Anxiety and a Rule of Life

In my second post about writing a Rule of Life, I talked about discerning the need for a Rule, and in my third, I talked about keeping track of what I was already doing. At the end of that third post, I implied that my next post was going to be about the prayer retreat where I wrote the first draft of my Rule.

But I’m going to take a one-post diversion away from that sequence, because there’s something else I want to talk about first.

I want to talk about how having a Rule of Life has helped me with my anxiety. *

One of the best things having a Rule of Life has done for me is that it has let me make big decisions from a place of rest and peace—and that has helped me make good decisions on the smaller stuff, even when I’m in a place of worry and exhaustion.

By taking the time to pray through my schedule and my responsibilities, I was able to decide what my days and my weeks should look like. What was most important? What did I want to do, for sure, every day? What came after that? When was the right time of day for each activity? And, what was my plan for days that weren’t normal—days when things went wrong? What was I going to do when someone got sick or a friend or family member needed me?

I thought through all of that, and I prayed through all of that, on my retreat. I made those decisions in a place of peace.

And it has made all the difference on the days when I've felt crowded and anxious and in the dark.

What was the key? Trusting the decisions I made in peace. On days when I'm anxious, I can tell myself, “I know you think the world is ending. I know you think this is a disaster. I know you think nothing can ever be right again. But we’re not listening to you right now”— (yes, I know, apparently when I talk to myself I either think I’m plural or I’m using the royal we) —“right now, we are going to do what we already decided we’re going to do. We’re not changing the plan because you feel awful. We’re just going to do the next right thing.”

And—this is the brilliant part—I knew what the next right thing was!!! I’d already prayed about it. I’d already held my thoughts and desires before the Lord, I’d meditated on His word, I’d prayed and listened and thought it all through.

I let my peaceful self make the decisions. And that kept my anxious self from having to bear that burden.

You know that old truism that you only have so much will-power during a given day? A Rule of Life means you only have one decision to make: Am I going to follow my Rule or not?

Life-changing, guys. It’s been life-changing.

Does that mean I never make tweaks or small adjustments? Of course not! I am still a mom, and not a monk. I can look at a given situation and say, “Yeah, the wise thing to do now is toss the plan and just sit and listen to this kid.” 

But, honestly, even that kind of thing is something I thought about while making my Rule. My duty is first to God, and then to my husband and kids. Then other duties follow. So if my family is in need, that’s the kind of thing that takes priority. (You do have to have some kind of flexibility. I said that I’m a mom and not a monk—but even monks are monks and not robots.)

Still, even with the un-eveness of daily life, having a structure to my days has been life-changing, and it’s been especially life-changing on the days when I’m feeling anxious. I tend to make bad decisions when I’m anxious. I make decisions that make my world smaller and scarier and harder.

So, having a Rule that has already made a good deal of my daily decisions for me? Has kept my bad days from making my whole life bad. Because if I have a terrible day in which I still know what my duty is and I still do it, that means that when I start my next day—which might be a good one!—I don’t have any awful messes to clean up. I haven’t fallen horribly behind.

And instead of feeling angry at my yesterday’s-self, I feel grateful to her. She had a hard time, and she kept going anyway, because she wasn’t confused about what the right thing to do was.

A Rule is a guide-line. Even if you’re blind-folded, you can keep your hand on it and keep walking in the right direction. You might walk more slowly, but at least you won’t be walking in circles.

And when you’re able to take the blindfold off, you’ll know where you are.

I am so grateful for my Rule of Life.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell




* Important note: Clinical anxiety is something that deserves clinical treatment. I have sought help from my doctor and from a psychologist in the past, when my anxiety actually was that acute, and I’m glad that I did. I’d encourage you to do the same, if yours is serious. I’m not talking about serious, diagnosable anxiety in this post. Having a Rule is a tool that you might use in that case—as I do myself!—but I would not look to a Rule as a cure or as sufficient if you’re in the middle of, say, panic attacks. Please seek professional help if you need it—it’s there for that reason, and it’s a great blessing—much along the lines of the availability of insulin for diabetics and eye surgery for cataracts!

(Also, it should go without saying, but: I am not a medical professional and nothing in here is medical advice.)

Keeping Track of What You're Already Doing

This is the third in a series about my experience of writing a Rule of Life. You can read the first two posts in the series here. 

Before actually sitting down and writing my Rule of Life, I had to do one thing: I had to figure out what I was already doing with my time. What was the structure of my days currently? How did I spend my hours and weeks now? In other words, I had to know where I was starting before I could figure out where I was going.

