A Quiet Simple Life | Sallie Borrink

For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 6:23

A Quiet Simple Life

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To Live Simply, Stop Listening To Other People


I’ve discovered the secret to living simply. It is this. Put your hands over your ears. Close your eyes. Now loudly say, “La la la la la. I’m not listening to you!” I’m serious. Sort of. I believe the number one key to living simply is to intently listen to God and stop listening to other people around you.

God Knows You Best

No one knows your life like God. No one knows you and your family and your unique life circumstances like God. No one cares about you like God. No one died for you except God’s beloved Son, Jesus Christ. Even people with the best of intentions toward us can never know us and understand our life like the Lord.

Stop Listening To Other People

We greatly complicate our lives because we listen to too many people. We put too much stock into the experiences and convictions of others. We care too much what people think of us. We read too many how-to books and blogs and magazines. We too easily adapt to the expectations of others rather than making the hard choice to say no, stick to our guns, and do what we know is right for God’s calling on our individual lives.

Need a bigger list than what I’ve given you here? Read A Christian Mother’s Version of Perfect Madness (blog now closed). Here is a little preview:

I wonder how a Christian author would summarize the “Mess” Christian Moms have gotten themselves into? How do they deal with the pressure to be Martha Stewart and to homeschool their kids to love “Pilgrim’s Progress” and quote more chapters of the Bible than the 10 P’s in a Pod family? How do they scrapbook their child’s every waking moment, journal their faith and keep faithful to their attention to both their prayer request list and their 18 different to-do lists? And what if they can’t maintain their weight thru obedience to “full” and “empty” as God ordained?

What if you can’t abide Beth Moore of if Ann Graham Lotz gives you the creeps? How are you to cope? What if “Bible Study Fellowship” is about as relaxing as a pelvic exam and you dread it with the same anxiety you used to have for calculus but have to go because you got a slot and are the envy of the waiting list?? What if you can’t think up a way to make a cactus out of a milk jug for the VBS Corral? How will people respond to you if you take yet another carton of deli potato salad to the pitch in? Or worse—call and have a pizza deliver [and use a credit card to pay for it.]

Be free.

Please.

Be free in Christ.

Photo credit

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Living Simply By Rising Early and Getting Enough Sleep


An early favorite book when I was beginning my simple living journey was The Yankee Way to Simplify Your Life by Jay Heinrichs. In the book he writes about rising early:

There is one time of the day when the phone never rings, the world keeps getting brighter, and you have the whole day ahead: early morning.

Did that sentence just set your teeth on edge? You very likely had an instinctive reaction to the phrase “early morning.” You said to yourself, “I am not a morning person.“

Motherhood and Loss Of Sleep

One of the hardest parts of adjusting to motherhood has been the total lack of control I have felt over my sleeping and rising schedule. Caroline did not sleep through the night until she was five months old which meant we were up at least two or three times a night. She also teethes badly, moaning and waking up often, which of course wakes me up without fail. When she is teething, she has a very hard time going back to sleep. So for the last twenty months I have felt very much at the mercy of her sleeping patterns.

At times I have decided to stay up late just to get things done. I could always count on four or five hours of quiet once Caroline went down. Invariably, whenever I had planned to get up early, Caroline also woke up early so I gave up on rising early because I was never certain of those hours being available to me.

But in staying up late, I have usually paid the price of not getting enough sleep and have ended up sick. This has only frustrated me more in my feeling like I was living in a no-win situation over which I had no real control.

And, honestly, it was a no-win situation for this time in my life. The only thing I could do was muddle through, do what I needed to do for Caroline, and remind myself constantly that it would not always be like this.

Rising Early

Living Simply Means Rising Early and Something Else

Going through this has only reinforced my conviction that one of the keys to living simply is rising early.

However, I will add this caveat.

One of the keys to living simply is rising early and also getting enough sleep.

There is nothing simple about rising early if you are trying to make it on only three or four hours of broken sleep. But for most people who want to rise early and struggle with it, the problem isn’t in the morning. The problem originates the night before with staying up too late. I know of which I speak because that is my struggle – forcing myself to stop at night and go to bed so I can get up early.

My ideal day would resemble Daniel Webster’s in a small way as described in The Yankee Way to Simplify Your Life:

At his beloved Massachusetts farm, Marshfield, rose at three or four in the morning. Fed his cattle and then went to his library, worked until nine. Breakfast at ten. Afterward liked to say, “I have finished my day’s work, written all my letters, and now I have nothing to do but enjoy myself.”

My preference is to rise at five, read my Bible and pray, work for a couple of hours while Caroline is still sleeping, breakfast when she gets up, use my morning very productively, and have lunch. I would prefer to eat our big meals at breakfast and lunch so that when the lunch dishes are cleaned up, the bulk of my day’s responsibilities are over.

Have I fully arrived at that yet? No, but I am encouraged that I finally have the opportunity to begin moving in that direction and have been making small steps in the direction of reclaiming my early rising pattern of living.

