Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

spiritual habits

How to Make Bible-Reading a Habit that Sticks

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Let me tell you straight up: I don’t read the Bible every day. My goal is to read a bit of the Bible every day, but I frequently fall short. This week, for instance, we’ve endured raucous thunderstorms at all hours of the night. You may not know this, but Nebraska thunderstorms don’t simply blow in and out in 20 minutes. Rather, they last hours…sometimes all night long. Which means I don’t sleep. Which means sometime around 3 or 4 a.m. I turn off my alarm. Which means I don’t get up much before my kids get up…which means I don’t get my morning Bible reading time in. It’s the truth: sometimes I choose sleep over Jesus.

When the Nebraska skies are calm, however, I do usually begin my day with at least a few minutes of Scripture reading. If I don’t sit down with my Bible first thing in the morning, it won’t happen at all. I know this because I’m a morning person, and that little bit of personal knowledge helps me maintain my spiritual habits.

The Four Tendencies* and Scripture Reading

I’m not going to write about how or why I read the Bible (I wrote about that here, if you’re interested). Instead, I want to talk about how understanding your Tendency (Upholder, Obliger, Questioner, or Rebel) and your distinctions (lark vs. owl; familiarity lover versus novelty lover; marathoner versus sprinter versus procrastinator) can help you stick to the spiritual habit of daily (or near-daily) Scripture reading.

Case in point: As I wrote about here, I’m an Upholder,which means I’m self-directed and usually work pretty diligently at achieving my goals on my own, once I identify them. Therefore, I read the Bible at my own pace, and it’s typically a solitary endeavor.

However, if you are an Obliger — which means you typically respond readily to outer expectations but struggle to meet inner expectations — the way I read the Bible won’t necessarily work well for you. Because Obligers are motivated by external accountability, a Bible study group that meets regularly might help you stay on task. Checking in with your group once a week to read and study Scripture together (or even enrolling in an online Bible study group like Women’s Bible Cafe or She Reads Truth) might offer you the accountability you need.

Likewise, a daily Bible reading plan might offer the Obliger the perfect mix of accountability and structure. Online resources like Bible Gateway offer a variety of plans. You simply subscribe to the plan that suits you best, and you’ll receive the appropriate verses in your email in-box each day.

My friend Deidra gets a daily Bible verse delivered to her phone, which she reads first thing in the morning (there are several free versions like this one for Android and this one for iphone available for download).

Or, if like me, you prefer to hold the Book in your hands, there are dozens of hardcover and paperback options like this one, in various translations available online and in bookstores.

Now, a word of advice for Questioners. If you’re a Questioner, you like to do your research and explore all your options before making a decision, BUT, you’re also prone to analysis paralysis. Knowing that, you might want to avoid the online Bible study plans (Too many options! Overwhelming!) and simply visit Barnes and Noble or your local independent bookstore, where you can page through a more limited selection of options. Or better yet, ask your best friend, your pastor or your women’s ministry leader for suggestions – that way you can “do your homework,” but avoid option overload.

Know Your Personality Distinctions to Read the Bible Better

As I mentioned earlier, I’m also a familiarity lover, which means once I find something that works for me, I rarely stray from it. I love the New Living Translation, and I prefer my small, paperback Bible, so I can snuggle into the couch and comfortably hold my coffee in one hand and the Bible in the other. I’ve been reading the Bible this way for about five or six years now.

You, however, might be a novelty lover, which means you’ll likely have to switch up your routine every now and then to stay committed. That might mean trying a new translation or interpretation, like The Message (which offers a contemporary paraphrase of Scripture); a Bible with accompanying devotions; or even something non-traditional, like The Book of Common Prayer or The Divine Hours (I read The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime all through Lent and found the change refreshing and inspiring).

Likewise, if you’re a Sprinter, a “Read the Bible in 90 Days” plan might appeal to you, whereas if you’re more of a Marathoner and prefer to divide up big projects into manageable bites, a “Read the Bible in 365 Days” plan is probably a better bet. And if you’re a Procrastinator, you might want to consider enrolling in an actual in-person Bible study group or an online group, so your peeps will help keep you on task.

Knowing whether you’re a lark or a night owl is important too. If I tried to read the Bible before bed, I’d be asleep in 14 seconds flat. But if you’re a night owl, you’re just hitting your stride when my head is hitting the pillow. Don’t force yourself to have “Morning Quiet Time” just because that’s the “Christiany” thing to do. Work with your personality, not against it.

