I've Stopped Trying to Find Balance. Here's What I Do Instead.

By Crystal Virgin

"Balance is a horizontal problem. But that framing leaves out the vertical — it leaves out God."

Let me save you some time: balance is not coming.

I don't mean that to be discouraging. I mean it as the most liberating thing I've learned in the last few years of trying to hold all the pieces of my life together at once. Work, motherhood, marriage, homeschooling, my own health, my own faith, my own growth as a person — it is a lot. And for a long time I kept waiting for the season where it would all even out, where everything would get its fair share of me and I would feel finally, genuinely, sustainably balanced.

That season has not arrived. I no longer believe it's coming.

What I have found instead is something quieter and more useful. Not balance — moderation.

The Phrase That Changed My Perspective

Moderation in all things.

It's simple enough to sound like a bumper sticker, but I have turned it over enough times that it has become something I actually live by. Because what it gives me is permission — permission to be imperfect across the board without feeling like I'm failing across the board.

My daughters don't need to be perfect eaters. They need to mostly eat well, and sometimes have the cookie, and learn that food is not something to fear or obsess over. They don't need perfect emotional regulation — they are five and three, and their job right now is to feel things loudly and learn slowly. They don't need a perfect relationship with screens. They need reasonable limits and a mom who models something better than her own phone.

Moderation gives me room to parent in the real world instead of the theoretical one. It keeps me from turning every imperfection into a crisis. It lets me give and take, flex and hold, without feeling like every compromise is a failure.

Balance demands perfection distributed evenly. Moderation just asks you to keep showing up reasonably well, in all directions, most of the time.

I can do that. Most days.

What Actually Gets Squeezed

I want to be honest about where I fall short, because I think pretending otherwise doesn't help anyone.

The thing that gets squeezed most in my life right now is my own spiritual growth. My personal scripture study. The quiet, unhurried time with God that fills me back up so I have something to give. It is the first thing to go when the day gets full, and the days are almost always full.

I notice it when it's been too long. I am less patient, less grounded, less able to access the version of myself I'm trying to become. Which is ironic, because the one thing most likely to help me with everything else is the one thing I keep deprioritizing.

I don't have a perfect solution to this. I'm still working on it. But naming it honestly feels like the first step toward doing something about it.

Jesus Is the Answer to the Juggle

Here is what I've come to believe, underneath all of it:

Balance is a horizontal problem — how do I distribute myself evenly across everything pulling at me? But that framing leaves out the vertical entirely. It leaves out God.

When Jesus is genuinely at the center — not as a concept but as an actual orienting presence — the juggle gets simpler. Not easier, but simpler. Because the question stops being how do I divide myself fairly and starts being what would He do here?

Don't know how to respond to your child's meltdown? What would Jesus do? Torn between two choices and can't find the right one? Keep Him in your sights and the right direction becomes clearer. Feeling pulled in twelve directions and not sure which one matters most? He has a way of helping you feel which things are actually urgent and which ones can wait.

I'm not saying faith is a life-organization system. It's not. But I am saying that when my eyes are on Him, I waste less energy on the wrong things. I spend less time performing and more time actually living. I stop trying to be the perfect version of everything and start trying to be a faithful version of myself.

That is the closest I have ever come to balance.

What I'm Learning to Let Go Of

The world has a lot of opinions about how a woman should spend her time and energy. What her body should look like, how her children should behave, how productive she should be, how present she should be, how much she should be doing and optimizing and improving.

I have mostly stopped listening.

Not because I don't care about growing. I care deeply. But I've learned that most of the noise out there is not designed to help me become more faithful, more loving, or more myself. It's designed to make me feel like I'm not enough so I'll keep reaching for whatever is being sold.

Moderation in all things includes moderation in how much I let the world tell me what enough looks like.

Jesus already told me. I'm just trying to keep up.