Create a Life You Don’t Need to Escape From: Faith Filled Rhythms for More Peace, Rest, and Joy

Hi, friends, and welcome back to Faithfield Living.

Today we're going to talk about how do we design our day so that we don't want to escape it.

So at the end of the day, we say, that was a great day, or at least a contented day.

That is what we're going to dig into today and I'm going to share with you something that just moved me to tears when I read it and which was the incentive behind talking about this today.

Welcome to Faith Filled Living, the podcast for women who want to find joy again, grow closer to God, and rediscover the woman he created you to be.

I'm your host, Kristin Fitch.

Each week you'll find encouragement, honest conversations, biblical perspective, and practical tools to help you experience more joy, purpose, and peace in everyday life.

Because the woman God created you to be is still there, and it's never too late to come alive to the life he created you to live.

Okay, so let's dive in.

I follow lots of people on Substack, you know, and I, a lot of people go and they write there, kind of like a blog, if you will, a post.

People also post podcasts and little, little, little ideas, kind of like Instagram posts or something.

But anyways, one of the people I've started following this year is Bear Grylls.

And if you don't know him, he's.

He's somebody that does a lot of those outdoor wilderness shows, adventure shows, and he also was in the, I think he was in the British military or para military or something like that.

But anyway, so he's done lots of things, he's written books, but I follow him and he wrote something recently that, as I was reading and it just, it brought me to tears, but in the best way possible.

And I'm sharing it in my weekly email as stuff to share, like, worth sharing.

And so you can read that whole thing if you, if you want.

Or I will also put a link to his post in my show notes, but his post is called A day you don't want to escape.

And one of the things is he, he shares a story about athlete Roger Federer, and he's basically talking to a group of professional athletes, like giving a talk or whatever, and they ask him a question and they ask him, hold on, I'm trying to see, oh, how are you still?

How do you sustain it?

Because he's been competing at the highest level for 20 years and they said, how are you still winning majors 20 years in?

And so this is what Roger says.

This is how he says he's still doing it.

I get up every morning and I make breakfast for my kids.

I take them to school.

Then I go and practice for a couple hours.

And I've worked out a routine where I get all the work in I need to without destroying my body.

Then I have lunch with my wife.

In the evening, we cook dinner together.

The kids come home and we ask them about their day.

There's so much joy in my house.

We put them to bed and I put my head on the pillow, and I think that was a great day.

And he says, and I've been doing that for 20 years.

But, wow, honestly, even that moves me.

But it moves me because it's that an ordinary day, an ordinary Tuesday can be the best day when we actually design our day around the things that matter being present, right?

We want to figure out, how can we be present with the people we care about?

How can we be present in the work we're doing?

And the work could be at home, the work could be out in the world.

It could be ministry at your church, whatever.

The work is the way you spend your time when you're not with the people that you care about.

The next thing is, how do you do something that you are deeply passionate or excited about?

Right?

Like, he is amazing at his profession.

And so.

And then the next thing is, how do you prioritize the things that are important to you and not let the word success get in the way?

Because even Bear Grylls in this article kind of talks about that, right?

Because a lot of people might say, how do you keep winning?

How do you succeed?

But that's not really what makes life important.

What makes life important is, who do we have around us?

And are we spending our time in a way that matters to us, right?

That touches our heart, that has purpose in it and has love.

And doing the work's important, but not if it comes at the detriment of our families or the detriment of our marriages or it doesn't allow us to maintain.

Right.

That schedule.

And so what I love about this is so many times you hear people talking about, oh, they had to work, you know, 80 hours, or they were always gone on weekends, or they were, you know, whatever.

And I'm not saying that we ever.

We don't ever have to work harder than most days, or we.

We don't have to maybe go somewhere.

What I'm saying, though, is how do we design ourselves out of days that exhaust us and actually create, I think, a great day in God's eyes?

Because the Bible actually gives us the roadmap.

It gives us the instruction manual for how to live and not to be overwhelmed, over, consumed and overstretched.

Jesus gives us so many examples.

He was, in the three years of his ministry, he often would have more and more people follow him, people demanding his time constantly.

But he would take, he would take time and he would go out, right?

He would go into the garden or he would go out into the desert, or, you know, he would get quiet time with God, with his Father.

So in other words, we are shown in the Bible the ways that we can make our days better and make our days more sustainable and that we can continue that pattern.

That is why the Sabbath is so important.

Now.

Not everybody talks about, oh, I take the Sabbath, you know, yes, some people do, and that's amazing.