Too often we are critical of ourselves for struggling to stick to a steady routine of Scripture reading, when in fact, it’s really just a matter of identifying our Tendency and personality distinctions and then finding the approach that fits best with who we are.

So tell me, do you have a favorite way to read the Bible?

Want to figure out which Tendency you are? Take this quiz. 

For more information about Gretchen Rubin’s personality Distinctions, read this. 

If you missed the first three posts in my Spiritual Habits series, you can catch up here:

How Our Habits Can Impact Our Spirituality {introduction}

The Spiritual Habit of Digging Dandelions

The Spiritual Habit of Staying in Place

*Based on Gretchen Rubin’s book Better Than Before: What I Learned about Making and Breaking Habits.

The Spiritual Habit of Staying in Place

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Back when we were dating, Brad entrusted me with his favorite plant, a lush fichus tree named Herman (in honor of Herman Melville, because of course) before he left town for a while.

I moved Herm into my house, positioned him in a sunny spot next to the sliding glass doors and then watched as he began to drop leaves at an alarming rate. I moved him to a south-facing window. More leaves littered the carpet. I watered Herman, fed him plant food, repositioned him yet again in a less chilly spot. Still he dropped leaves.

A week after Brad left, I called him to report that I’d killed Herman in a record-setting seven days flat.

Turns out, fichus trees require stability to thrive — a lesson we would be wise to apply to ourselves as well.

When they first join the order, Benedictine monks and nuns take a vow of stability. “The vow of stability affirms sameness,” says author and Episcopal priest Elizabeth Canham, “a willingness to attend to the present moment, to the reality of this place, these people, as God’s gift to me and the setting where I live out my discipleship.”

To “affirm sameness” is radically counter-cultural in our society. We are conditioned, even encouraged, to drop one thing and move onto the next. Marriage grown stale? Divorce. Bored on the job? Update the resume. Shoes scuffed? Buy a new pair. Acquaintance irritate us on Facebook? Unfriend. We abandon with ease, enticed by the fresh and new.

We are also expected to be as productive as possible, to hustle, push ourselves to the max, and multitask like a boss. The person who resists the rat race is an anomaly and is often seen as weak, an aberration. We wonder what happened to their ambition. A lot of us – dare I say most of us — equate stability with failure, or, at the very least, stagnance.

Yet it’s clear this relentless pursuit of the perfect place, the perfect situation, the perfect job, and the perfect person often leads to the Herman the Fichus phenomenon. We feel restless, uprooted and displaced. We wither rather than thrive. Like Herm the Fichus, we begin to lose pieces of ourselves. We begin fall apart.

Stability as a spiritual habit or discipline can be practiced on both the macro and micro level. For me, practicing stability in the big picture of my life means practicing contentment in my career, my parenting, my marriage, my home and my place.

This does not come naturally to my Type A, driven personality, especially when it comes to my work. I’ve long worn productivity, achievement and success as badges of honor, so seeking contentment and self-worth in the present status quo takes intentionality.

Likewise, on a micro level, practicing the habit of stability means making a concerted effort to stay in one place and do nothing, if only for a few minutes at a time.

Last November I began the practice of sitting on a park bench for five minutes during my daily afternoon dog walks, and I’ve kept up the routine pretty regularly. Josie automatically veers off the path and toward our bench now and patiently waits while I listen to the birds and gaze at the trees. It’s become a habit for both of us, and it’s good for me to simply stay in one place, to let my thoughts settle into a low simmer.

As it turned out, much the same was true for Herm the Fichus: he simply needed to stay in one place. I finally stopped moving him around the house and let him be, convinced he was dead but too guilty to dump him into the trash bin. A few weeks passed, and that’s when I began to notice tiny buds sprouting on bare branches. Leaf by delicate leaf, Herm began to thrive, unfurling and blossoming into a lush, verdant canopy. Left in one spot, he grew strong and whole once again.

A Word about Personality and Habits

In addition to identifying the Four Tendencies, Gretchen Rubin (author of Better Than Before) also identifies several personality aspects (she calls them distinctions) and how they relate to habit formation. For example, she asks whether the reader is a familiarity lover or a novelty lover, a lark or a night owl, an underbuyer or an overbuyer, a marathoner, sprinter or procrastinator, etc.. Identifying which end of the spectrum you lean toward can help you discern which spiritual habits might fit best for you.

