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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Just Say “No” to Cookie Cutter Christian Living


Amy of Amy’s Humble Musings recently posted “A bath for baby.” The post started with this:

The answer to, “How do you do it all?” is simple. Nobody does it all. If you bake your own bread and mill your own wheat, then you probably don’t polish your silverware. If you polish your silverware, you probably don’t parse Latin verbs with your kids. If you do Latin with your kids, you probably don’t have a garden. If you have a garden and do all of the above, you probably don’t take a shower. And I’ll bet your garden has weeds.

To this I say a hearty Amen! And why? Because it is true that no one can do it all. I’ve written before in Simplifying Choices that although I think canning is very cool, I don’t can. I also don’t sew. I’ve needed to do other things that were more important. Life is about trade-offs and we all make them everyday.

As I thought about Amy’s post, I reflected on how vastly different our lives are. We discovered last year that we have the exact same wedding anniversary (including the year). However, our lives have taken vastly different directions over the past nine years. Some differences are simple like she lives in Florida and I live in Michigan. Can you say different weather? But there are more profound differences. She and her husband have five children. We have one that is 1/4 of the way here as I write this! Her husband is a rocket scientist and travels a lot. My husband is a graphic designer and is home 24/7. She gardens and I read gardening catalogs. I work part-time for pay in our home-based business and (to my knowledge) Amy does not work for pay. I’m sure if I knew Amy more, I could share more differences. But I think you get my point that we have completely different lives.

However, we are both seeking to follow Christ. There is no doubt when I read her blog that she wants to be found a faithful servant of Christ. And I hope that those who read my blog would also discern the same thing about me. But that seeking has led to such different lives. That is why the “cookie cutter” mentality regarding Christian living drives me crazy! Within the parameters of Biblical Christian living, there is such a wide variety of God honoring lives.

I think in a desire to “map out” the perfect blueprint for Christian living, many people forget that God creates individuals with unique temperaments, spiritual gifts, and callings. He simply does not call everyone to live cookie cutter lives and, as David would argue, He seems to go out of His way to ensure that those who promote cookie cutter Christian living are not successful in the long term. (That is another post.)

Very early on in our marriage, we decided that although we did not feel we were ready to have children, we wanted to be open to whatever plan God might have for us. So we gave God every opportunity to give us children earlier than we would probably have chosen to have them. And if you asked us, we would have also told you that we wanted probably two or three. MAYBE four on a good day. But we have always thought that given our temperaments and personalities that we would do best with just a couple of children. However, we also wanted to be open to whatever God might have for us that we might not be able to fully comprehend at that point.

Well, if you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time you know that all our “openness” resulted in zilch, zero, nada children (until this year). God simply had a different plan for us. And just because we have one on the way, it doesn’t mean that there will be any more. This could be the only child we have. God may send another one. He may send two more. Is it possible that our intuition about what was best was right all along? I certainly do not regret the choice we made to be open to whatever God might do, but I do find it really interesting that given our ages it seems likely that our conviction that “less is more” and “later would be better than sooner” for us when it comes to children seems to be playing out in the way God is ordering our lives.

Going back to Amy’s quote, I also think that sometimes less is more because perhaps God DOES need us to do Latin and Greek with our child. Maybe this baby I am carrying is going to grow up and become a brilliant theologian who will light a fire like Jonathan Edwards. (Hey, a mom can dream, right?) Maybe our one child will need the focused attention of his mother and father in order to fulfill that calling that God has for him in the Kingdom. Could God raise up a great theologian in a house with ten children? Of course! But just because He can, doesn’t mean that He will. It could be His plan to raise up our child without siblings. And it could be that we will never know the why of His plan until heaven. But if God only gives us one child, there is a reason for it.

It could also be that God only has one child for us because He has other things He needs David and me to do in the Kingdom and raising more children would interfere with those other plans.

As was addressed at the beginning of this entry, NO ONE CAN DO IT ALL. Is raising godly children a powerful part of the Kingdom? Of course! Is blogging to encourage other Christians a powerful part of the Kingdom? It can be if it is what God has called me to do and I do it faithfully. Is blogging or writing articles to challenge/encourage others in their Christian walk as important as raising a child for Christ? YES, if it is what God has called me to do in His Kingdom.

I am sure there are Christians who would vehemently disagree with me and say that raising as many children as you can for Christ is the “highest calling” for a Christian. I disagree. The highest calling for a Christian is doing exactly what God calls YOU to do based on the unique life situation, spiritual gifts, and temperament He has blessed you with.

For some believers that will include raising many children. For some believers, it will mean not raising ANY children. For some believers it means spending an hour or more in prayer daily. For others it means caring for an elderly relative. For other believers is means being single when they would rather be married. For some believers it means being an ethical business person.