But some of us are our Sabbathing, or at least often we're Sabbathing, but we may not even call it that.

But in other words, we are making sure that, that at least one day a week we are resting.

We're delighting in what God's already provided for us.

We're delighting in the relationships we have.

We're delighting in God's creation.

We're slowing down.

See, the Sabbath is a time to reset.

It's a time to renew, to reflect, to reconnect.

And when we take that weekly, our next, like when we start the next week, right the next day on, we're ready to tackle it.

We're more creative, we're more innovative.

We've been inspired because we took a slow stroll on the beach or we read a book that it was just beautifully written.

We, we read a passage in the Bible that spoke to us in a different way because we had more space in our schedule on this particular day, right on Sabbath.

So why I liked this post so much that Bayer did is just because it spoke to a simple day in scheduling.

His, the work he does right for him, the work is actually getting better at his.

It his, at tennis.

And so here's what I like Bear said.

He said Vetter's answer is the reverse.

Instead of saying like, how do you keep winning?

And he says the tennis sits inside the day like one room in a house.

In other words, the tennis doesn't take over Roger Federer's life.

Tennis fits into the life he wanted.

He knew that his family and what he was creating in that legacy and the time with his kids, because they will not be at home.

You know, he only has limited time.

Those things take on a higher value for him.

And he figured out where to put his work, where he put his conditioning, if you will.

And I think a lot of us have to do that too, or we need to do that if we haven't.

Often I think we let our schedules dictate our days.

And I.

Please hear me.

I am not saying that we don't go through seasons like that.

I have three sons now.

They're either college or just, just past college and getting, you know, getting their first jobs and things.

And it's only been two months since one of my sons just moved out for his first real career job.

The other two are at home right now.

And I've had those days, those weeks where after school and dinner and homework, there's, you know, sports practices, sometimes two.

And on a given weekend we'd have a tournament and we might, I don't know, like 12 or 15 games in one weekend because of three sons.

So I get that sometimes our schedules do seem to dictate our lives.

But what I'm talking about is how do we set, how do you set boundaries so that at some point you just don't say yes to everything or okay, well, we only do two soccer tournaments a year.

We did not do them continuously.

We did not do soccer tournaments that were further than two hours away, often further than an hour away.

Those are choices that we made.

My husband was their coach, but he purposely coached them at my kids played travel, but it was a different type of travel where we chose to be in a division where we didn't have to go as far because the priority wasn't, okay, all these kids are trying to go play.

In college, the priority was they wanted to play high level soccer without it consuming the families with the expense or the distance because most people had more than one child.

And so we have to be able to balance those things.

So it was much like that.

And so why I wanted to bring this up today, like I said, one is because we do have to be intentional with creating our life and we have to look at what's working, what's not working, where are we overloaded, where might we make a change?

And you know, one of the other things that Bear says in his article is it's also about being present and it's also about not giving what's left over to our families, to our spouses, to our kids.

Because if we're so exhausted and over stretched, then what do we have left in the evenings when we come back together?

And so that's another thing is are we creating schedules that work so that we do give the people we care about our best and not what's left.

And that can be hard for some, some families.

That can be hard, especially for sometimes spouses.

And I would say women in the sense that we often take on a lot of things, like more women I know than, than men take the kids to all the things like the doctor's appointments, the appointments, you know, the whatever, if they're sick.

And sometimes men do it more because they may.

And I'm not saying this doesn't happen to women.

I'm just saying I think it happens to men more.

They may have a role at a company where they're expected to work more than, you know, 40 or 50 hours a week.

And so in that case, they're working long hours.

And like I said, I know women that do this too, but I know more men and families that do it than women.

So Bear points out one or two other things.

And like I said, if you want to read the whole thing, it's definitely worth reading it.

And he makes many, many other good points, but one of the things he points out is that that fetter is.

Sorry, let me go back here.

He.

He says that he's present, right?

He's present each part of the day, even the most mundane parts of the day, he's present, meaning he gets to fully participate in it.

And that brings joy, that brings life, that brings connection.

So one, it's, are we being present in our lives?

Are we being present in the parts of our lives that matter the most especially?

Or are we constantly on our phone?

Are we constantly distracted?

Or is the person with us constantly distracted?

But the other thing is, he goes on to say that it's about being resilient, you know, having endurance.

But it's having endurance to live, to be part of this journey of life, through all of it, right?

In other words, we don't want to sprint, so we just, we burn out and we're exhausted, and then we can't keep going.

We want to be resilient in the sense of things will happen, right?

We will have days that aren't as easy.

