The Spiritual Discipline of Balance: Gigi’s Story

“Being in grad school has definitely been the hardest thing I have done in my life,” Gigi said. “With all of the material we get, you’re never going to master it all, and that’s what I was shooting for.”

As a high achiever who had always excelled in school, Gigi didn’t expect to have to work so hard for her grades in Dental School at Columbia University. Suddenly she was studying all day every day, with little time to pursue anything else. After living like this for the first year, Gigi realized something needed to change.

“I was putting so much into school all the time and neglecting the other areas, and that really wasn’t what God intended for me to do while I was here,” she said.

An Invitation to Surrender

After rededicating her life to Jesus as an undergrad, Gigi entered grad school with the intention to keep growing her faith. So she signed up to get involved with InterVarsity at a club fair. 

The community only met once a week, but Gigi struggled to attend consistently during her first year. She admitted that she often chose school over community and faith, until God began to remind her that she needed to surrender her grades to him.

“I thought academia was something I could control on my own and [something] I didn’t need to go to God for, but he’s really humbled me in that area. God was calling me to trust him, to just let it go to him,” she said. 

Gigi realized that God was inviting her to depend on him, so whenever she felt anxious about school, she would release her anxieties onto him and pray for him to provide her with “daily bread.” When her second year came around, she invested fully into Christian community.

Finding Rest in Community

Surrounded by other Christian grad students, Gigi began to see her studies in a different light: something that brought glory and honor to God but required a healthy balance with other areas of her life. 

Just as Gigi intentionally set aside time for school, she blocked off time in her schedule to be in community. Setting boundaries wasn’t always easy, but she continued to grow her trust in God by believing he would work through her allotted studying time. She learned that praying and inviting God into study time was a good way to release it to him. 

Through these practices, Gigi’s experience at grad school was transformed. Her first year, Gigi had struggled even to go to church, too concerned about missing out on study time. But during her second year, when she started regularly attending church and Bible study, she had a different mindset: “Even if I sacrifice my Sunday morning and go to church, I’m still going to be able to be successful in my classes.”

And she was! As she spent time with community, Gigi felt more rejuvenated and rested. In fact, when she adopted social and spiritual rhythms into her college life, she discovered something unexpected: “I’m able to go into my work and do my work even better.”

Success in Balance

When Gigi was invited into leadership the second semester of her second year, she was surprised. Her InterVarsity chapter was seeing something she hadn’t noticed in herself: Gigi was no longer just an attendee, but a welcoming presence in the community. So she accepted the invitation to serve in ways she had capacity for.

Gigi still values being a good student, and she looks forward to using her dental degree to spread light to the world. But she has learned that success for her isn’t devoting every area of her life to having perfect grades. Success is finding a healthy balance between academics and spending time with the people God has surrounded her with.

“I think that [God] wants us to have joy and peace in our life, and I think that having relationships is one of the best ways to experience that,” Gigi said. “It’s so worth it, and every time that I do spend time with my friends, I’m always much more filled: working from a place of rest instead of working to rest.”