by Kristin Chessrown
Shortly before the COVID pandemic, I was diagnosed with ADHD.
As an adult, just shy of 30, this felt like the news was coming a little late.
I was bewildered and quite frankly a little devastated at first.
A recent conversation with my ADHD coach went something like this…
Me: “I feel like I can’t get this ’successful adult’ thing right.”
Her: “You’ll get the hang off it, you’ve got a lot to unlearn. Essentially, you’ve been reading the wrong instruction manual… you’re a different model.”
Me: “Why did it have to take this long to figure that out!?”
Her: “Because you were really good at functioning in a routine, and you’ve always had routines built around you. You have to build your own now, and that’s going to take some work.”
Does anyone else feel like COVID kind of threw your routine out the window?
I feel you.
We’ve spent the past few months in a whirlwind.
Many of us, just holding on for dear life, treading water until the pandemic was over.
We counted down the days until we went back to work and church services as normal.
And then recently, we watched as the number of COVID cases went up, instead of down like we expected. We watched as our state put more restrictions back in place and waited to see what would happen.
Can I confess something to you?
I wasn’t worried about the COVID cases, at least not as my initial fleshly response, I was worried about not getting back my routine.
I want to go back to normal.
I feel like I need to go back to normal.
I feel like I need a scheduled meeting and deadlines to tell me when to get out of bed and put my makeup on.
Building a routine right now, feels like I’m doing it from scratch, the foundation level of building a new normal.
Did you know Jesus has a plan for that?
He calls us to rhythms of time spent with him, time spent in community, times of work, and times of rest and celebration.
In Peter Scazzero’s Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, he refers to these rhythms as a Rule of Life.
The Greek word that this “rule” comes from actually describes a trellis, a tool used to enable a vine to get off the ground and grow upward.
Following a Rule of Life, is simply a guideline that puts God at the center of our lives, and enables us to grow from there.
Scazzero then placed all of the elements of a routine into one of four categories:
- Prayer
- Rest
- Work/ Activity
- Relationships
Moving forward, all of our routines are going to look different from each other, and from anything we’ve known them to be before, and that’s okay.
God is really good at making plans, He’s been doing it for years.
More than that, He has given us a Rule of Life with Him that is molds and shapes itself around whatever is happening around us. Whatever disruptions happen, we can create of life of empowered rhythms centered on His strong love.
Especially when our plans and rhythms fall apart.
His plans are always better than those we try to come up with on our own – every time!
So my dear beloved sister, spend some time with Him this week creating your own Rule of Life.
Let God remind you who you are, and let Him guide you in structuring your life around who He has made you to be: totally and completely loved by Him.
Kristin Chessrown is a young lady who continues to fight for God’s focus for her life and becoming who God has created her to be. She does not settle, will not bend to peer pressure all the while loving every person she comes in contact with. She has an innate ability to see untapped potential in others while celebrating who they are right this very minute. Kristin knows what it means to experience great loss as well as great intimacy with her loving Heavenly Father and I know you have been encouraged by her transparency and courageous life.
– Cindy Grasso