The highest calling is being faithful and doing our best with whatever God has given us to do as His Kingdom representatives.

So those who would seek to impose their “absolutely biblical Christian living blueprint” on all believers should be careful to make sure that they are not seeking to usurp the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of believers around them and excessively burdening their brothers and sisters in Christ with expectations that are not of God.

There are those who are zealous for the things of God to the point where they are unwilling to allow God to lead His children as He sees fit. It is almost as though they are convinced THEY are the Holy Spirit that people need. What a terrible day it will be for them when the discover that in their zeal to make sure everyone was doing everything “right”, they caused others to miss out on the unique blessings and callings God had for them in the Kingdom. How many gifts to the body of Christ have been lost because brothers and sisters in Christ labored under expectations and beliefs that God never intended them to carry?

May each of us go forward today in that delicate and critical balance of grace and truth.

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Quotes About Failure and Perseverance


A life making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
George Bernard Shaw

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything.
Samuel Johnson

By perseverance the snail reached the ark.
C. H. Spurgeon

One who fears failure limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again.
Henry Ford

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.
Elber Hubbard

I do not fear failure as much as a I fear that I might succeed at things that really do not matter.
Erwin Lutzer

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The Disappearance of the Busy Signal and the Plague of Accessibility


The past several days my husband and I have been doing a major purging and reorganizing of our home offices. While being ill for several months and having a large extended work project, we let some of the paperwork go a bit so we both have files to weed, piles to file, and the like. We also took some time and reorganized our offices based on a fresh look at our current priorities. (That’s a different post!) Overall, we are pleased with the results so far.

Today I’m going to post some items that I found while cleaning out my files. The first is a link to an article about The Subtle Disappearance of the Busy Signal from the Simple Living Network (now via Wayback Machine but inserted at the end of this post for posterity’s sake).

I’ve written before about the fact that one of the ways my husband and I have simplified is by not having a public cell phone. We do have a cell phone and we carry it with us at all times for emergencies. But it is never on unless one of us is gone somewhere without the other. We don’t give out the number and we don’t use it for business. It is also not our home phone number. We made the decision a long time ago that we don’t want to be that accessible.

I think there is a lot of wisdom in what Dr. Spina writes in this article. I agree that if we don’t purposefully make technology our slave, then we very quickly become a slave to it.

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(If the copyright owner would like this removed, I am happy to delete it. I only add it here because it reflects an important time in history.)

The Simple Living Network

This article appeared in Issue #30 July-September 2000.

The Subtle Disappearance Of The Busy Signal
By Anthony C Spina, Ph.D.
Copyright © 2000. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted here by permission.

You cannot throw a frog into a boiling pot of water without it jumping out instantaneously. Yet, if you were to place it in a cool pot and slowly raise the heat to the boiling point, the frog will unsuspectingly meet its fatal demise. Metaphorically speaking, we humans are also cooking in a technological cauldron.

Recently, I became aware of this in the observance of a strange phenomenon — the disappearance of the busy signal. There used to be a time when you phoned someone, already engaged in a conversation, you would hear a annoying, cyclic busy tone. This was a signal to the caller that the other person was unreachable or. . . busy. Nowadays, that signal or the notion of being unreachable has all but disappeared. At a time in society when we have a plethora of stress-related diseases and a desire for more free time to spend with children, family , and friends, we celebrate that we are a technology-equipped people that can be reached anytime, any where, any how. In fact, there is no exemption from other peoples’ demands or intrusions.

The current crop of information technologies has enabled a situation to exist that no longer renders us the freedom to be busy. The well-wired American has call/waiting or an answering machine which can’t escape someone’s message. If that doesn’t work, send him/her a fax. He/she can also receive e-mail. If none of these work, try calling his/her cell phone or beeper which are always strapped to his/her waist.

The busy signal used to be a message to others that said, I’m busy, not available at this time. We, as members of the high-tech society, are not allowed to be busy or un-accessible. It is uncommon not to be accessible most of the time. We have even adopted a appropriate phrase to describe this new state of constant engagement. We are available 24/7. So the reason there is no busy signal is that there is no condition that is non-busy. Everybody is busy all the time. Thus, in order to gain one’s attention from this state of perpetual involvement, there are several technologies at hand to effect the interruption. Cell phones and beeper accomplish this task the best, since they are so close to our person. They nudge us with their variety of ringing or vibrate us silly until we respond. Of course we could shut all these services off and get our lives back, but that has become almost impossible.