We will have days that don't go this way.

Like tomorrow, I'm taking my husband.

Well, actually, by the time this airs, it won't be.

It'll be.

He'll have already had it, but he's having surgery tomorrow.

Like I said, it'll probably be.

Have just happened once this airs.

But my point is that day is going to look really different.

And I don't even know exactly how that day will go because we'll be there at least till midday.

But he could be there longer, right?

It depends on his surgery.

And then if he comes out of.

I think he's having regular anesthesia, how long it takes him to come out of that and then get up and walk.

So my point is, is there are going to be days that carry more weight, that carry more stress, that carry more joy and grief.

And that's all true, but we want to be present for all of it.

And we also want to build that resilience muscle, both in ourselves and our kids.

Because when we're resilient, when we put we do the work, then we are stronger for when things don't go the way we want.

But he also explains it's about.

He's talking about, because of course, like I told you, Bear Grylls is a like a wilderness adventure guide person.

He does.

He's done lots of shows on tv.

But he explains that some people that go try to hike the highest mountains, they don't make it because they just try to push, push, push.

But the reason that there's camps along the way is because you have to rest.

And he says, rest isn't weakness, it's fuel.

And the climbers, who knew that, ignore that, get carried down, and then I'll just share this.

That he says, yet in ordinary life, we treat rest as a thing we'll get to and routine as a sign we've stopped being ambitious.

That's backwards.

A routine you can sustain for 20 years is the most ambitious thing you can build because almost nobody manages it.

You see, like, we can have routine and it can change on occasion, right?

You go on vacation or you go to a work trip, you go to visit somebody, somebody has to have surgery.

But the rest of the days we have routine that works so that we can grow older and be healthy.

We can grow older and still do the things we love.

So in other words, we want to rest.

We want to rest our bodies.

We don't want to overdo it.

A good example of this is I have a friend that she'll often say, yeah, whenever I start working out again or a new workout routine, she says, I always overdo it.

And then I'm really sore and I can't do very much for a couple days.

Well, she's overdoing it.

She's not easing herself in.

She's not.

When you start a new routine, you don't go all in, right?

You start like, okay, this is how it's going to go.

You plan it out, and then you move into that.

Well, I've done that, too.

When I was younger, I used to not have exercise for a while.

I'd start a new gym or, you know, whatever it was, and then I would overdo it, too.

But I mostly, I've learned that lesson that I want my life to be easy.

But when I say easy, I mean I want the routine to be easy.

I walk pretty much every day, you know, 30 minutes or an hour or longer.

You know, I do my rebounder, and then I do some exercises.

I could definitely step that up a little bit right now.

But my point is, I want things that feel good and I don't have to try so hard about.

Right.

I want to move, and I want to be able to use my body as I get into even more decades, but I don't want to do it so that it feels like pulling out splinters.

So once again, I want to design a routine that I can maintain.

For instance, I like riding my bike.

I don't do it daily, but, you know, a couple times a week, I'll ride my bike to a friend's house or my husband.

I will go take a little bike ride in the neighborhood.

But those are the kind of things I'm talking about is design your life so that there's rest built in.

Design your life so that the routine that you're creating, it lines up with what your priorities are, and it lines up with how you want to be spending your time.

Like I said, don't let your schedule dictate you.

You need to dictate your schedule.

And one way you can do that is do an audit.

Do a life audit.

Do an audit of what your, you know, what an average week looks like.

So put down the seven days and then write out kind of what your week looks like, and then note where things aren't working as well as you'd like.

Or maybe you're just feeling, like, frazzled by the end of the day, or maybe you're feeling frazzled by the weekend when Friday night comes.

But you can kind of make a plan from there.

There are so many ways to do it.

I've talked to people, I've interviewed so many people that do it differently.

And one way is there's a great podcast I did.

It was with a woman that did a book.

I forget the exact name of it, but it was basically about, like, Soup for Sabbath.

But she.

Basically what she does is during the week, she kind of has a schedule of what meals.

She has different nights, which I know Other people do that too.

But she would make ahead of time during the week her Sunday meal so that on their rest day, she wasn't the one in the kitchen create like making an entire meal.

She already had a meal that she made the day before that they could heat up and she got to enjoy it and relax with everybody.

I mean, she's trying to get the food out and, you know, and put it on the table and everything.

But she wasn't having to start from scratch.

And then she has other nights where they're like, we always have a pizza night, because then that's her night off.

So it's when it's a busy day for her family, they have an easy planned, like we're going to grab something out or from the freezer this particular night.

