Maintaining Balance Between Work and Family

I have been thinking about how people live to maintain the balance between their work and family. In New York, most husband and wife work to fulfill their family needs. Many are even taking extra courses while working and taking care of their family. The issue is how then we, as a woman, should use our time wisely to manage our time in earning extra bucks from working outside and still be able to nurture our family.

I thought I always have a lot of time to do more work than what I have right now. However, when there is extra work comes, I always tend to get stressed out, even though my husband has always been very understanding and helpful to me. When I am in a rush, I often neglect him unintentionally. And that usually happens in the morning, especially when I was rushing to go to work (poor my hubby). But he's always so patiently caring and helping me with my morning tasks, such as making the bed and preparing breakfast for me to eat on the train. I can never thank God enough for giving me such a blessing through my husband.

Right now my activities are somehow pretty simple.Yet, I still haven't been able to manage to do all of them in my daily routine. Besides that, I am now trying to get a part/full time job, which will require a much better time-management skill and discipline in every area.

Here are a list of my activities so far:
- Doing household chores, e.g. cooking, grocery shopping, laundry, cleaning.
- Studying for pharmacy technician exam (have to take within 2 months or so)
- Doing the Church database. 
- Bible study/devotion
- Learning Chinese (under my husband's teaching)
- Sunday School preparation
- Teaching piano

So, what if I
- wake up at 7am,
- 1 hour - morning devotional time(+Chinese learning)
- 1 hour - preparing for the day + breakfast + dinner menu
- 3 hours - Study pharmacy exam  (9-12pm)
- 30 mins - break
- 1 hour - Study pharmacy exam again (until 1:30pm)
- 2 hours - Church Database (until 3:30pm)
- 1 hour - teaching piano
- 5pm - start cooking
- 8pm - dinner time
- 9:30pm - shower
- 10pm - Night devotional time
- 11 - Free time (Sunday School Prep / Reading / internet / etc)
- 12 - bed time

Hm... looks pretty good. Let's see if I can keep up with this schedule starting next Monday. However, there are still little things that I must do next week, including interview preparation, choir practice, and car inspection.

Hopefully I will have enough discipline to do all these in spite of little unplanned things that might come up in between.

Lord, though I am weak, but You are strong. Please give me Your strength to do all these tasks in my daily routine with the joy from You alone. With a humble heart that I may follow Your guidance to live according to Your will. In Jesus' name, Amen!