Because the truth is: we all already have a Rule of Life.

We just don’t call it that.

But we are all living our lives, which means that we are already making decisions about how we use our time and our other resources. Just because you haven’t consciously decided how you’re going to make your decisions doesn’t mean you’re not making decisions. Of course you are—you have to.

You’re just not necessarily making the decisions you want to be making.

So I started tracking my hours.

And here’s where I admit that I cheated. See, I had an advantage when it came to figuring out how to do all this: I know someone who actually teaches about this stuff at a seminary. So I told her what I was doing, and she cheerfully loaded me down with things to read.

Here’s where I have to admit something else. I don’t know if you always read the forwards or dedications or afterwords in the books you pick up, but I do. And there I’ll invariably find a few lines like this:

Thank you to George Eightarms of the Cephalopod Institute for his insights on the mating habits of the octopus. If my undersea zombie apocalypse romance gets anything right, it’s because of his help. However, all mistakes are my own. 

My friend was kind enough to point me towards the starting line. However, she is an expert and I am not. As I pointed out at the beginning of this blog series: This is just an accounting of my own experience. I’m just a layperson here. I’m writing this series both for the selfish reason that I find it interesting and also for the more charitable reason that I hope my experience might help or encourage someone else. But…all the mistakes herein are my own.

Anyway. One of the things my friend has her students do is to track their hours for a while. I used a chart she gave me, but I also went online and found this version, which I used to chart out some theoretical weeks, as I was thinking through the changes I wanted to make. (It’s from Laura Vanderkam’s site. I read a couple of her books this last year. She’s done a ton of original research on how successful women spend their time; it was really quite interesting.) 


I took a couple of copies of the charts, and set to work. I assigned a color to each kind of activity I did throughout my week: things like housework/childcare, writing, editing, devotional stuff, etc.  I also had categories for rest, differentiated between (for lack of better terms) good rest and bad rest—mostly because I wanted to see how much time I was throwing away on TV and social media (versus actually restorative stuff like reading for pleasure).

Here's one of my theoretical weeks. The real thing ended up being much messier.

The point here wasn’t to change anything right away—although I’m sure the mere act of observation did change things—but simply to gather information.

After two weeks, I had a lot of good data about how I was spending my days. The various colored sections really do jump out at you.

Now I had what I needed in order to go on my short, one-day retreat, and to pray through how I was spending my time. I had a record of what I was already doing, and I had a bunch of notes in my journal, and I had the questions that had prompted me to start this process of self-examination. I also reread sections of Holly Pierlot’s book, in order to fill in any gaps I might be forgetting to notice—to remind myself of other areas of my life that I ought to prayerfully examine.


And I also had a place to retreat to: I had been told of a small convent of Roman Catholic sisters in a neighboring city. (And, given that I live in the Los Angeles area, the “neighboring city” was only about a ten minute drive away. We pack ‘em close here.) For a small fee (just enough to cover their costs, I think), they’d provide you with a room and a meal for the day, and access to their chapel and garden, so that those who wished for a day of silence and prayer could have it.

My husband was happy to be parent-in-charge for the day while I went and prayed.

So I made my appointment, and I went.



Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell


This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. I will probably use it to buy more books. (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Discerning the Need for a Rule of Life

I wrote my first Rule of Life about a year ago, but my journey towards a Rule really began long before that.* 

In preparation for this blog series, I’ve been going back over my journal entries from 2016. And I’m finding that my path toward writing a Rule was even more rocky and twisty than I remember it being—and I remember it being a pretty rocky and twisty path!

Like many big changes, this one was prompted by what initially seem like negative things. Things like: 

• dissatisfaction
• a lack of peace
• an inability to get everything done

But, as I started paying attention to what I was doing each day and how I was doing it and—maybe most importantly—why I was doing it, it became clear that what was really driving me was my desire for good things. Things like:

• time with the Lord everyday (both quality and quantity)
• time with my husband and kids everyday (both quality and quantity)
• a desire to write good things (i.e., fulfill my vocation)
• a desire for a peaceful home
• a desire for health (mental and physical)

I don’t think the “dissatisfaction” would have felt so much like starter’s pistol if I’d felt it several years earlier. In fact, I know I felt it several years earlier, and it didn’t have the same jump-starting result back then.

But several years ago, I was in the middle of a “survival” season. I had lots and lots and lots and lots and lots (okay, maybe not that many—but still LOTS) of little kids, and I was their full-time caregiver. Yeah, there were things in my life that made me dissatisfied, but I knew I didn’t have room to arrange them in any super-ideal fashion. 

