The Myth of Balance
We’re going to talk about something that’s actually the number one question I get when I’m on the road: how do you do it all? How do you balance life and family and work? So I want to first start off by saying some of you are listening and you don't have kids and I will say this, we're going to talk about what it means to balance family and relationships no matter if that's children, parents, siblings. Everything I will say is about kids, because that’s my context. But this also applies with extended family and friendships, because all of those relationships take work.
I want to start by saying something that maybe you've heard me say before, which is I don't believe in balance. I don't believe in balance because I cannot find it anywhere in scripture. Our idea of balance is that those scales you used to use in school and put rocks on them. Achieving perfect balance is almost impossible. It’s a losing game. So I find balance to be a very unrealistic goal. What I see in scripture is surrender and obedience.
Today I'm just going to read to you a very simple passage and we're going to base this entire episode off of it. Matthew 6:33: “seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.” A lot of us probably have heard that verse before and grew up memorizing it in the King James version, which is “seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you.” If I would have applied that verse all those years, I would have had a lot less anxiety. As we apply that verse and as we truly become single-minded in our pursuit of God and whatever he wants for us, I believe that everything else shifts into place. It has been true for us.
I remember starting out early in ministry and we were sitting in our backyard. My husband and I were looking over at our new trees that we had just planted. There were three of them in the backyard, and we were anxious for them to grow because we didn’t have any shade in our backyard. We were noticing they were starting to grow almost too fast, and we started wondering if we planted them to close together. The same time we started IF:Gathering, we also adopted our youngest son, and I was writing and speaking as well. All of that started around the same time. Nobody on this earth would say that was wise. It is not a recipe for balance. I was scared too. I wasn’t super ambitious for a big ministry and job in life. I spent most of my early years at home with my kids.
I had a people-pleasing idol more than a fear of getting up in front of people and leading in a big way. I was looking at those three trees, and thinking, this is our life. We started an organization, we adopted, I’m writing, and it’s all taking on a life of its own. It looked like these things were going to tangle together and cause a big mess. We planted the trees too close together and if they all grow and succeed, we’re going to have a disaster in five years.
I remember looking at everything and saying to God, I don’t know what’s coming, but it looks like it could be a massive train wreck. The greatest fear I have is that train wreck being my family or my children. I needed God to help me manage all of these growing things. I told him if he ever wanted me to walk away from anything (other than my kids) I would do it. So we started all these things with a lot of surrender. We also started all these things with a few voices in our lives that had full perspective. We would lay down our schedules, our finances, our struggles in marriage to these people and ask them to speak into our lives.
The interesting thing about this group of people is some of them were friends, some of them were mentors, and some of them are family members. This little group of people knew that they were my people. I honestly thought they were going to tell me to stay home and to not go do these things. But they often told me that I was living in fear and I needed to go and be more courageous. They didn’t lean to one extreme - stay home with your kids or take every opportunity that comes your way. They looked at my life holistically to see what I’m struggling with, how my kids were doing, and they had an ebb and flow to decisions.
My husband has also been a big decision maker in my life. He’ll often say, “that’s too much. You don’t need to do it.” Sometimes I’ll buck against that, but I’ve learned in listening that there’s so much protection. He’s looking at the big picture, not just the opportunity. He’s thinking about what’s right for our family. He has protected me from causing a lot of chaos so many times. Having those voices in your life that help you make decisions is so important.
Even my friends that are single and have demanding jobs, they have had to set better boundaries and barriers in their life so they’re able to have relationships and healthy rhythms in their life. I don't think this just applies to people that have kids. I think we all need those voices that are helping us make decisions. But I don't think the word balance is the right word. Because what we're doing ultimately is we're surrendering and obeying. Whether that means going or whether that means staying, whether that means working more or working less. All of our tendencies are different. Some of us are prone to take risk and push limits, and some of us are to stay comfortable.
When you look at whatever decision it is that you're making about work, family, time, rhythms, and patterns in your life, submit them to God. Ask him to help you. That’s why I created something called a Dream Guide that you can download on my website. I do this in my own life with my family, and we lay out our priorities and responsibilities and all the things that are being demanded of us and that we want to accomplish in that year. We sit and talk and surrender it together.
We tend to stay in unhealthy, toxic situations for so long without ever analyzing it, thinking about it and changing it. We’re not victims to our circumstances. You can always make a shift. As I’ve surrendered and obeyed, balance hasn’t come. Our lives are still chaotic. But peace has come to our family. People ask how we raise and launch kids that are healthy and normal when we have so many demands on our life, and I’m like, I don’t know! We have prayed and submitted to God and he has shown up. Some days those trees did tangle up and it looked like we were completely destroying our lives.
One time Kate asked me over dinner what my biggest fear was, and I actually started crying. She was 14 years old at the time. My biggest fear was that my kids would resent my work and resent God because I was gone and I wasn’t at every single thing. I never wanted them to pay the price of work. But she said something that I will never forget. It really shifted my view on this guilt I had been feeling because of work. She said, “Mom, how on earth could you be worried about the very thing that has shaped my life the most?” She actually started laughing at me. She said, “ because you have served God and you have worked hard, I want to serve God and serve other people and work hard. I've watched you do it and you created that value in me.” I never saw that coming. The very thing I thought was a threat to my kids ended up shaping them. I’m not saying you need to go out and get a job. I’m just saying you need to model obedience. Our kids saw that we weren’t in this for money or a bigger platform. We were in it to serve people and serve God.
Somebody gave us advice early on that we can either put our children at the center of our family, or you can have them join the circle and put God at the center. You can serve together as a team. We decided that’s how we were going to raise our kids. Whether they have a game or they’re going on a mission trip or they’re going to college, they’re going as an ambassador of our family to love and serve the world. It felt like a big experiment. It was very different than the way I saw people raising kids beside us. I was worried that we were going to ruin them. But now that we have two grown kids, I can see that they love God and people and they don’t see their lives as something to be spent on themselves. They see their lives as something to be stewarded for the glory of God and the good of others. They like God and they like us. That’s all we really want at the end of the day for our kids.
Whether that’s staying home or getting a job, we have to obey God no matter what. There is not a right way. There’s no formula. Surrender and obedience is a costly practice that takes constantly seeking God and dependence on him. That is the way I have found life and godliness. It is through walking with him daily. It is not through simple practices and principles, although the Bible contains a lot of those. I still believe in those too, and that's why I will share those at times. But at the end of the day, underneath all of it sits on a foundation of surrender and obedience. As we do that, he takes care of us. He is faithful to us, and he’ll show you the right way to go. You won't look around and find a whole lot of people living this way. You will find a lot of life plans and a lot of strategic ways to do life better. But I will say it has the most life giving way to live.
I know there are a million demands on your life. Whether you have a family under your roof or not, you live a demanding life. I would just encourage you today to sneak away, get with God, pray, lay it all out before him, and surrender it. There is something in the surrender that breaks the anxiety. There's something in the surrender that calms the chaos that cuts through the noise. As I live moment by moment with him, he is in it with me. Even if it’s messy.
