There’s something about the beginning of a new school year that feels a little bit like New Year’s Day. We all talk about January being the time when we make resolutions and start fresh, but if you have kids, you know that August is when life really starts changing.
Summer comes to an end, schedules fill back up, kids head to school, and suddenly everything about your daily routine shifts. You’re getting up earlier, figuring out transportation, managing activities, and trying to remember all the things you didn’t have to think about a few weeks earlier.
And what’s interesting is that as those things change, we naturally begin developing new rhythms. Some of them are intentional. Others just happen because life gets busy and we start responding to whatever is immediately in front of us.
But here’s what I’ve been thinking about. The rhythms we develop today are quietly determining the kind of life we’ll experience tomorrow. And sometimes we don’t recognize where those rhythms are taking us until we’ve been living them for years.
Your Life Is Being Shaped by Something
I think most of us have a pretty good idea of the kind of people we want to become. We want healthy relationships, meaningful work, strong families, and a growing relationship with God. We want to be generous, patient, emotionally healthy, and present with the people we love. But wanting those things and actually arranging our lives around them are two very different things.
You can genuinely want to become a more patient parent while consistently living at a pace that leaves you exhausted and frustrated. You can value your marriage while allowing everything else on your calendar to receive your best energy. You can want a deeper relationship with Jesus while giving Him whatever attention happens to be left over at the end of the day. And the complicated part is that none of those things necessarily mean you don’t care.
Sometimes we’ve simply allowed our lives to become so full that we’ve lost the capacity to invest in what matters most. If someone looked at your calendar, your spending, and the things that consistently receive your attention, what would they conclude is most important to you? It’s a challenging question because our intentions don’t always match our actual lives.
The Things That Are Slowing Us Down
There’s a passage in Hebrews 12 that gives us an incredibly helpful picture of this. The writer describes the Christian life as a race and encourages us to throw off everything that hinders us and the sin that so easily entangles us, so that we can run with perseverance the race marked out for us.
I think we naturally pay attention to the part about sin. We understand that there are destructive choices and behaviors that can damage our relationships with God and other people. But there’s another phrase in that passage that I find equally challenging. Everything that hinders us.
That suggests there may be things in our lives that aren’t necessarily wrong, but are still keeping us from becoming the people God has called us to be. A commitment can be good and still consume too much of your life. A hobby can be enjoyable and still receive more attention than it deserves. A career can be meaningful and still slowly crowd out the relationships that matter most.
Sometimes the greatest obstacles to spiritual growth aren’t obviously destructive things. They’re good things that have gradually taken up more space than they should. And if we’re not intentional, we can spend years carrying responsibilities, expectations, and habits that are making it unnecessarily difficult to follow Jesus well.
You Can’t Keep Adding Without Making Room
One of the things I’ve learned is that most of us approach personal growth by trying to add something to our lives. We want to grow spiritually, so we decide to read the Bible more. We want a stronger marriage, so we plan to spend more time together. We want to be healthier, so we add exercise. We want to be more generous, so we make a commitment to give. Those are all good decisions.
But if our lives are already completely full, adding more responsibilities without removing anything rarely produces the kind of change we’re hoping for. Eventually, something gives. And usually, it’s the thing that doesn’t feel immediately urgent. That’s why I think Hebrews 12 is so helpful. Before the writer talks about running with perseverance, he talks about removing the things that are weighing us down.
Sometimes growing in our relationship with Jesus requires us to stop doing something before we can begin doing something better. That may mean creating boundaries around work, changing how we use technology, reconsidering financial commitments, or making intentional room for relationships and spiritual practices.
The goal isn’t simply to become more productive. It’s to become more available to the life God is inviting us to live.
Putting This Into Practice
I want to encourage you to think about your current rhythms with honesty rather than guilt. The goal isn’t to create a perfect schedule. It’s to identify where small changes could make room for something better.
1Audit where your time and attention are going.
Look back over the last seven days. Consider how much time you’ve spent working, scrolling, watching television, being with family, praying, and doing things that genuinely restore you. Then ask yourself whether those patterns reflect the things you say matter most. You don’t have to account for every minute. Just identify one place where your actual priorities and your intended priorities aren’t lining up.
2Identify one thing that’s hindering you.
Think about Hebrews 12 and the invitation to remove what weighs us down. What’s one commitment, habit, or distraction that may not be inherently bad but is limiting your capacity to invest in something more important? Choose one specific adjustment you can make this week. Maybe it’s reducing screen time, declining a commitment, protecting an evening with your family, or creating space for prayer before the day begins.
3Replace that space with something meaningful.
Don’t simply remove something from your schedule and hope your life improves. Decide what you’re making room for. If you want to grow spiritually, establish a consistent time to pray or read Scripture. If you want a healthier marriage, protect time together. If you want to become more generous, make a concrete plan to give. Choose one rhythm you can realistically sustain and begin practicing it this week.
The beautiful thing about changing our rhythms is that small decisions, repeated consistently, can have an extraordinary impact over time. You don’t have to change everything about your life this week. But you can begin making room for the things that matter most.
