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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Do You Have An Emergency Plan?


Do you have a written emergency plan? Do you know what you will do if faced with an hour to get out of your house?

Wait a minute, Sallie! I thought this was supposed to be a quiet place.

Yes, it is. There is nothing as quiet and simple as knowing you are prepared for an emergency.

Watching the devastation in Iowa has reminded me that I need to update our written evacuation plan. Yes, we have a written plan. I’ve written down what we need to get in each room of the house if we are ever forced with an evacuation. The down side is that I haven’t updated it since Caroline was born and it is completely out of date. I will be updating it this weekend.

Think it won’t happen where you live? Maybe not a flood. Chemical accident from a train derailment? Live anywhere near the New Madrid Fault? Ever read about the past New Madrid earthquakes that shook a significant part of the US and is expected to happen again? Tornadoes? Hurricanes?

No, we can’t plan for every eventuality. But we can plan to the best of our ability. When there is a crisis and you have stored water, you can be a blessing to others instead of another person in need. Think you won’t be without water? We had a water main break here last year and we were without water for three days and on a boil water advisory for a few more. That can happen almost anywhere.

I can guarantee you that probably 99% of the Iowans who are losing everything in the floods never thought it would happen to them. From what I have read, most of them don’t even have flood insurance because it was such an improbability.

The time to think about what you need to take with you is not when you are in a daze and told you have an hour to get out. The stress is too much at that point. You need a list that you can go through. Give yourself a plan with five minutes in each room and know what you will grab. Know what will go in each suitcase or bag or tote. Know what will fit in the car. Have a plan. Think about it. Write it down. Make sure everyone in the house understands the plan and could implement it if you weren’t there for some reason.

Make a plan.

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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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Grocery Prices!!!


I know this is something a lot of people have been talking about, but I still have to write about it!

Pampers just went up 10% this past week ($2/box). Half and half went up 10%. Those are the two I can think of right off the top of my head. When I get done writing the check at the store and look at what I get for my money I can hardly believe it any longer. I do shop the loss leaders, we don’t buy a lot of junk, etc.

On the other hand, we do eat well. Many of the things that are good for you cost money. That is one thing I am always suspicious of when I see people say they can feed a family of four for $50 a week or something. How much fresh produce are they eating? How much fish? How much organic? How many things like nuts and such that are really good for you but are definitely not cheap? I know we could eat a lot cheaper, but at the expense of good health? I would rather sacrifice elsewhere else in our budgeting than eat poorly just to save a few bucks at the store.

At the same time, everything I’m reading says that grocery prices are going to continue to go up, up, up this year. If you haven’t started keeping a pantry, now would be a really good time.

Think about it. If I had bought five boxes of diapers two weeks ago, I would have reaped a $10 return on my investment almost immediately. Where can you get a 10% return on any investment nowadays? If you factor that out over hundreds of items you will buy over the next ten months… The savings could be substantial.

Something to think about.

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