Do you feel like your life is moving a hundred miles an hour? Do you struggle with feeling like you can never reach the bottom of your to-do list by the end of the day, week, heck…the summer? Do you go to bed at night wishing things would just slow down?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then you and I (and 95 percent of Americans) have a lot in common. 

While it seems everyone struggles to find balance and manage the busyness of life, I wanted to sit down with a group of moms to talk more about these issues. Moms tend to play a pivotal role in combating and managing the busyness in their households. Moms tend to wear the “manager” and “scheduler” hats for their household–even if they work outside the home and split childcare responsibilities with their husbands more evenly than women did a generation or two ago. Moms also tend to carry unique burdens, like being awakened in the morning by someone else’s needs (ask a mom with little children when was the last time she set an alarm). 

In this article you’ll hear from…

• Erin Blume, director of Adult Ministries at First Free Rockford. She and her husband, Jason, who works with the Harlem School District, have two daughters: Eliot (10) and Landry (7).
• Heather Schlueter, K-8 visual art teacher at a two-way language immersion school. She and her husband, Breck, a journeyman cabinet maker and home inspector, have three kids: Eliora (16), Tullian (11) and Oren (8).
• Laurie Creek, a pediatric medical-surgical nurse working out of state every third weekend. She and her husband, Dave, associate pastor of Family Ministries at First Free Rockford, have four boys: Ethan (13), Levi (10), Oliver & Elliot (8).

What are some of the major pain points your family is rubbing up against on a daily or weekly basis?

Laurie: We just moved into our house a couple months ago, so that’s a huge transition for us. Dave also started his new job at the church in October. Those are two big milestones and doing them in the same year has been a lot. Some of our rhythms that we’ve been establishing over the last five years since we moved back to Rockford have gotten out of whack since we moved into our house. We’ve been trying to get back into some of those things that are really grounding for us.

Heather: Our family is very, very active, and we participate in a lot of different things. Each kid participates in something athletic and each kid participates in music, and then we have school and we have church. Those four things put together create mad chaos with going places, pickups, drop offs. … We’re hitting a lot of overlaps right now, and that’s starting to nag on us and it makes life very exhausting. 

During the year, there’s always that point where we think we should probably step away from something, but we still want to give our kids those opportunities. I do look at families who maybe don’t participate in a lot of activities and I’m like, Oh, wouldn’t that be great? But our kids are like us and they’re like little mini me’s, and they want to participate in all of those things.

How do you identify your family’s unique threshold for things and keep from comparing your family to other families? 

Laurie: For our family, we’ve realized that we can’t do more than three nights a week out of the house. We have Kids Club on Wednesday nights and the kids are in soccer right now and we got put on a team on Mondays and Wednesdays. That was the only team for one of our boys’ age brackets. And so I just had to tell the coach, ‘We’re very committed to church on Wednesdays, so we won’t be able to be at practice those nights…Sorry.’ If we are overly busy in the week; I feel out of balance. I need a lot of down time, slower time, and so do our kids.

Erin: I think it’s really easy, the more families you interact with, to think, We should be doing that! We’ve missed the boat! But Jason and I, we’ll check in and ask each other questions like, ‘How are our kids adapting and growing? How can we help them find boundaries? How can we help challenge them a little more?’ And even family dynamics, we’ll check in on what our family needs. It’s easy to get focused on what another family is doing, but we have to turn our attention to what is working for us. 

Laurie: I have this phrase that I think about occasionally: “For every ‘yes’ you say to something, you’re saying ‘no’ to something else.” So, what are we saying ‘yes’ to? Because if we say we value time at home and eating dinner together at the table, but if we’re at a sport practice from 5 to 7:30 every night, then are we really instilling those values into our kids? We say we have certain values for our family , but if we don’t actually practice them, do we really value them?  

Another quote I think about often is, “You find inner peace when your schedule aligns with your values.”

Erin: In our family, there’s two of us that are go, go, go. Elliot and I very much like to be out. But Jason and Landry are the people that want to be home more often. And so it’s like this balancing act for me as the mom who is the schedule setter. So, for us it’s not saying yes to everything, or checking with them first.

Heather: I think it’s really important for our family that Breck and I make a lot of joint decisions, because I need to respect him and what he’s capable of. There’s going to be resentment that forms if one person over-schedules, because, sure, I want to do all these things. But then my partner in crime is going to be piggybacking with me on these things or having to pick up the slack in another area. And if we don’t communicate well during the week, then it becomes something bigger. So I think it’s really important that he and I are always on the same page and that we’re connecting and checking and that we respect each other’s limit. 

But it’s hard. Going back to one thing that [Laurie] said about coaches and stuff, I know that we’ve learned that unless we speak up, coaches don’t know and sports programs don’t know the impact that it makes on a family’s schedule. I just don’t think enough families are verbal with the school, with sports, music, with whatever, you know, and to help those in charge to really recognize and not to penalize families for being families.

Are there any non-negotiables in your family life right now?

Heather: Our Bible study and our life group recently did a Sabbath Bible study (see the Resources list at the bottom of this article) and that has really made Breck and I start re-evaluating some of our choices. I have noticed that we give a lot toward the kids, but we aren’t focusing necessarily on our family time together. And with our discussion of Sabbath and understanding what a Sabbath is and what the purpose of it is, we definitely have started to reinvestigate that in our life and we know we have some recalibration to do. So, we want to make the Sabbath a priority and a non-negotiable. 

Erin: Our non-negotiables are church for sure, serving in some capacity, and also Sabbath. Now it’s to the point where it’s just kind of built into how we orient our week and it’s been so good for us.

