Why Rhythms Are More Essential than Ever
In a season of quarantine and social distancing, cultivating healthy habits and routines is an invitation back to normal.
Any of this sound familiar?
You’re scrolling through Instagram for a while before you realize you never actually ate dinner. You start a movie at 10 PM because, why not? You sleep in til 11 AM. Lunch is actually your breakfast. You’re not going anywhere soon, so you skip the shower and workout. You finish that season of the Office. You look at yourself in the mirror, and you wonder how many days away you are from making the Wilson and being full cast away.
Ok, so let’s be honest.
I haven’t changed my sweatpants in over four days, and I can’t remember if I brushed my teeth yesterday or not. I’m going to bed brutally late and trying to force myself to wake up like a normal day, but it’s not a normal day because these aren’t normal times.
For a lot of us, we may have had these experiences in the last week or two of social distancing. With a lack of social activities and an ambiguous schedule to keep us busy, it can be easy to go a whole week on autopilot. What’s strange is that we still seem to fill our days with tasks that make us feel somewhat productive. But, when we neglect the small things that make up our everyday life, we realize these things are more important that we thought.
Since the beginning, God designed for His people to live into a built-in rhythm. The story begins with uncomfortable chaos of nothing, and the first thing God does is establish healthy boundaries for the chaos (Genesis 1–8). The next thing God does is set aside a rhythm for time itself, creating morning and evening.
Everything He created was designed to thrive in these rhythms. Therefore, God’s design for His creation extends to us as His people. We were always made to live in God’s ordered design, not in chaos.
Quarantine is chaos.
In social distancing, we know the struggle is real, and some of us already feel like we’re losing ourselves (extroverts, I feel ya). So, how can we practically develop wholesome rhythms in a season of staying at home?
I have some ideas. Let me share with you a few of my rhythms that make up chapters in my day, even in social distancing.
Morning Rhythms
Here are a few things I do every morning that kick start my day:
- Coffee: Because honestly, who would start a day without some?
- Listen to the world news briefing: It’s super simple if you set up your “flash briefing” through Alexa. Ours includes verse of the day, world and national news updates, and a Spanish word of the day. Today was — “cabesa” (head).
- YouVersion devotion of the day: Youversion is an online Bible app with hundreds of Bible reading plans and devotionals available on your phone. I’m currently going through the “New Testament in a Year” Plan.
- Current church-wide calendar devotional: Our church created its own devotional called “Moment”. It gives excerpts of Pastor Greg’s sermons in a daily “moment” format. It’s cool to do the devotional together with people in our community.
- 2–3 minutes in silence and stillness: This is the allotment of time I give to myself each morning to process what I’m feeling and why I’m feeling that way. I’ve found that this is a huge self-awareness tool for me. Most times, the emotions aren’t meant to be fixed, just to be felt.
- Make the bed: It’s a daily reminder to make my own bed before I try to make the world’s bed, no matter how late it might make me for a meeting.
- Prayer time with the wife: Sometimes this looks like five minutes, other times it looks like 30 seconds while we’re running out the door. This is mostly for us to check in with each other and give our days to God.
Evening Rhythms
Here are a few things I try to do after work to wind down into my evenings:
- Listen to jazz: Normally I do this with the sunroof open on my evening commute home.
- Sit out on our balcony: Every day at 5 PM (if I’m home by then), the church a few blocks away in downtown Houston rings bells that signal the end of the workday for the oil and gas industry workers. I always think of it as a sacred time of closing the chapter of a day with my city.
- Finish all email or text conversations for the day: Depending on how busy my day was, this can be a lot longer than I wish it was. Still, it’s important that I’ve followed up with the conversations of that day.
In the evenings, my rhythms are much more simplistic. After a long day, I typically don’t feel super motivated to do much anyways.
We’re living in a strange time that can make our days and weeks feel chaotic without a plan or healthy habits. But, this can also be a perfect opportunity to build and maintain rhythms that grow us significantly.
Even in social distancing, we can cultivate habits that set our hearts on what He designed us for.
Here’s my permission to steal one of my habits or create your own. Through healthy rhythms in our lives, may we be people that work and rest well during this time.
Wanna connect?
If there is any thing that stuck out to you while you were reading this piece or you want to process out loud what it looks like to process through this pandemic well — I would love to talk and connect!
