Q: This book reflects your own journey from “chaotic, busy living” to a more restful and rhythmic life. How bad was your own busyness addiction?
A: My wife, Pam, and I were married at 22, and within five years, I was running my life at unprecedented speeds, even for me. We lived in Shreveport, La., at the time, where I taught junior- and senior-level English literature at a prep school of several hundred kids called Evangel Christian Academy. That role alone would have meant a full plate for me, but I treated it as a mere side dish, adding to it a half-dozen other appetizing things. I was the boys’ varsity basketball coach. I was the girls’ varsity basketball coach. I was the boys’ JV basketball coach and the junior high boys’ basketball coach. I was the high school track and field coach, one

of the campus pastors for the school, and the volunteer youth pastor at the church associated with the school.

I was gone from 6 or 7 in the morning until 10 or 11 at night, teaching, conducting parent-teacher conferences, grading papers, tutoring students, leading practices,

driving buses, coaching games, washing uniforms in the locker room’s laundry facility, and more. During that season of life, the greatest compliment you could have paid me was, “Wow. You’re always so busy.” To me, busyness equaled movement, and movement was necessary for me to get ahead. I had exactly one day off a week, which was Saturday. Even then, I refused to rest.

Instead, I added a huge Saturday ministry commitment for my wife and I. Then, just as I was at my “busiest for God,” I took on one more commitment, and it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. My wife was done, D-O-N-E, with the chaotic life I’d created for us. Her bags were packed, and I had a decision to make.

I wanted to stay married more than I wanted to keep coaching, or teaching or volunteering every day of the week. So I begged Pam to give me 24 hours to prove I could change, then I proceeded to resign every position I held. Every single one.

I continued to work hard in the years that followed, but with a loving wife and then, eventually, two small children at home, I gladly kept my schedule in check. They were my magnetic north, my motivation to stay healthy and whole. I did, largely. I went to work in radio making stagnant stations profitable.

Q: You write about “bedhead days” your family implemented. How did they look?
A: Along the way, my family and I sort of institutionalized the practice of ditching impression management and working toward a quiet, gentle spirit instead. Once a week, we’d hole away for an entire day with nothing on the agenda and nobody to impress. My wife and my kids and I would wake when our bodies were done sleeping, instead of being jolted up by a blaring alarm. We’d ignore the hands on the clock and open our own hands to an unscheduled day. We’d eat

when we got hungry, move when we got antsy, rest when we got weary, and let the day come to us instead of maniacally chasing it down. Smartphones weren’t the rage yet, but desktop computers were, and we took pains to keep ours shut down, to experience life not virtually but firsthand, here, in real time. Mostly, we puttered. We ambled. Once a week, beautifully, we took a long, slow stroll through our day. “Hurry is the sure sign of an amateur,”ⁱ writes Ann Voskamp. If

she’s right—and I think she is—then once a week, we Boyds were total pros.

Bedhead days, we came to call them, these times of extricating ourselves from the clutches of busy and intentionally focusing on rest. We didn’t have any rules on our bedhead days—in fact, rules would have mucked everything up. If there were three guiding principles that emerged over time, they were be lazy, be together, and give grace.

Q: Your bedhead day sounds like a kind of Sabbath.
A: An early realization I came to in my bedhead-day observance was that I could be the most scheduled, efficient, dutiful person on the planet and yet if I missed the spirit of the Sabbath, I was missing the glory God intended for it. Jesus’ response about the Sabbath being made for us, instead of the other way around, was essentially this: Moses and the prophets may have set forth the schedule of Sabbath, but I—Jesus—have come to establish the spirit of it. And the spirit of it

is one of peace, not of prohibition.

In this world, we are promised a little chaos. For some of us, we’re promised a lot. “In this godless world you will continue to experience difficulties,” Jesus says in John 16:33, “but take heart! I have conquered the world.” And interestingly, the way Jesus conquers the world is not by acts of war, but by acts of pervasive peace. It is peace that brings us to Christ. It is peace that saves our souls. And it is peace that saves our weeks from peril, the peace of a day of rest. God knew we’d need peace once a week, like we need our own bed after being on the road for a week. He knew we’d need a soft place to land, a plumb line to re-center our souls. And so, the Sabbath—an invitation, a gift, a small taste on the tongue of peace.

Q: How has Jesus become a role model for peaceful living?
A: A string of scenes from Luke 5 is a good place to start. Here he is, right in the thick of ministry—calling disciples to follow him; enfolding sinners in community; healing people who are paralyzed and marginalized, broken and bruised and sad. He is teaching and preaching and answering questions about the kingdom until his voice is hoarse. He’s working hard and pushing hard and running fast and strong. In the midst of all this busyness, Jesus decides to take a

break. In fact, He takes many well-deserved breaks. “As often as possible,” Luke 5:16 says, “Jesus withdrew to out-of-the-way places for prayer.”

He withdraws in order to work through tragic news, such as when he learns that his friend John the Baptist has died.ⁱⁱ He withdraws to gain insight on important decisions, such as which men to call to follow Him.ⁱⁱⁱ He withdraws so He simply can pray.^iv He withdraws to enjoy time with his closest companions.^v He withdraws as a means of teaching His disciples the unparalleled value of rest.^vi He doesn’t wait until His mission is accomplished. He doesn’t wait until someone

sanctions a few days off for him. He doesn’t even wait for an official “Sabbath” to dawn. When He senses it’s time to withdraw, He just goes.

“Jesus obeyed a deeper rhythm,” writes Muller. Absolutely, He does just that: engage, engage, engage, withdraw…engage, engage, engage, withdraw.