Case in point: I am a familiarity lover. I’ve eaten the exact same snack at the exact same time pretty much every day for the last four years. New experiences make me uncomfortable. I’m not adventurous, and my favorite place in the world is my own backyard. So, given what I know about myself, it makes sense that I might gravitate toward the spiritual habit of stability – I’m inclined toward stability anyway. Sitting on the same bench at the same place on my walking route at the same time every day is not a huge stretch for me. It was relatively easy to integrate that new spiritual habit into my everyday routine.

BUT, if you’re a novelty lover — if you gravitate toward new experiences — the thought of sitting on the same bench in the same park at the same time every day might sound like your idea of a ticket straight to crazy town. For novelty lovers, the spiritual habit of stability might be more challenging. Not impossible, but probably more challenging.

Read more about Rubin’s personality distinctions here.

If you missed the first two posts in my Spiritual Habits series you can catch up here:

How Our Habits Can Impact Our Spirituality {introduction}

The Spiritual Discipline of Digging Dandelions

Next week: The Spiritual Habit of Scripture Reading

 

The Spiritual Habit of Digging Dandelions

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Last year, when I heard the honey bee population was suffering from a mysterious insect-world apocalypse, I decided to offer up my lawn for the cause. I would not drown my dandelions in Round Up nor pry them from the earth with a slim forked garden tool. Instead, I vowed, I would let them flourish and propagate in order to provide nectar for the struggling bees. It would be my sacrifice, my contribution to Earth.

This year, come April, I took one look at the blur of yellow blanketing nearly every inch of my front yard and decided bees be damned. Pulling on my gardening gloves, I grabbed the dandelion plucker from the garage and proceeded to rid my lawn of the noxious weed, one bright bloom at a time.

Three days later my front yard was free of dandelions. I also had a raging case of elbow tendonitis (which would later require a cortisone injection that felt a lot like giving birth out of my elbow, but that’s another story).

While I might not recommend my particular OCD approach to dandelion digging (It’s the Upholder in me. As my husband said, “Do you not understand the concept of moderation?” No, in fact, I do not understand the concept of moderation), I do recommend the habit (or discipline, or practice, or whatever you want to call it) of dandelion digging in general, which comes down to this:

Monotonous physical repetition frees the mind and soul to open, breathe, and rest. 

I thought about a lot out there on my knees, scooting from bloom to bloom, pushing the metal prong deep into the moist dirt, wrenching the gnarled, stubborn roots free and tossing them with satisfaction into the metal bin beside me.

I let my mind wander as I listened to the staccato call of the chickadee, the trill of the cardinal, the scamper of the squirrels up the river birch bark. I let my body relax into a rhythm, the cool grass bleeding circles of damp on the knees of my jeans, the plunge and push and pull of my fingernails in the dirt.

Digging dandelions isn’t “spiritual” in the traditional sense. I didn’t pray or ruminate on Bible verses out there on the front lawn. I didn’t do anything, actually (besides dig dandelions). I simply let thoughts come, and then I let them go. I noticed and focused on my environment – the pungent smell of early spring dirt, the fresh scent of new growth high up in the pine boughs, the rise and fall of voices up the street, two neighbors chatting in the morning sun. I let myself be immersed in the sights and sounds and smells of creation, which to me often feels like the best kind of prayer anyway.

It doesn’t need to be dandelion weeding specifically, by the way. Any monotonous, repetitious chore is conducive to this kind of spiritual discipline: folding laundry, washing dishes, raking, Windexing windows, painting the baseboards in your bathroom. The key is to move your body repeatedly and automatically and to let your thoughts come and go.

Try making a habit out of doing your most monotonous chores mindfully. Eventually, you’ll find, your to-do list will recede into the background. You’ll breathe more deeply. And your spirit will feel more at ease.

A Word about the Four Tendencies: 
Remember last week when I described Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies? You’ll see, as we dig into these non-traditional spiritual habits over the next few weeks, that some will be more conducive to particular Tendencies than others.

The spiritual habit of digging dandelions (or doing monotonous chores mindfully), for example, will probably work well for an Upholder (because we respond well to both inner — “Practicing mindfulness will be good for me” —  and outer  — “My neighbors will appreciate a dandelion-free lawn” — expectations) and the Obliger (who feels accountable to others…like the neighbors). If the Questioner is sold on the rationale (“Because I believe doing a repetitive, monotonous chore is a good way to practice mindfulness, which I want to learn”), then digging dandelions (or something similar) might be a good fit. As for the Rebel…well, only the Rebel can decide what will work for him or her!