These technologies are so pervasive and entwined with daily existence in the workplace, that they have invaded our personal lives as well. The line of demarcation between work and personal lives has become blurred. The use of the information tools which have crept into the corporate workplace, increasing productivity, have found their way into the rest of our lives as well. In a recent study, a recruiting firm surveyed 5000 executives. And found that 82% of them worked while on vacation. No doubt, this was aided by the PC, email, voicemail, and cell phones.

All inventions have consequences, some intended and some not anticipated. The above mentioned technologies were supposed to make our lives easier, perhaps even give us more free time. There is widespread evidence to suggest that just the opposite has been realized. Books with titles such as Technostress, Time Wars, Information Anxiety, Data Smog, and Hyperculture echo that something has gone awry. New illnesses have surfaced with names that reflect the new maladies, for example, Information Fatigue Syndrome. Social movements such as Voluntary Simplicity seek out the solace and meaning that once was.

We must view technologies critically and ask what problems are they solving and which new ones have they created. We have to ask ourselves, when is a technology a help and when does it become an intrusion on peace of mind and into our personal lives. Paraphrasing the words of Jacques Ellul, a French philosopher, instead of technology being subservient to humanity, human beings have had to adapt to it and accept total change. Technology has mediated both society and nature and has become an environment.

Therefore, if you are among the growing numbers of wired Americans that are seeking to find the off button or a way to turn on the busy signal once again, then perhaps you are beginning to feel the heat. Hopefully, we will be smarter than the frog.

About The Author

Anthony C. Spina, Ph.D. has over 25 years of business, industry, and education experience in both internal and external consulting. He has broad professional experience in multiple disciplines, such as organizational effectiveness, research, market analysis, training, change management, information technology, and marketing. Dr. Spina is the founder and president of Knowledge Resources, an organization focused on facilitating transitioning processes for both individuals and organizations attempting to meet the challenges and demands of constantly changing, complex environments. Dr. Spina considers himself a social critic and management philosopher passionately concerned about the societal impact of technology on the way we live and work.

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Quotes From The PBS Series “Frontier House”


This past weekend my husband and I escaped from the heat by watching one of our favorite mini-series, Frontier House. I took the time write down several of my favorite quotes from the show so I could post them here.

If you’ve never watched it, I highly encourage you to do so. It’s fascinating on several different levels. And, in my opinion, the only one of the “house” reproduction-type shows worth watching.

Frontier House Quotes

These are quotes from during the training time and while they were on the actual project.

The thing that’s amazing is how… really a twenty-first century woman isn’t preoccupied with her covering up her body, but she is very preoccupied with putting on the makeup and putting on a mask to hide behind…
Gordon Clune

Four foot by about twelve or fifteen foot. It wouldn’t even fit the books in our house.
Mark Glenn, speaking of their Prairie Schooner wagon

Neighboring is a lost art in our society. We’re such a mobile culture, it’s rare to really get to know your neighbors or invest any great deal of energy into the art of neighboring.
Nate Brooks

I feel like I’m growing up a lot here because like before like if I was in Temecula or California or wherever I used to live like I wouldn’t do anything. I would just sit on my butt and watch TV and I was just a lazy person. But like now that I’m actually doing work I feel like a better person. Like you know I’m actually doing something to help other people.
Tracy Clune

Quotes From After Returning Home

The following quotes are reflections made by the people about two months after they returned to normal life.

In modern life there’s almost too much to choose from so I’m not really sure what to do… We could do anything. We could get a Masters in anything and recreate ourselves and become anything, make any amount of money, have any amount of kids. It’s overwhelming. You know, I’m not sure exactly which one to pick.
Kristen Brooks

You’re a man or a woman working hard in the twenty-first century and your kids don’t know what it is that you do. It’s seamless. They’re isolated from it. And that’s sad… I realized that more so than ever since I’ve been back. But in five months in 1883 I got more satisfaction, more accomplishment, more appreciation than I did my entire career beforehand.
Gordon Clune

I think the year 2001 is kind of boring. Every day I always say I’m bored and my parents get mad at me for it. But there’s nothing to do. There’s just nothing to do here. You get kind of tired of going to the mall every day. And you get kind of tired of doing nothing all day.
Tracy Clune

The twenty-first century you’re bored because there’s so many things. It’s like you have so much stuff that you’re just bored of all of it. In 1883 you have such little stuff that it was like special to you when your mom would buy you stuff and things just for you.
Logan Patton

It’s an unnatural life that the twenty-first century offers us. I think there’s just too much. There’s too much stimulus. The pace and the noise and the…florescent lighting… It’s a bit overwhelming… Your principles, your ideals, your morals… they’re all for sale. I think there’s a lot of problems that we’re just not admitting.
Mark Glenn

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