Some people certainly get up early more easily than others. But if you feel groggy first thing in the morning, that does not mean you are biologically incapable of getting up. In the days when most Americans farmed, everybody was a morning person. A dairy farmer would not roll over in bed at 4:00 a.m. and mutter to his wife, “I’m sorry, dear, but I can’t milk the cows right now. I’m not a morning person.” We all wage a continuing struggle against biology. Who is genetically suited to sitting at a desk all day or driving a cab for hours? A woman who’s thinking of taking up jogging doesn’t determine whether her oxygen uptake and slow-twitch musculature make her a jogging person. Yet we’re perfectly willing to categorize ourselves as biologically unfit for dawn just because we’re not one of those (extremely rare) people who bound out of bed, beam at their suffering spouses, and shout, “Good morning! What are your plans for the day?”

I am not necessarily naturally wired to be a morning person. I just know how much better life is when I get up early. I truly believe the day is won or lost by 10:00 a.m. There are intangibles available in the quiet of the early hours that aren’t available any other time of day.

Perhaps most important is the ability to be alone with my thoughts and start my day quietly before tackling the responsibility of a lively toddler. For me, it is a key component of living simply.

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Now I Know: Seasonal Affective Disorder


Before I start writing this post, I have to say that I feel like I am sitting down with dear friends I haven’t seen in a long time. It blesses me to blog again.

Shortly after I quit blogging in March we went through a time of protracted illness, teething, and general unwellness. I’ve been sick more in the past five or six months than probably the past ten years.

During one bout, I went to see my doctor. Although it was not what I went for, he very quickly and, I believe, accurately diagnosed me with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). SAD is a fancy name for winter depression. The diagnosis was a relief in many ways. I’ve long wondered if I did suffer from SAD, but never talked about it with anyone other than David and my parents. I don’t exhibit all of the symptoms and my case is not severe. But it is a large factor in my life.

Not only do I suffer from winter SAD, I also suffer from the summer version. As a result, February, March, July and August are very hard on me. Unless you suffer from SAD, it’s hard to understand the desperation one feels when in the grips of it. David and I are always the first people in our area to plant flowers in the spring, get the porch furniture out, etc. By late March I am truly desperate to see winter end.

Likewise with summer. July is usually pure torture for me. So much sun and heat. August is also hard, but I can see the end in sight and we usually get some small breaks in the heat which helps. But, again, it is hard to explain the stress and anxiety someone feels with this disorder.

As I said, it is a relief to have this diagnosis. My doctor and I are working together to determine what will work best for me in terms of dealing with this each year. Simply having a diagnosis and knowing I’m not just imagining things is actually helping me plan more carefully for this summer. A cooler summer with a little less sun would be a true Godsend.

Looking back, I can see time and time again how the SAD has impacted my life, including my blogging. I’ve said so many times to David – it’s like I’m a different person in the fall and spring. And to a certain degree it is true. Life is so much better during those stretches. Now I need to find ways to deal effectively with the harder stretches. I don’t want to say cope because I believe in Christ that I can do more than cope. I don’t necessarily believe that God will heal me of this, but I do believe He can and will strengthen me in new ways and give me new wisdom and insight as I seek Him.

Going through this experience has caused me to really sit back and refocus. When put in combination with the newborn/infant sleep deprivation and a little one who has horrible bouts of sleepless teething, the past few years have been exhausting. There have been other factors as well, but I have come through all of this with a much greater understanding of my physical limitations. With that understanding comes a greater acceptance.

So in accepting who God has made me to be and what He has allowed my life to be, I’ve also realized afresh my need to live a quiet simple life. For some people it may be a lifestyle choice. For me, it is a necessity. I simply cannot function well any other way and be spiritually, emotionally, and physically healthy. With this understanding comes a greater freedom.

And so the story will continue as I blog here about a quiet simple life.

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To Spank Or Not to Spank – That Is The Question


I must be crazy, but here is the question: Do you spank? I’ve been thinking a lot about the to spank or not to spank debate and would honestly like to hear your experiences and convictions.

Questions About Spanking

Here are some possible questions.

  • Do you spank? Why or why not?
  • Did you start spanking and change your mind? Decide at first not to spank and now do?
  • Do you believe “spare the rod and spoil the child” is a biblical directive?
  • When do you believe a child is old enough to obey and be spanked for disobedience?
  • If you don’t spank, what do you do?
  • And if you could only recommend one book related to discipline to a new parent, which book would you recommend?

Please focus on explaining your own view of spanking as opposed to trashing the opposing view. Thank you.

Should be an interesting discussion!

2018 Postscript

Update in 2018: What follows in the comments is a very interesting and respectful discussion that took place when my daughter was about fifteen months old.

In the end, we changed our mind and did not spank. You can read about our decision with our daughter in the post 6 Reasons Why We Changed Our Mind and Stopped Spanking. I do not endorse all of the comments below or all of the books recommended in the comments, but I include this post and the comments on my site because I think it contains valuable insights regarding why people choose to spank and choose not to spank.

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