My point is, is sometimes we need to just say, where do I need more space?

Where do I need more space in my schedule space in my life so that I can breathe, so that I can relax.

And if, you know, Tuesdays and Thursday nights are crazy busy for your family, maybe you're someone, you know who still has kids that are running around in activities and sports, or maybe you're at church a couple nights a week.

Well, those might be nights you say, how can I make it easier for me or my family to already have a meal ready?

Or maybe when you make a meal, make two or three and put them in the freezer so that you can just pull it out and heat it, you know, in the crock pot or whatever.

So that's the kind of thing I'm talking about.

But at the end of the day, I think Bear kind of wraps up with like some questions he asks himself to kind of decide, like, am I living my life in a way that is a great day and that I don't want to escape.

The other thing I want to add to today's episode, and I won't make this too much longer, but it's, it's our perspective.

And I've talked about this before, right, Our mindset, our perspective, but it's our perspective on the life we have meaning.

When we actually have gratitude for our lives, when we have appreciation for our lives, it doesn't mean everything's perfect.

It doesn't mean we have everything that we want.

What it means is we know just how grateful, how blessed we are to have whoever it is that we have in our lives.

Now maybe someone listening to this, that's not true.

And, but for many of us, we do have somebody that cares about us.

Or we may Have a family or we have a community, you know, that we're a part of.

And so being grateful for what we do have, you know, or maybe we have, you know, a place to call home.

And, you know, we have, you know, work and things like that.

And so.

But the more appreciative we are of the things we have, the more we can see that, right, that we have somebody to talk to in the evenings or, you know, we are raising up young people, then it shifts how every day that's so ordinary.

We can see just how extraordinary it is, what a gift it is.

And so that's the other thing I would just share with you is part of it is starting to just, like, thank God for what you already have, even if you're still praying for something else.

Keep thanking him for what you have and just be grateful for all.

All of it.

All the, you know, everything that you have for the beautiful earth, you know, the trees, the sky, the sun's out, everything.

Because when we shift into that, it shows that being content actually shifts how we perceive our lives.

It shifts, you know, the chemistry or chemical in our brains and in our bodies.

And so just stop.

Just take a look at that, too.

Are you somebody that's showing up and you're grateful for the things in your life, or are you grumbling about a lot of things going on in your life?

Because that is something that you're going to want to switch and flip if you're finding that you're somebody that's frustrated and grumbling about a lot.

It's something to look at, it's something to work on.

Maybe write down bring it to God, but that's it.

I just wanted to share this with you today because that.

That post by Bear Grylls, it really spoke to me.

And it spoke to me because I think so many of us get stuck in the grind of just what our schedule is and what our obligations are and all the things that have to get done, right, the laundry, the cleaning, the bathrooms, all of it, it can sometimes feel like a lot.

But when we realize there's also a gift in that there's a gift in that we have a warm bed and we have plumbing that works, and we have, you know, like I said, people that we get to care for or they get to care for us.

It's such a beautiful thing.

And so that's it.

I just want to encourage you in this way today and just say we can live more or more closely to what we're shown in the Bible that God wants rest for us.

That God wants us to have space to create.

He wants us to have space to be in community.

He wants us to have space for people to see that when we live the way God is speaking to us to live, life is better.

Now.

That does not mean it comes without hard circumstances.

That's not what we're talking about here.

Life is better because we're present, because we see the goodness in the moments.

We see the goodness in the connections to him, to other people.

And so that's what I'm talking about today.

But I hope this episode will just encourage you to think maybe a little bit different about your own life and the days that you are living in and how you can actually change those or shape them to be more aligned with what your values are and what it is that you want your day to look like.

So until next time, I hope you have a great and beautiful week.

And I have a great workbook for you if you want to grab it.

It's called Start with Rest.

That's completely free.

You can grab it on my website.

Or I have one called Create a life you Love.

It's a journaling workbook and it's basically lots of different pages to get you thinking about what are your values, what are your priorities?

Like what do you.

What else do you want to fit in in your life?

Like what's important to you, what do you need to remove but that both of those can be found@Kristinfitch.com and go to my Workbooks page.

You'll also then get my Faith Friday emails that I send most Fridays of the year.

Just encourage you in your life and to get you thinking about some other ideas.

And I often share things that I loved or things that moved me this week.

So until next time, I hope you have a great week.

If you enjoyed today's episode, if you could leave a rating review on Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts, it helps the show get discovered by more people so that we can continue to uplift and encourage people in their faith journey as well as all of the other parts of their lives.