(Not that that stopped me from trying.)

And then we went through some family health crises—one of them mine—that took up almost all our extra time and energy and attention. I just did not have the wherewhithal to make any big changes.

But then the kids got older

The kids eventually all grew up to be school-aged children. Their needs changed. Other things changed. Various energy-sucking situations changed and resolved. And now, I did have room to make some changes. I did have the time. I did have the physical energy. 

There were ongoing things to be dealt with, sure. But the crises were over, at least for a bit. 

It was time to figure out how to handle this glorious, energy-rich, potential-full time of life called middle-age.**

This was a new time of life. And I wasn’t living it well.

And I really, really wanted to.

So I started experimenting.

Next week’s blog post will be about those first few experiments, and about the way they prompted me to start keeping track of my days. (Because eventually I learned that, if I wanted to change my life, I first had to have an accurate idea of what my life was. That is, I needed data. That is, I needed to observe and record.)

But before I finish off this blog post, I need to be honest, and share the one realization that really, really started me on this journey. It's particular to me, and if you take a similar journey, your final straw will probably be a different one.

But here's mine. I found myself writing these few paragraphs (edited for clarity), right after I reread my journal entries from the time when the children were all still babies and toddlers:

…I'm realizing that back then, I just longed for an hour or two to write, and it was absolutely life-giving it was when I was given those hours. 

Now, it feels like I long for just an hour or two to write, but other, lesser things stop me.

I think this means I’ve made a mistake, somewhere.

It was that last bit that finally started me on my journey: the realization that I could now—if I really wanted to—do the things I’d been telling myself for years that I wanted to do.

There are lots of times in life where you can't do what you want. I know that. I've lived that. I'm sure I'll live it again.

But, writing out those journal paragraphs above made me realize: I'm actually facing a real choice here. Those things I wanted to do? I could really do them now.

And I wasn’t.

That meant I’d gone wrong somewhere. 

And I was determined to change direction. I was determined to make it right.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

*To be completely honest, I can find journal entries about a “Rule of Life” at least as far back as 2010. And I know I’d been introduced to the concept well before that—probably at least as early as 2006 or so, which was about when I first read Holly Pierlot’s book A Mother’s Rule of Life. 

But this blog series is about the Rule that stuck.

**No, really. I’m convinced we don’t value the potential of middle age nearly enough in our culture. It’s all made clear in the middle stanza of this Gerard Manley Hopkins poem, if you want to see what I’m getting at.  

(Bonus! That poem also contains one of the answers to the always-fun “Where-Did-C.-S.-Lewis-Steal-THAT-Narnia-Line-Or-Concept-From?” game.)

This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. I will probably use it to buy more books. (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

the rhythms of our days - announcing a new series

a fascinating book brought by an attendee!

This last Saturday, I got to give a talk to a local church group about celebrating the Christian year at home. It was lovely, and one of the wonderful people who came brought along the recipe book up in the header, A Continual Feast. I looked through it with her before the talk started, and it's now definitely on my list of things to buy. It's full of seasonal recipes, interspersed with lots of commentary on actually celebrating the church year. Once I get it, I see many new delicious traditions in my future...

Anyway, the talk itself was really fun. The group was interested, and asked great questions, and talking with them reminded (again, some more) just how much I love this stuff.

I love the rhythm of the church year. I love ordering my life around the church's annual retelling of the life of Christ. I love ordering my smaller story around that bigger, truer, better story. I love the reminder that, as one of God's people, my small story is a part of that big, true, good story.


Orderly Days: on Writing a Rule of Life
Following the Christian calendar reminds me that time is part of God's good creation. And during this past year, I've been concentrating pretty hard on the order of my days. Almost exactly a year ago, after months of preparation, I took a one-day retreat in order to pray through a Rule of Life for myself. 

And so now I've had almost a whole year of practicing my Rule. 

Which means that I'm just about ready to start blogging about it.

So, coming up on this blog, starting next week (I hope!), you'll find a new series about writing (and keeping, and living) a Rule of Life. I'll talk about how I'm ordering my days so that I have space for all the good things. And also about how adding in good things helps to crowd out the bad.

I'll talk about searching for a peaceful rhythm, and what that looks like, and how to make it work.

And also I'll talk about what to do when it doesn't.


I hope you'll come back and join me next week!


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell








This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. I will probably use it to buy more books. (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)