Teresa Hirst

Routines expand time for our long-term goals that spontaneity would steal. While it sometimes feels great to loosen the boundaries of life, we also lose sight of important priorities in the process.

These words concluded my post last week about making writing a priority. The phrase is mine, but the idea came from my teen daughter.

After she returned from a vacation at Grandpa’s and Grandma’s farm, she asked, “Can we get back on a schedule?” She discovered that late nights with her cousins and sleeping in steals time from the day.

Ironically, by the end of our stay-at-home vacation I felt the same thing, too. The later and later mornings had displaced some of our good spiritual habits. I wasn’t ready to see them go, and I panicked.

“What’s going to happen when our children leave home?” I asked. “Will we lose all the important routines we created?”

“Only for the first week,” Paul joked.

In those more relaxed and less structured days away from our children, we enjoyed ourselves. But I also remembered the unintended blessing of nurturing my children—personal spiritual development.

The bounds we establish for our kids don’t just teach, guide and support them toward what’s right; they also discipline our time and character. That’s so obvious I often miss it.

I explained this once to a skeptical friend. She said, “That’s a lot of pressure on yourself.”

I guess it is. But the positive pressure to limit ourselves, change our behavior and focus our time on spiritual priorities is an example that expands all of us.