Her Version….All these things pulling at you:

• Quiet Time
• Work
• Intimacy w/ Spouse
• Extended Family Time
• Children
• Me time
• Volunteering in the Community
• Ministry
• Friends
• House work

How do you find balance? Is it realistic to think you can find balance?
Society also has defined roles for male and female. Can you be everything to everyone?
I don’t know, but I decided to google the word “balance”. Here are a couple definitions I found:
      A condition in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions or;
     Harmony of design and proportion.

Here is where I landed—
Let purpose and intent drive the proportion of time you allocate. Keeping in mind God’s umbrella protection noted in Ephesians 5:21 “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which He is the Savior.”

If balance is important to you and your family, think about being intentional and/or setting aside time to take care of it. An old professor always said, “If you fail to plan, you plan to to fail” so plan for it!

His Version…The Book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3, Verse 1 opens up with, “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.” (NKJV). Verses 2 through 8 tell us there is a time to exercise a range of emotions and/or execute various tasks. Those verses suggest to me that God in His infinite wisdom established an order, an appointed time for life events to occur. But I imagine His intent was also to establish an order regarding how we respond to life.

But what does that look like from a marriage perspective?  The Bible charges “Husbands to love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave His life for her…” Ephesians 5:25 (NKJV).

For me, this indicates the “secondary” focus must be on my wife. My primary focus is on God. I’ve come to understand through personal experience that when I am in right relationship with God and when my wife is content, the rest of my life seems to fall in line — balanced. The world is my footstool. I can accomplish my work goals. I can hang out and take trips with the guys. I can enjoy partaking in my hobbies and even spend time with myself.

However, balance for me means not doing so much outside of the house that the inside of my spiritual and marital house become compromised. That has occurred in the past and both God and my wife have called me out on it. I’ve learned to put work, friends and hobbies in the proper perspective. While important, they are less significant in comparison to the health and success of my marriage and spiritual relationship.

I sum up the ill effects of not having marital balance by recalling the words spoken by young man who performed at a poetry event my wife and I attended several years ago. He said, “If Daddy is not on time with Mommy and Mommy is not on time with Daddy then they end up having a child who is off schedule.”

Our Version
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. (Ephesians 5:21-32 NIV)