Jeff:
We’ve answered this question a lot in little different areas, but even if we have answered it slightly, and we want to always answer this one again, because I think we want to keep it at the forefront. We want people to hear it. We want to be wrestling through this question and we haven’t answered it this specifically in this exact manner. And I believe it’s Brigetta, Bridgetta, Bridget, something like that. Let us know, by the way, how you pronounce that. But you asked us on Facebook, “Hi there. My husband and I have started your family rhythms course, that’s Seven Day Family for those wondering, and I had a question. Do you have an example of a weekly rhythms that is based off of someone who may have a corporate 9:00 to 5:00 job?

Now, I have less experience with this, so Jeremy, I want you to answer this one. But just let it be said too, I think a lot of times people assume that we just are all self-employed and stay at home and all these things. And everyone’s staying from home. But in reality, you’ve been in a corporate setting for a long time. You owned a business. You were CEO of that business. You showed up every single day. And so yeah, how did you guys navigate this issue and how would you kind of answer this question?

Jeremy:
Yeah, I think when you create the rhythm, so if you think about like mapping it out on a spreadsheet or on a big piece of paper where you have seven columns, one for each of the days, it’s really good to just block out the times that you … where you don’t really have access to. And so you’re saying, what do you do when you don’t have access to the 9:00 to 5:00, Monday through Friday blocks.

And so what we would do in that case is we literally would block those out. Okay, those are a different color on the rhythm. And then what you … You know what you’re stewarding in the rhythm for the sake of the family, which is all day Saturday, all day Sunday, all your evenings and all your mornings. That’s a lot of time to steward for a family team.

And what we actually added back into that, sometimes we would add back in a couple of lunches during the day, because I was able to take a couple of lunches off and be able to either have a conversation on the phone with April or bring one of my kids to work or something like that. So if there’s a way that something can invade those big blocks that are off limits, that’s great. But assuming, let’s say, that’s not even a possibility, then what we’ve started to do is really think through the evenings, the mornings, all day Saturday, and all day Sunday. And so for us, Saturday was our Shabbat, our rest day. Sunday was like a family kind of meetings/work day, where I also did some work for business stuff.

Then what we did is every evening became extremely precious. So the way we kind of worked this out is that four of those evenings were designated as family-only time. So there would never be two days in a row that I was doing something outside the home in the evening. Especially because of that 9:00 to 5:00 block, I really wanted to protect those evenings. And so for us, Monday night was a family night where we did our Bible study, Tuesday night was a ministry night, and also we kind of call it a scatter night where if the kids had a sport or something they were into or a instrument or whatever, we could plan those things and hobbies on Tuesday night. But I always did a teaching time on Tuesday night. So that was a night we allowed things to happen.

Then Wednesday night was our media night for the family. We still do that. That’s a very protected night. We have a really special meal and a kind of hang out thing we do. Thursday night was more of … That was kind of a youth group, another night where we did ministry stuff. And then Friday and Saturday were also family nights, and then Sunday night’s when we do church. So that’s how our rhythm was designed, but it’s really important never to feel like because you have a 9:00 to 5:00 job, you can’t live rhythmically. A 9:00 to 5:00 job gives you a lots of opportunity to live rhythmically. We also take advantage sometimes of the mornings. April does that a lot more. My mornings are a little bit more difficult to use for that stuff, but that’s kind of how we did it. And I would encourage you guys, live rhythmically, think about what works for your family, and don’t let the fact that you have a irregular kind of corporate job get in the way of living a rhythmic life.