Having a child has had a devastating impact on my spiritual life!
Before kids, I had a thriving spiritual life that had all the space in the world for study, prayer, rest, and reflection. There were plenty of hours in my day, and finding one to intentionally connect with God was not hard to find. And, even if there happened to be a hectic week, there was always the weekend!
I remember the beauty of a lazy Saturday morning. I would sleep until my body informed me that it was fully rested. I would put on sweats and a hat, take my wife by the hand as we walked with our dog to our local Starbucks. We would sit for over an hour in sporadic conversation as we read our books, bibles, devotionals and jotted our thoughts and prayers in our journals.
Those were good days!
When we found out were were pregnant with our first child, we were so excited to add this new life into our perfect little family. Our Saturday rhythms continued as our walks transformed into a waddle. And in no time at all, we simply added a stroller with our brand new son into this rhythm.
I didn’t notice it right away, but by the time our second kid entered the scene, I realized that something was off. With one little baby it was mostly doable to maintain most of our old rhythms. I could still get up early and spend time with God and those times were made precious with my little boy on my lap. But now my little boy was three and he wasn’t as pleased to stay quiet and still while I had his sister on my lap for my morning devotion time.
Over three years, my thriving devotional life had atrophied. I could not maintain the spiritual practices I had kept most of my adult life. It was impossible to get a head of my kids sleep patterns, and waking up at 5:00 am just to get some actual quiet time seemed like a punishment rather than something that would be fulfilling.