Rhythmic—that’s how Jesus lived. Jesus’ times of withdrawal, of divine rest, weren’t patronizing scraps tossed God’s way; they were intentional and intimate moments of connection, during which nothing else caught Jesus’ eye. Jesus was in love with His Father. That one great love drove everything He did—and did not—do.For the entirety of Jesus’ public ministry here on earth, He was inundated with people every day. Yet not once do I see Him exasperated with the humanness of humankind. Yeah, he puts the Pharisees in their place a few times and tells the moneychangers at the temple to get a life, but I mean regular, everyday people—the people who so often ride my last good nerve. He never seems to be fed up with them. He never loses His cool. There is something instructive to me about this, something that looks a lot like being able to engage with people because adequate time has been taken first to engage wholeheartedly with God.

Q: So God wants us to live restful, peaceful lives? It sounds too good to be true.
A: God has given us everything we need in order to live a rhythmic, well-rested life. To ignore those divine resources is to sign up for slavery, again and again and again. This is true because rest is freedom; the unrested live unfree.

When we enter the rest of God, the peace of God, we declare, “I’m not going back.” I’m not going back to the patterns and practices and propensities that made my life chaotic and cold. I’m putting down the spinning plates, I’m climbing down from the ladder, I’m allowing the exhale to emerge. It’s entering the future, now.

What does this freedom look like for you, this foretaste of kingdom come? The smell of falling rain? The sound of wind in trees? A morning to sleep in? The ability to lose track of time while reading a book? Making homemade soup? Simply focusing on your breath for a few minutes? Meandering through a list of chores? Listening—really listening—to your spouse or your kids? Talking candidly with God? Leisure time that’s leisurely, for once?

Q: You lead a mega-church, so how do you keep your leadership and staff from busyness addiction?
A: New Life staffers know full well that I expect them to do their jobs in fewer than 50 hours a week and they are not to be away from their homes more than two or three nights a week for the purposes of doing ministry. If they choose to work more hours than what I mandate, then I pull them in for a little chat. One of two things clearly is wrong: They have too much to do and we need to revisit their task load, or they are not working smart. Either way, something has to change.

I know it. They know it. Their spouses know it. In fact, a call from a spouse is typically how I discover a particular staff member is working too many hours. New Life staff spouses know I expect them to call my cell if their husband or wife is violating my 50-hour rule. I’ve received a few of those phone calls over the years, and you’d better believe I take them to heart. I pull in the staff member, we have a conversation, and together we chart a new course.

During those conversations, I remind them that if they do wish to burn out, there are plenty of churches around this country that will welcome them with open arms, but New Life is not one of them. I help them remember they are part of a church community that is staunchly anti-burnout.

Q: How do you keep tabs on your own tendency toward busyness?
A: The truth about me is that despite brief periods of impressive wholeness and holiness as it relates to living a rhythmic life, I’m still and likely always will be a hyper-scheduled person, a sign-me-up slave to the clock. Left to my own less than stellar devices, I become irritable when there is no schedule to speak of, and even more irritable when there is a schedule to speak of and somebody has the gall to disrupt it. This doesn’t bode well for someone seeking to live the Jesus

pace; you don’t exactly see Him consulting His daily agenda on His smartphone every 60 seconds. At times, I think I’m getting better, that I’m learning to take some things in stride; but in the same way that an addict is always an addict, I recognize that as it relates to time, I’ll always be counting my sober days.

My problem stems from a little something Jesus said about what it means to be in relationship with him. Just this morning I was re-reading the piece about how He says the people who want to be His disciples will do some very strange things, such as denying themselves and taking up their crosses daily and following him.^vii I barely can clear the first bar: Deny myself? Seriously? Why would I want to do that? I like myself. I like what my self wants, what it needs…and what it so often wants and needs is control—or the illusion of control at least.

I have a seat at my desk. I exhale, and notice that the simple process of breathing puts a tiny bit of wind in my sails. I think about that verse in Romans, where the apostle Paul says that he does what he doesn’t want to do and doesn’t do what he knows he should. I don’t really want to be thinking about it, because I know it will not absolve but indict me. But think about it, I do. The command—the law—I’m butting up against here lately is the one about rest. The Sabbath wasn’t a suggestion; originally it was a law. Before that, it was a practice God Himself kept. Creation: six days. Rest: day seven. Clearly he didn’t need rest; he is God, after all.

No, he was modeling something here, something I am supposed to tune in to. Yet my mind spins out of control—literally—when something interrupts my plan. I’m living too close to the margins again, which means every interruption is a step closer to boundarylessness. I don’t think this is what God had in mind.

Q: What one idea would you like our readers to ponder?
A: If you and I had margin, if we weren’t chronically stressed out, if we weren’t forever dashing from here to there to there…I wonder what we’d do differently, what we’d attempt, who we’d become.

Three pieces of advice, if you’re interested in answering that question for yourself. First, unplug. Decide now that the rhythmic life is worth living, that peaceful describes the person you want to become. Next, be filled. Know what brings you alive and pursue it. Be intentional during unplugged times. Third, give your best away. Share your sense of peace with a world in chaos, letting the abundance of your life overflow.

This is how we quit dying inside. It’s how we come alive.
ⁱ Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), 66.
ⁱⁱ See Matthew 14:12-13.
ⁱⁱⁱ See Luke 6:12-13.
^iv See Luke 5:16.
^v See Matthew 26:36-46.
^vi See Mark 6:30-32.
^vii See Luke 9:23.

Addicted to Busy: Recovery for the Rushed Soul by Brady Boyd available from David C. Cook ($15.99).