53 MAGNOLIA JOURNAL fall 2019story by JOANNA GAINESthere are a handful of questions I get asked on a consistent
basis. Most center on our work. Some our marriage and
our family. And equally common is the question of how we
manage to balance it all at the same time. The nature of that
question has never surprised me all that much. I would guess
that people have been searching for that answer probably since
the beginning of humankind. I don’t know if I’ve ever responded
to the question as transparently as I’d like to now. You see, for
me, balance does not exist.
I haven’t always been so sure of this. For years, I tried to
navigate what balance should look like for my life, first when I
became a wife and then a mom, and again when I was both as
well as a new business owner. I had, for some reason, accepted
this unproven theory that balance would somehow equate
to stability and peace of mind; that it could steady the roller
coaster of my daily life. I carried on in this way for several years,
having made up my mind to stake my entire well-being on this
pursuit of finding balance.
To me, the picture of a balanced life took shape as a grid of
tidy squares that compartmentalized the whole of my identity:
wife—mom—daughter—sister—friend—designer—and
so on. I believed that dividing up each part of my life
would help me more easily keep an eye on all that I was
carrying, so that I could know for sure when I started to
fall short somewhere. For a while, this meant that there
had to be very clear lines drawn in the sand, especially
when it was a matter of work and home. If I was at
the office, I’d try to shelve any part of me that
could be considered a distraction. And then,
once 5 o’clock rolled around, I’d grab my mom
hat off the shelf and head home. But no matter
where my focus was supposed to be, thoughts
about the many other things that held a place
in my mind and my heart would inevitably
creep in. And guilt was never far behind, taking
its cue that I had crossed some sort of working
mom boundary. What’s more is that no matter
how close I thought I was to a balanced life, it
never took much—an urgent need in our family or
an unexpected glitch in a project at work—to throw
me completely off-kilter. I lived in suspended
breath, always feeling like the porcelain plate of my
life was one misstep from falling and shattering into a
million pieces. My world felt fragile. I started to see how
little grace would exist for me if I continued to live my life
in between those neatly packaged squares.
The hidden truth about balance is it requires that
everything in our lives be equally distributed at all times.
It insists that the needs of our marriage and our kids, our
work and our relationships, be completely proportional
at every given moment. But that’s just not the way my
life unfolds every day.
Ultimately, I decided that balance is way too meticulous
a science to get just right in my daily life, and that it wasn’t
something I was very interested in for myself. In its place, I
sought wholeness for my family and for my work.Because both of these pieces are integral to who I am, both
meaningful and sacred in their own right, I decided to stop
working so hard to separate the two. In our current season of
life, which has both Chip and me putting in a lot of hours at the
office, wholeness looks like having our kids right there with us.
In and around where we work, I’ve carved out intentional spaces
for them to spend their afternoons after school. I understand
this isn’t a practical solution for everyone, and there have been
other times in our working lives when it wasn’t possible, but even
then, I always had something from our kids—a handwritten note
or a piece of their artwork—hung up in my office as a steady
reminder of the parts of myself that existed beyond those walls.
Because at the end of the day, I am never one of these things
without the other.
I’ve found that something miraculous happens when I make
space for both: Each is made better by the other. My work is
undoubtedly more inspired when my kids can be a part of it, and
I’m a better mom when my passion for creativity plays a role
in how I parent. This might sound counterintuitive, but when I
let my worlds collide, it also gave me clarity on the things I am
most passionate about. Because no one can physically do
or be everything to everyone, I knew that some things
would have to give. Anything that survived, I counted
as sacred. The rest I let go.
You know what else I discovered? For far too
long, zero areas of my life had received the best of
me because I wasn’t showing up anywhere as my
whole self. I’d lessened the scope of who I was
in the name of balance and self-preservation.
But all it yielded was a diminished version of
what I could have been capable of all along;
the goodness that I have to offer my family,
my relationships, and my work demands the
fullness of who I am. For all of these things in
my life to flourish, they require that I honor
all of who I have been made to be.
That porcelain plate I once feared
dropping has broken into pieces more
times than I can count. But I actually find
more beauty in the jagged edges that have
replaced its delicate lines. There seems to
be more freedom in a life that’s pieced together
in a way that actually honors the things that bring
us genuine fulfillment. Even though that plate will
inevitably crack again, it has been my experience
that where there is brokenness there is also an
abundance of grace.
I deeply love being a wife and a mother, and I feel
a profound sense of purpose with my work. Whatever
it might be that fills the scope of your life—marriage,
kids, work, relationships, a project you’re devoted to,
or all of the above—I truly believe that when we show
up for the things we care for deeply with our whole
selves, that’s where we’ll find the kind of meaning
and fulfillment that can withstand any sort of shifting
ILLUSTRATIO sand—no balance required.