In nearly every season of my life, I have looked to balance as a benchmark, a way of measuring how well I’m holding my life together. If things generally felt right-side up, then I knew I could breathe a sigh of relief. Balance, to me, was the light at the end of the tunnel, the antidote of sorts for whatever chaos was swirling nearby.
In my 20s, for instance, I was mothering small children and a small business, and I longed for the secret to make it all achievable. I was exhausted, so I sought balance for the promise of peace. Then, in my 30s our business grew overnight, and our dreams were taking off, and I longed for the secret to savor every moment. We were running—fast—so I sought balance for the promise of wholehearted fulfillment.
Balance, or the idea of it, became a destination, a finish line, and yet this promised land always felt just out of reach. It didn’t seem to matter how often I reorganized my schedule, chose this over that, or simply said “no.” There were very few seasons that felt like I’d nailed it—like I was flourishing on every front in brilliant, shimmering unison.
Perhaps even more than that, what I found when I held my schedule and my time so preciously was the perspective it produced about what I could or couldn’t let into my life. I saw balance as this fragile thing to behold. My desire to reach it bred in me a scarcity mindset, and it made me hesitant. If something new, something unexpected, even something worthwhile landed in my path, I felt as though there was no space left in my arms to pick it up or look it over, much less pull it close.
It may be unsurprising that the question I’ve been asked the most over the years goes something like, “How do you balance it all?” which tells me a great number of us are longing for a sense of harmony among the choices we’ve made and the lives we’re building. We want to know that we’re giving ourselves over to the right things, that we will not look back and wish we’d held it all differently. We all want to know that we’ve given our time, our resources, our thoughts, and our beating hearts to the good and lasting moments.
“We all want to know that we’ve given our time, our resources, our thoughts, and our beating hearts to the good and lasting moments.”
I doubt if I’ve ever responded the same way twice, likely because balance has always been a bit blurry to me. While I hope that whatever advice I’ve given in the past settled a few hearts, meanwhile mine was always stirring for something different from this balancing act. Something more like freedom—and confidence—to be able to lean into a new passion if one happened to find its way to my heart, or to stop what I’m doing to connect with someone who took me by surprise. For a while it felt like I had to choose one or the other: freedom or balance, curiosity or stability.
But as I sit here now, I may have an answer. (And it isn’t a flat-out rejection of the existence of balance, though I’ve said that before too.) The reality is that I am naturally drawn to sustain a sense of equilibrium in my daily life. I know myself, and a dynamic plate (not necessarily a full one) keeps me contented and inspired. And yet, when I look at that girl on the wire, and I ask myself how she makes it from one side to the other, I no longer believe it’s a matter of careful distribution across all that she’s carrying. I no longer buy the idea that rigidity leads to peace or deep fulfillment. In my experience, balance can often look like staying still because you’re too afraid to take on more. Too afraid to drop something. Too afraid to tip over. And that’s just not the way I want my world to go on spinning. When life calls for an audible, I want to know that I have the strength to meet the moment with open arms.
As I’m wrestling with the idea of balance, I’ve started to wonder if the most important thing isn’t actually what we’re holding, or how well or how equally we’re holding it. What if the most important things are those holding us up? The things keeping us steady. The things that fortify the ground we’re standing on so we can go on standing tall when there are ebbs and flows and inevitable curves in the road.
I now believe it’s the things that keep me steady that will move me forward, which for me looks like belief that runs deep. It looks like time spent taking in beauty. Good connection with the people closest to me. It’s being true to how I’m built, meaning I won’t give myself a hard time for working a long day as long as I also make time for a moment of sheer delight. It’s feeling grateful more than discontented, and being thoughtful enough to write it down or say it out loud. What I like about the feeling of steadiness is that it speaks to the state of my soul more than to my schedule, so in moments of complete chaos or in a season where things aren’t all right-side up, in my heart it won’t feel like failure but rather a chance for growth.
Living first for the things that keep me steady gives me permission to be surprised by wonder. It lets me choose a moment of connection over my to-do list. For the sake of steadiness, I get to act in faith more than I act out of efficiency. In the end, what more could I ever wish to hold?
