How Can Young Moms Achieve Work-Life Balance?

The following is a transcribed Video Q&A, so the text may not read like an edited article would. Scroll to the bottom to view this video in its entirety. 

So, I think the question of how to achieve life work balance is one that a lot of young women ask, particularly women who are just stepping into that role of parenthood. That's something that we kind of have to come to grips with. How do I juggle all these balls in the air? The ball of family, the ball of work, the ball of community and church. You've got a lot of different things competing for your time and attention. And we naturally want to try to balance that. We naturally want to think, "well, if I just do just enough work, and just enough time at home, and just enough time on all the other things then all of a sudden my life is gonna just run seamlessly. I'm not gonna have any problems and that's gonna be the sign that I've got balance." And I've just never known that to be true in my life and I've never had a single friend or acquaintance that has ever said that that's true; that everything always works seamlessly and without tension because they've achieved some sort of balance.

So, I think the better thing to ask is just, "Are you satisfied with every component of your life working together? Do you like the fact that you have work in your life? Do you like the fact that you have ministry and that you have community events and that you have whatever else it is in your life?" All working together. Asking yourself about that question of, "Am I satisfied?" is a better question to ask because you're never gonna have perfect balance. You're never gonna have zero tension in your life. You're always gonna feel... you know in a week, whatever it is that, "Oh, I'm kind of spending more time doing this than I would... I would rather be spending that with my family or vice versa." And so I think that just asking yourself about that satisfaction level is better.

And then, I think, once you can accept the fact that there's always gonna be tension and it's gonna varying degrees of tension then you can kind of live without that balance a little easier and that won't be the thing that you're searching for. And instead, I think that you're gonna be able to feel satisfaction at the end of the day. Saying, "Okay, it's not all running perfectly, it's not all running smoothly, but it's never gonna run perfectly. It's never gonna run smoothly, but I'm glad that I'm doing the things that I'm doing. I'm glad I'm involved in the things I'm involved with. And I wouldn't change that." And I think once you can say that, then you're on the right path.