How to Find Balance as a Working Mom

Written by Marie Armenia

This article is courtesy HomeLife magazine.

It’s 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, and Tracy has just received a call at work from her child’s elementary school. Her son is ill and needs to be picked up. Tracy quickly reviews her options:   

• Option A: Call her mom. (No, she’s away on vacation.)   
• Option B: Call her husband. (No, he has an all-day meeting with an important client today.)  
• Option C: Call her neighbor, a stay-at-home mom, and ask for help. (Sounds good, but her call gets no answer. She must be out running errands.)   
• Option D: Tell her boss she needs to leave now but will return later this evening to complete her work. (This would most likely be met with hesitation and a deep sigh of discontent. It would also mean missing her daughter’s first solo with the children’s choir at church tonight.)   

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After battling tears of frustration, Tracy settles on a modified option D: Leave now, go to church tonight, get up at 4 a.m. tomorrow, and go into the office early to complete today’s work. Sure, she’ll be exhausted, but isn’t she always?

The Struggle To Juggle

Being exhausted is just one part of Tracy’s learning to manage the demands of being a good wife, mom, and employee. And Tracy isn’t alone. According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2002 there were 42.7 million working mothers who had children under the age of 18 still living at home.   

Like Tracy, Lisa Baltz, a 45-year-old business analyst, is a working mom. Lisa has the advantage of hindsight since her two daughters are now grown, but she still remembers clearly the challenge of trying to balance her responsibilities at home and work.   

“Sleep deprivation and exhaustion was something I struggled with, in addition to not having any time for myself,” says Baltz.   

But looking back, Baltz sees how her working was the best choice for her family, given their circumstances. And she did find many ways to balance family and work successfully. If you’re a mom who works outside the home, you can also learn to successfully balance the mother load.

Making it Work

Plain and simple, moms who successfully balance family and work have one thing in common: They do what it takes to make family their number-one priority when they’re not at work. If you take a closer look, you’ll notice they have several similarities in their approaches. These working moms:   

Have accepting and expecting attitudes. They accept their situation and expect God to give them the wisdom and strength to balance it all to His glory. Like the Proverbs 31 woman, they “always [face] tomorrow with a smile” (The Message).   

If you know that your working is the best option for your family, pray daily for God to give you the wisdom to know how to make the most of your time and to make the best decisions possible for your family. And don’t waste your time complaining about how heavy your load is; focus on finding ways to make it work.   

Become the queen of routine. These moms know that kids flourish when they know what to expect and what’s expected of them. There are bedtime routines, morning routines, and weekly routines. And these schedules aren’t just for the kids. When parents follow routines, too, it sets a good example for children and helps to keep life saner for everyone. Again, these working moms take their cue from the woman in Proverbs 31, who “keeps an eye on everyone in her household, and keeps them all busy and productive” (The Message).   

Sticking to routines gives your children a sense of security. If you haven’t made routine a priority in your home, try one small routine at a time, and do it without fail for one month. Then continue to add other routines one at a time.   

Say no sometimes. Without apologies, explanations, or guilt, these moms feel free to decline requests that infringe on their family time. They realize saying yes to one thing means saying no to something else, such as a meaningful conversation with their husband, playing a game with their children, or catching up on laundry.   

Pray about which activities you should be involved in, and learn to say no to the rest. If you have a hard time saying no to others’ requests, begin by postponing your yes. When asked, say something like, “I’ll give it some thought.” Then think carefully about which activities you should commit to.   

Say yes to offers of help. There aren’t any Superwoman costumes hidden in the back of these ladies’ closets. They’re only human, and they know it.   

If someone wants to “fulfill the law of Christ” by helping to carry your burdens (Galatians 6:2), by all means let her. If Grandma offers to help with laundry, take her up on it. If your neighbor offers to baby-sit, say yes. Rather than thinking that needing help is a sign of failure, consider it part of God’s grace to help you through each day.   

Learn to delegate. As part of a family, these women ask other family members to take responsibility for their part. Mary Whelchel, founder of The Christian Working Woman ministry says, “Working mothers make a mistake by not requiring the children to carry their share of the work load.” She suggests displaying a chart somewhere in the house that lists each family member’s responsibilities. “Not to do that,” she says, “is to rob your children of learning to be disciplined and that you have to work for things.”   

And remember, your goal should be cooperation, not perfection. As Whelchel says, “A thin coat of dust on the furniture protects the family.”   

Find ways to stay healthy. First, that means getting enough sleep. Losing a full night of sleep for just four nights in a row has been shown to cause physical reactions such as memory loss, diabetes, and hypertension.   

If you’re not healthy, you cannot successfully balance your responsibilities to your family and your job. Begin by making sleep a priority, limiting sugar and caffeine at night, and taking time for an occasional bubble bath to keep yourself mentally healthy.   

Create support systems. One group of working moms created an exclusive e-mail encouragement group to voice concerns, find solutions, and keep up with school activities. Some moms plan their weekly grocery shopping together as a fellowship time, and others take their cue from Titus 2:3-4 and enter into mentoring relationships with older women at church.   

Whatever you do, create a support system, whether it’s a mentoring relationship or a group of godly women who will support you and challenge you to grow.   

Kiss guilt goodbye. Rather than feeling guilty, successful working moms have a confident assurance they are accomplishing God’s will for their lives. Whelchel gives this advice for identifying guilt: “True guilt comes when you are in disobedience to the Lord. You know specifically what it is. As soon as you obey, the guilt goes away. False guilt is a non-specific feeling of not measuring up, but you’re not sure exactly why.” To defeat false guilt, Whelchel advises getting in the Word and “finding a Scripture verse every day.”   

While these tips aren’t guaranteed to make everything in your life go smoothly, they can help you strike a balance so that when you’re home, you’re really home.

Option E

By the way, Tracy’s Wednesday turned out better than she expected. Her husband’s schedule wasn’t as inflexible as she thought, and he was able to get their son from school. Later that evening, as she sat in church listening to her daughter sing, Tracy thanked God for being her Counselor and Guide.   

For that day, she chose to focus on Option E: eternal life. She reminded herself that her “light affliction is producing for [her] an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory” (2 Corinthians 4:17).

Marie Armenia is a freelance writer living in Spring Hill, Tenn.