggest cheerleader and I’ll never stop shouting from the sidelines. (Our wine is the best, by the way!)

Focusing on the Family

If you’re at all familiar with California geography, you will have realized that Los Angeles is really nowhere near Napa Valley. During certain seasons throughout the year, Val travels up to Napa every week. So how do we make that work? Well, it can get a little crazy at times, especially since Val coaches both boys’ hockey teams. It’s really not so crazy for me, though, because much of the time it’s no different than when he was playing hockey and was on the road for days at a time. In fact, when I’m not working, it’s actually a little easier because the kids are older.

The hardest part is making sure I’m able to be in three places at once. I’ve invented this handy machine . . . just kidding. I wish I could, though! And don’t we all. Now
that
would be a good way to balance it all. The kids’ schedules are challenging for sure, especially on days when the boys have to be at the hockey rink and Natasha has to be at play practice or a tennis lesson. My kids aren’t driving yet (one more year!), so finding neighbors for carpool is a must. Sometimes I hire a sitter to do some ferrying if Val or I are out of town, but most of the time we manage it, though I really don’t know how. L.A. is very spread out and it takes forever to get anywhere, so when you’re trying to get three kids to three different places it can definitely be a challenge.

But when Val is home, he’s literally at home. He does the majority of the cooking, he drives the kids to school and their various practices, he coaches hockey, and he just genuinely likes being at home with his family. Aside from golfing with his buddies and working out, he doesn’t fill his time with much besides being with the kids and me in the afternoons and evenings. He even got rid of his iPhone awhile back because he found himself looking at it too much and felt it was a distraction. He shrugs his shoulders in a couldn’t-care-less attitude when friends poke fun at him for having an old flip phone. But he just says, “Why should everyone have my attention immediately? Are they more important than my family when I’m sitting down to dinner or playing a board game with my kids?” He even made the decision to only answer e-mails during a set time of the day.

I admire Val’s ability to cut out those distractions so he can focus on his family. That’s serious discipline, and it’s not something I’m quite ready for to that extent, to tell you the truth. Val definitely sets the tone for family priority in our home, and the kids know it. That helps keep our family balanced.

Quality Time

Though Val and I do love spending time with the family as a whole, we also love to spend quality time with just each other. However, we have differing opinions on how that time should best be spent. I love spending short amounts of time together on a frequent basis, while Val likes weekends away without the kids.

I enjoy having lunch with Val, going on a few errands together, taking a walk or a jog, or going on a dinner date every week or two. This allows me to share the day-to-day stuff with him—my emotions, concerns, excitement, business opportunities, or anything else that is important to me. I’m a woman, I’m a talker, and I like connecting frequently.

Val would prefer to whisk me away on a trip without the kids. He prefers connecting one-on-one away from home, without the distractions of everyday life. This helps him recharge, get reacquainted with me and himself, and come back with a new sense of self and a fresh set of eyes.

Both methods are great, but without recognizing that both are equally important to our relationship, doing only one or the other would never satisfy our marriage. We’ve learned this the hard way over many hours of discussion, and not without tears. Sometimes we still need reminding, and when we finally figure it out, it’s like an “ah-ha” moment. We both know these things about each other, so how did we miss it?

So we go for walks, on dinner dates, to the post office, on one- or two-day trips to Napa, and any other getaways we can manage when the opportunity arises. We’re often invited to charity events around the country, and we sometimes have business trips that we turn into a quick romantic getaway if possible. But don’t let me fool you into thinking those quick trips are easy for us to go on. They’re not, just like I’m sure getting out of town isn’t easy for you. With our kids’ crazy schedules, we have to set up carpools, sleepovers, and so on before we can head out on our own, and sometimes it’s just not worth it if there’s too much going on with the kids. But if it’s remotely possible, we make it happen, because we know it will not only help our relationship as husband and wife, but it will also help us come back as better parents.

3 Keys to a Healthy Marriage

A healthy marriage is a marriage with sex. Just because I’m a Christian, doesn’t mean I can’t talk about sex, you know! On the contrary, as a married couple, this is one of the most important details of our marriage. If the sexual intimacy isn’t there, I can guarantee the relationship isn’t there in any other form. Sex needs to be high on the priority list for a balanced marriage. I won’t go into detail, because there are plenty of marriage books out there, but when the physical relationship is lacking, so is everything else. I know from experience that it just makes everything that much more agreeable.