When Work Comes Home: Finding Balance in Shared Callings
This summer LeaderWise’s staff are sharing a framework developed by psychologist and career counseling researcher, Dr. Sunny Hansen, and her colleagues that takes a holistic approach to "planning one's life course." While career counseling often focuses on choosing a job or advancing one's career, Hansen’s book Integrative Life Planning identifies six critical life tasks that help people think more broadly about building a meaningful life. Originally published in 1996, it’s guidance for the ages.
Sunny Hansen’s third critical task in Integrative Life Planning invites us to consider the relationship between life and work—not as separate spheres competing for our attention, but as interconnected parts of a meaningful whole. For many of us, this integration is a lifelong practice. For those in vocational ministry, the line between work and life can become almost invisible.
As a clergy couple, my spouse and I know this reality all too well.
Over the past nearly thirty (cough, cough) years, many of our conversations have centered around who would attend which church event, who would take the kids to which practice, who would grocery shop and prepare meals for our family while also remembering to get communion elements for Sunday worship.There wasn’t always a clear boundary between “work” and “home.” Ministry often followed us through the front door, and suddenly our personal lives were carrying the weight of our professional callings.
Neither of us were doing anything wrong. We were simply experiencing what happens when two people deeply committed to meaningful work also want to be deeply committed partners and parents.
Hansen’s framework reminds us that work is only one dimension of a fulfilling life. Rather than asking us to compartmentalize, she encourages us to intentionally weave together our values, relationships, and vocational identities. Integration isn’t about allowing our work to consume life; it’s about ensuring that our work supports the lives we want to live.
That idea connects closely with Eve Rodsky’s work in Fair Play. Rodsky challenges the assumption that household responsibilities simply “work themselves out.” She names something that many couples experience but rarely discuss openly: mental load. Beyond completing tasks, someone is usually responsible for anticipating needs, remembering deadlines, planning meals, coordinating schedules, and managing the countless invisible details that keep a household running.
For clergy couples, or any dual-career household, that invisible work can be especially challenging. When both partners are caring for congregations, students, clients, or communities, there may be little energy left for the unseen labor waiting at home. Without intentional conversations, resentment can quietly replace partnership. Balance, then, isn’t about perfectly dividing every responsibility or achieving a mythical work–life equilibrium. It’s never going to be 50/50. It’s about regularly asking one another:
What is demanding the most from us right now?
What invisible work is one of us carrying alone?
How can we redistribute responsibilities in ways that honor both our work and our relationship?
What boundaries protect not only our time, but our well-being?
Integrative Life Planning invites us to see these questions as vocational questions just as much as relationship questions. Our careers are shaped not only by the jobs we hold, but by the people who share our lives and the systems we create together.
For my spouse and me, balance remains an ongoing conversation rather than a destination. In some seasons, our ministries have required more of our time and energy. In other seasons, our family has required more of us. The goal hasn’t ever been perfection, but intentionality—recognizing when work is crowding out life, when home responsibilities need to be rebalanced, and when it’s time to make space for rest, connection, and joy.
Perhaps that’s the heart of Hansen’s third task. Connecting life and work doesn’t mean allowing one to overshadow the other. It means creating a life where our work reflects our deepest values while our relationships remain places of mutual care, shared responsibility, and grace.
As you reflect on your own work and life this week, consider not only the tasks on your calendar, but also the invisible work you’re carrying. Then ask yourself—and perhaps someone you share life with—what balance might look like in this season. The answer may not be perfect, but the conversation itself is an important step toward a more integrated life.
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