In God’s providence and his perfect timing, we strive to please him where we are called. It’s really as simple as that. Just keep faithfully serving where we are called in good stewardship. But no one likes that answer. It usually takes humility, stress, and good old-fashioned grit. I take my opportunities when I get them, and I plod along to the end. 

Megan Hill: Are we wrong about what “all” is?

I well remember the time I confessed to a group of women: “Sometimes being a mom is boring.”

You could have cut the resulting silence with a pie server.

I love my kids. Their stories, their questions, their Lego creations.  I take seriously my responsibility to care for them as my children and as my fellow human-beings. My roles as wife and mother rightly have high priority in my life (Titus 2:3-5).

But if, while I am stirring the macaroni and cheese, my mind turns instead to the wonder of the incarnation or the problem of systemic racism or the challenge of writing a fresh metaphor, is that wrong?

The question of doing (or having) it all was resurrected for my generation by Anne-Marie Slaughter in her July/August 2012 cover article for The Atlantic, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.” Her piece was followed by Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, a slightly different perspective on the same situation. For Slaughter and Sandberg and many women my age, “doing it all” means being able to find success and fulfillment in a wide range of simultaneous roles: wife, mother, employee or employer, creator, friend, citizen, volunteer.

Many conservative Christians take issue with Slaughter and Sandberg. They would say that godly women should define “doing it all” as being able to find success and fulfillment in a smaller number of simultaneous roles: wife and mother.

But whether women define “doing it all” with a list of a hundred roles or by reducing that to one or two roles, we are wrong about what “all” is.

Yes, being a wife and mother is my highest earthly privilege; my conduct in those roles even influences what other people think of my God (Titus 2:5, I Pet. 3:1-2, Eph. 5:22-33). I can also take satisfaction in work done well.

But I am not dedicated finally and completely to being a wife or a mother or a writer. In the words of the Heidelberg Catechism: “I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.”

If being a peanut-butter-sandwich-making and laundry-folding mom is sometimes boring, it’s because those tasks are not intended to be ultimate. I do them heartily, yes, but I do them as for the Lord (Col. 3:23). I take every thought captive—whether thoughts about mac ‘n cheese or thoughts about global poverty—to obey Christ. (2 Cor. 10:5) And I bring my children up in the way of the Lord, submitting to my husband as is fitting in the Lord (Eph. 5:4, Col. 3:18). I pour water and cook dinner and buy clothes and, yes, write articles for my Jesus (Matt. 25:40).

In the words of Charles Wesley’s hymn: “Thou, O Christ, are all I want; more than all in thee I find.” How do I do it all? By daily remembering that “all” is not to be found in the sum of my different roles. It is found only in the one all-consuming and all-worthy work of a lifetime: “to live is Christ.” (Phil. 1:21)

Gloria Furman: Whose do we think we are?

It’s easy to look at your schedule, family, church, work, interests, and yourself and conclude: God has given me roles, tasks, circumstances, strengths, and weaknesses that compete with each other. How do you do it all?

To answer the “how” we need to know what we mean when we say “it” or “all,” as Megan mentioned. But we also need to know the “who” and “whose.” We don’t need to dwell on our gifts, opportunities, personalities, passions, and strength-finders nearly as much as we need to know and love the God who has revealed himself to us in his Word. Who is this God from whom and through whom and to whom are all things (Rom. 11:36)? We must know whose we are.

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