Tune in next Tuesday for another Spiritual Habits post.

How Our Habits Can Impact Our Spirituality

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I’ve been reading a lot about habits lately. Most of what I’ve been reading (books like Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives, by Gretchen Rubin, and The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, by Charles Duhigg) has focused on habits as they relate to our physical lives: more exercise, more sleep, healthier eating, less alcohol, less fingernail gnawing, and the like. But it struck me, as I read, that learning how to form and keep good habits can be applied to our spiritual lives as well. After all, what are spiritual disciplines if not habits – routines and practices we engage in regularly to keep our spiritual lives alive and well?

I’m pretty good at forming and keeping good habits. I’ve been running three or four miles three or four times a week since ninth grade. I go to bed early and aim to get at least seven hours of sleep each night. I eat a side salad with my dinner most nights of the week.

I’ve always assumed my ability to form and keep good habits is largely a result of my Triple Type A rule-follower personality, and as it turns out, I am right. I’m good at habits because, according to Gretchen Rubin, I am an Upholder, which means I “respond readily to both outer and inner expectations.” I both make and follow rules for myself, and I readily follow the rules others make for me. I’m kind of a robot that way.

Upholders are typically self-directed, have little trouble keeping commitments and resolutions, and easily meet deadlines (in fact, according to Rubin, Upholders often turn in assignments early. Hello – I turned in the Luther manuscript two weeks before my deadline). The downside to the Upholder Tendency is that we often struggle when rules aren’t clear, we feel compelled to meet expectations, even when the expectations are pointless (for example, whenever I get the new issue of Better Homes and Gardens in the mail, I feel driven to read it cover to cover right that very second, like I have a pleasure-reading deadline breathing down my neck), and we tend toward gold-star seeking, hoop jumping, and mindless rule following.

Rubin identifies three additional Tendencies in Better Than Before. Here’s a brief summary:

The Questioner — Questions all expectations and will meet an expectation only if it’s justified. Questioners are motivated by reason, logic, and fairness and typically like to decide for themselves whether a course of action is a good idea. They also traditionally like to research and acquire plenty of information before making a decision. The down side to Questioners is that they can suffer from “analysis paralysis,” and they tend to reject expert opinions in favor of their own conclusions (which is not always a bad thing). [By the way, my husband is a Questioner – he comes from a family of lawyers. A Questioner and an Upholder in marriage…this is why we almost broke the Myers-Briggs personality test when we took it as part of pre-marital counseling].

The Obliger — Responds readily to outer expectations but struggles to meet inner expectations. The Obliger is motivated by external accountability. They do well when they know there will be consequences for their decisions. Because they go to great lengths to meet their responsibilities, Obligers typically make great colleagues, employees, and friends. However, they struggle with self-motivation and, because they have difficulty telling people no, they are susceptible to burnout.

The Rebel — Resists all expectations, out and inner alike. Rebels need to work toward goals in their own way. They wake up thinking, “What do I want to do today?” rather than “What should I do?” or “What do I have to do?” As Rubin points out, “At times, the Rebel resistance to authority is enormously valuable to society.” On the other hand, Rebels often frustrate friends, colleagues, and family members because they refuse to be told, or even asked, to do anything. [I strongly suspect my youngest child is a Rebel. Help me, Jesus.]

Now. There’s a reason I am telling you all this (besides the fact that it’s fun to figure out which category fits us best). Over the next few weeks I’m going to be writing about Six Spiritual Habits. For the record, I’ve never liked the pairing of “discipline” and “spirituality.” Even for a Triple Type A rule-follower, “discipline” feels too punitive to me. But “spiritual practices” or even “spiritual habits”…that feels right. During this series, I’ll come back to Rubin’s Four Tendencies from time to time as I talk about how the six spiritual habits work for me and how they might work best for you.

Let me tell you in advance: my spiritual habits aren’t exactly traditional. You won’t find me writing about Scripture memorization or contemplative prayer, at least in the ways they are traditionally practiced. But I’m hoping that by inviting you into some of my non-traditional spiritual practices, you might be encouraged to seek new and different ways to connect with God as well, and perhaps even integrate some of these practices into your everyday or weekly routines.

See you next Tuesday for the first Spiritual Habits post.

So tell me: Which Tendency are you – Upholder, Questioner, Obliger, or Rebel? You can learn more about the four Tendencies at Gretchen Rubin’s website  and take her Habits Quiz  to figure out which Tendency fits you best.