Rhythm

Most people view the idea of rhythm as a way to move. Music has rhythm as you move your fingers over the piano keys, and the sound moves on waves to your ears in pleasing beats. If you have rhythm, you move your feet and your body together to the sound of what you hear. We listen to the rhythm of the crickets rubbing their legs together, as we unwind on the porch with a drink, ice cubes clinking against the glass. Rhythm tends to refer to the melody that lights us, helps us shake off everything, works out the stress, casts aside our cares, and gets us lost in the moment.

Rhythm is a tall, slinky woman with just enough curves to groove her way around a dance floor, or slide her limbs into the metronome cadence of folding towels and washing dishes, moving to the beat of a heart. She moves with an easy, flowing grace, and her movements ripple with life and joy, because fitting herself into her own day and life makes her happy. She has learned how to ease herself into a day, how to handle the tumbling emotions, how to recover from mistakes, how to let loose and still hang on to the essential pulse that makes her uniquely herself.

My definition of rhythm has reflected this sometimes, although I was never gifted in music, and I don’t have the confidence to dance in front of others (although I’ll break it down in my kitchen and my car, when the right songs come on). My best definition of rhythm reflects not so much my own original movement, inspired by stress or communal joy. Rather, my definition of rhythm is more aligning my steps with Jesus, and of reconnecting with him and with myself.

For example, the rhythm of my day starts early, when I get up before Joe or the kids. While the coffee is brewing, I head for the couch and check in with my favorite apps on my phone. Then I read my Bible and the Lectio 365 passages for the day. I pray and breathe and try to focus my mind and heart on Jesus.

Afterwards, I catch up  in my One Line a Day Journal, and I write a little in my everyday journal. On a typical busy morning, it’s never more than a page, and usually less, but I feel better for having written. Especially because I know what’s coming next: coffee. 

I settle back into the couch with a cup of steaming coffee and a granola bar, and I scroll Instagram; I do the first lesson of Duolingo for the day. Then I read. Right now, I have four nonfiction books going in pieces, and one novel, and while I love all the nonfiction books, they are how I make myself feel I deserve the novel.

This beginning rhythm of my day is not complicated or even interesting, but it took me a very long time to find a morning rhythm that fit the life I have instead of the life I think others would choose for me. I used to run out the door with a plain waffle in my hand, half cold from the toaster, to eat in giant bites while I drove. I used to throw multiple outfits on the bed and hate whatever the last thing was that I didn’t have time to change. I used to get up and wash my hair too late to truly style it and always be in a hurry.

Will this current way always be my rhythm? Probably not. My morning rhythm has evolved with the way I experience life. But starting the day with Jesus, writing, and books, reminds me of who I am, and the set order of doing things helps me keep my priorities and still rest in who I am.

But this rhythm does more than help me look inward. The Message version of the Bible has a verse in Matthew where Jesus says that we should walk with him and learn the unforced rhythms of grace, and that’s what I’m trying to do every morning. I’m praying and reaching for Jesus, trying to learn more about him, yielding my plans and my day to him, trying to walk with him in the rhythm of his footsteps, mimicking the cadence of his strolling. Most of this rhythm takes place on my couch, with just a quick walk into the kitchen for my coffee, but the movement here is in my heart and soul and mind, the resetting of myself to follow Jesus and be who he made me to be at the start of each new day. It’s a rhythm that brings both comfort and challenge, but always reminds me that I’m loved, and that God doesn’t give up on me. This rhythm leads me into the day more ready to give grace to myself and others, more ready to live my life walking toward the life Jesus wants me to live, trying and failing and trying again to move to the rhythm of his steps.