Initially when we started it, it was like, When is all this stuff going to get done? But what we’ve seen God do is honor us in it, and we’ve never lacked time to get stuff done. There’s always been another day to do something. And what we’ve seen it do in us, in our soul, is Him meeting us where we’re at and ministering to us and giving us rest that we so desperately need. And it’s taught us that life is really not about us. 

Colossians 1:17 comes to mind, “He holds all things together.” We feel like we have this control over stuff and we don’t. So when you literally, one day a week, say, ‘OK, Lord, we’re going to just rest in You and we’re going to spend time with family.’ There’s something so powerful about that and just seeing God has got it all. 

I struggle with anxiety and since practicing the Sabbath, I’ve seen my anxiety diminish because I’ve seen the Lord give me rest and give me this perspective that it’s not about me.

Could you give a little more detail of what honoring the Sabbath looks like for your family? I know for people who aren’t very familiar with Sabbathing, it can seem a little “out there,” but it really isn’t.

Erin: ​​We enter Shabbat Friday night because a lot of people will enter on Saturday and then go to church Sunday, but just with the uniqueness of working at the church, we do Friday night. It’s a meal together as a family around the table, good conversation. This is not every week, but this would be our ideal plan.

We finish our Sabbath with corporate worship on Sunday morning, but on Saturday we will spend time in the Word a little bit or we’ll watch a Chosen episode with the kids. We’ll listen to a Lectio Divina with them. We’re not in the Word with our kids for, like, an hour and a half or anything like that, but it’s maybe some questions like ‘Where have we seen God at work this week? How have you seen God? What have you seen him teaching you this week?’ 

We’re not checking email that day. We’re not on social media that day. It’s quieting your mind and resting. I’m not grocery shopping on Saturday. Jason may still do some yard work because he enjoys it. It may be getting together with family, things like that.

Laurie: We usually start with a meal and have it all prepared beforehand and then light a candle with the kids and say ‘Thank you, Lord, for the Sabbath.’ The candle is a visual representation of God’s presence with us. Then we eat and we have a question jar that I need to refill, but we go around the table and pull out questions to ask each other. It could be silly questions or it could be deep, or like highs and lows from the week. 

Some other dynamics are no screens. We put away our phones, but we still listen to our Lectio Divina at night. Then the next day we make breakfast, hang out. Ideally we talk to the kids about what they want to do as well-play a game, read books, take a nap, get out in nature. In this season, we include their soccer games on Saturdays as part of our Sabbath. Then we end Sabbath again by lighting the candles and saying ‘Thank you, Lord, for the Sabbath.’ 

When we’ve gotten away from doing Sabbath, our kids have asked for it. Our kids are noticing they want it, even with no video games for 24 hours. They are enjoying that time together, so it’s really important.

Heather: The Sabbath is a day of delight and delighting in the Lord, and Breck and I noticed at first that it was difficult for us to just accept the joy and the delight that the Lord wanted for us, because of just the culture and our busyness and the hustle that we live in.

When we did Sabbath, we did it on Friday nights for a couple weeks. We lit two candles and we shared a meal. We play a game. Our family delights in movies, so we would watch a family movie together, because it was pressed upon us that the joy is different for different families and different people. 

In the near future, we want our kids to learn to prepare the Sabbath meal so that they understand the work that goes into it and what it takes. Right now, they go grocery shopping with me, and make a list, and I love that. It’s a lot of hard work. Obviously, the older the kid is, the more they can do it on their own, but my 8-year-old is the most interested and he’s the most excited about it. He’s like, ‘When can I make this?’ And we get cookbooks at the library.

Any final words of encouragement or wisdom for other parents, families, individuals reading this?

Erin: Take time to enjoy our kids and our family time. Take the trip, take the time away, go for the walk, put the phone down and go play in the backyard. Spend time enjoying your family. 

Heather: I would re-emphasize that partnership between yourself and your spouse, and with your kids, too, as they get older—the importance of really knowing them, their interests. Partner with and participate in the development of your kids’ calendar and schedule. Make sure there’s a partnership so that everyone’s on the same page. You’re supposed to share in marriage and in family. I think sometimes marriages come off balance, and families become off balance because of it being one person ruling the roost, taking the reins of the schedule and calendar.

Laurie: I know for me and my temperament, I need a lot of alone time because you don’t necessarily learn from your life experiences, you learn  from reflecting on your experiences. I know that life is not in balance right now, so I need to spend time with the Lord, really seeking his counsel and asking him what I need to do or change- and then actually do it. That would be my encouragement to others- to spend time with the Lord asking and listening to him if there is anything that needs changing if life feels out of balance, even if it’s one small thing. 

And James 1:5 says, if you ask God for wisdom he will give it to you generously. So, for me, I know that one small thing to start with is going to bed earlier at night so I can get up earlier in the morning because a priority is spending that time with the Lord to start the day.

Erin: You know, I’m the only mom that my kids are going to ever have. I’m the only wife that Jason has. What am I bringing to the table? Am I bringing weariness? Am I bringing stress? Or am I bringing peace and joy and fun and levity to the household like, what kind of mom do I want to be? And I think that’s when you do find balance. You can bring your best self as a mom and wife to the table. When Pastor Rusty (Hayes) was at the church, he challenged several of us by saying, ‘You’re replaceable at church, but you’re not replaceable at home.’ And so just keeping that perspective as we try to figure out how we balance all the things in our lives and our families.

Resources mentioned in this discussion:

• The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry and Practicing the Way by John Mark Comer are two influential books that Erin, Heather and Laurie’s families read as they established their Sabbath practices.
• Lectio 365 – An app that helps you pray the Bible by meditating on the Scriptures and asking God to speak through them. 
• Lectio Divina for Families – A version of Lectio 365 for parents to listen to with their kids.