When I was teaching, people would often tell me how lucky I was to have weekends, holidays, and summers off. On the surface, it probably did look that way, extra time at home with my family, a built-in break from work. But what most people didn’t see were the hours I poured in outside of the school day. Weekends were spent preparing lesson plans. Summers were filled with workshops, setting up classrooms, and meetings. Evenings stretched late into the night as I graded papers or brainstormed new ways to help my students.
Slowly, I began to notice something painful, my family was only getting the leftovers. They got the version of me who was tired, stretched thin, and always halfway distracted. Somewhere along the way, my job had shifted from something I did to who I was. Without even realizing it, it had become my number one priority, over my kids, over my husband, and even over my own peace of mind. And the hardest truth of all, it had taken priority over God.
What I’ve learned since leaving teaching is this, life will always be full of demands. Every profession can consume you if you let it. The key is not trying to “balance” it all but choosing what will come first. And the only right way to choose is to put God first, because everything else flows from Him. Once you realize what your true priorities are, the things you can’t one day get back, like time with your kids while they’re little or the chance to be fully present in your marriage, everything shifts. Jesus reminded us in Matthew 6:21, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” When we treasure the right things, starting with Him, our hearts follow.
Now, working for myself doesn’t mean everything is perfectly in order. There are still long days, deadlines, and moments where I feel pulled in a million directions. But the difference is, I get to choose where my time goes. I can pause to read with my kids, close early to go out with my husband, or take a quiet moment with the Lord without feeling like I’m stealing time from something “more important.”
Because in the end, it’s not about making everything equal, it’s about choosing the things that matter most and letting them shape the way you live your days. And first and foremost, that means choosing Him. Like Joshua declared, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15). That’s the kind of choosing I want my life to reflect.