I found a 2023 draft in my blog folder that never got posted. It was built around one question: does your head ever get so crowded you start to lose your way? I laughed when I saw it. Apparently my head was too crowded to hit publish.
I knew that feeling then. I know it now. This has been my biggest output year at home, and I wrote this week about what that’s costing me. The crowding is back.
The 2023 version of me had an answer. Three things he did no matter what. Bible and prayer first thing in the morning. Real time with his wife and son, hugs and stories and jokes around the table. Thirty minutes of exercise, because if he skipped it he started to fall apart. He was thankful for all three. That was the whole post. Two paragraphs and a list.
Three years later, the list isn’t what interests me. What happened to it does.
The list changed shape
The morning time is still there. It still goes first.
Exercise used to be thirty minutes I owed myself. Now the goal is an hour a day, which includes lifting heavy things with my son three days a week. It keeps my body feeling good, and I get the added bonus of extra time with my boy. Watching him grow stronger week over week is an awesome thing.
I still need my family in large quantities. Time with my wife to talk and decompress. Time to enjoy our son. The hugs and stories and jokes around the table haven’t gone anywhere; there are just more of them now, and they matter more. I thank God for my family daily.
And there’s one the 2023 list doesn’t have at all: thinking out loud, which usually happens on long walks. It’s where I turn questions over. It’s where a stranger asked me for lunch money and ended up teaching me something. I didn’t add it on purpose. It just stopped being optional.
A rhythm is what’s already there
Here’s what I’d tell the guy who wrote that draft. He described his rhythms as something he leans on when the stress ramps up, like a tool you grab when you need it. I don’t think that’s quite right.
You can’t start a rhythm in the middle of a crowded season. There’s no room for it. The only rhythms that help when your head is full are the ones that were already in place before it filled up.
That’s why they work. They don’t ask for a decision, and decisions are exactly what a full head is short on. When I can’t think straight on a Thursday, I don’t decide to lift. It’s Thursday. My son is waiting.
The one that’s missing
Reading the old draft, I noticed what’s not on it. Rest. It wasn’t on the 2023 list, and it’s only now making its way onto mine. I’ve admitted I’m bad at keeping a Sabbath, and this draft shows it was never even a candidate. Every rhythm I have is something I do. None of them is something I stop doing.
I’ve had to admit that I need rest. Even when I don’t want to, I see it in the Bible plain as day. When the disciples came back from their first big season of work, Jesus didn’t hand them a better routine. He told them to come away to a quiet place and rest a while (Mark 6:31).
Which leaves me with a problem. Rest is the first rhythm I’m trying to start in a crowded season instead of before one. By my own rule, it shouldn’t take.
The 2023 list says otherwise. Two paragraphs and a list turned into better time with my family and a healthier body. Rhythms can start small. I’m hoping rest can start small too, even now, even here. I’m trying it anyway.
