There has been much conversation in the homemaking world lately about healing our nervous systems. Modern women tend to function in a flight-fight-freeze state every day, all day long, trying to get it all done, do it all, have it all, and be all that we’re supposed to be. It is also known as living on adrenaline, stress addiction, and chronic franticness.

Living this way has led many women into chronic health issues and anxiety-bound nervous systems. I personally think that this lifestyle, combined with starvation dieting in an attempt to stay fashionably thin, led to both of these issues for me. I’ve spent more than the last decade rebuilding my body, heart, and mind, digging through layers and layers of physical and mental issues, and mental issues that caused physical issues, and physical issues that caused mental issues. A couple of the things I’ve found to be 100% necessary for staying out of the anxiety hamster wheel are slow mornings and slow evenings. They bookend my day with delight so that no matter what the day holds, I can set myself up to start well and know that when the day ends, I have a happy ending. This is a huge source of Merriness and Cheer to go with my Durability and Strength.

The soft morning keeps me from ratcheting up my anxiety. I don’t hit the ground running. I ease into the day like the sun rising.

The soft evening keeps me from going and going and going. It signals to my body and my mind that even if I ask a lot of it during the day, there will be a soft landing at the end.

I diligently guard these times, setting my available hours for 10 am-5:30 pm. It’s not that I never do anything before or after those times; it’s that I don’t set appointments, make phone calls, or start on the day’s projects before those times. Does this mean I’m being lazy? Anything but. Let me show you what a calm, normal, summer day looks like for me:

4-6 am: Coffee and writing.
6-6:30: Set up what my husband will need for the morning, supplements, and chicken chores, feed the fish.
6:30-7ish: Bible/theological/scholarly/military reading and memorization all outside.
7-7:30: Take a walk.
7:30-8:30: yard work: watering, weeding, grounding.
‍8:30-10: Open the day: breakfast, open house (weather permitting or not permitting), make the bed, dishes, to-do lists, tidy, spot clean, diffusers, laundry, peck away at a project like re-organizing my craft boxes, shower, dress.
10-5: All the other things: errands, phone calls, social things, cleaning, baking, budget, podcasts, Dr. visits, everything. I take a 30-minute break to read something educational (outside), eat lunch, and do a strength workout in here too.
4:30-5:30: Close the day: dishes, food prep, bedtime prep, notes for tomorrow, treat time for chickens, feed the fish.
5:30-8:30: Dinner, talks with my husband, more educational reading (if I have the brain space), fun reading, lock up behind the chickens when the sun goes down, bed and final wind-down.
9:30: Lights out.

These are my favorite days.

‍Now for any of you hyperventilating about how strict this might look, please take a breath. Much of this is flexible, and I don’t actually look at the clock that much unless I have an appointment where I need to be conscious of the time. I just know how long it will take me to do most of these things if I’m not being frantic, if I’m just doing the homemaker dance. This also changes with the seasons. At the height of summer, my chickens are ready to get up and out by 6:10. In the winter, that is more like 7:30. Same for the evenings – in the summer I close the chickens in at 8:50, and in the winter it’s 5ish. I adjust the morning and evening schedules with the sun. This is also not completely cemented in. Sometimes I have a doctor appointment at 8:30. Sometimes I go watch Harry Potter with my nieces at 8 in the morning. Sometimes we go out in the evenings to spend time with friends and family. But I do try to hold the line on the schedule most days because if I don’t, I will drive myself into ill health, which isn’t good stewardship. For me, this is good stewardship. If I don’t hold the line, I won’t be any help to anyone.

‍Side Note: I’ve been blessed to see my “working hours” expand. When my husband first came home from the hospital, I was physically and mentally done by 3:30. It was all I could do to make it until that time. As things resettled and I adjusted, it was 4, then 4:30, and now it is 5:30 without feeling completely done most days. I’m so thankful for those extra hours at the end of the day to keep going. But please note, I didn’t push. I listened to my body. I also had some good friends who kept encouraging me not to overdo it during the settling phase and not to berate myself for my inability to go longer.

Side Note 2: I can’t recommend highly enough living by the sun. I still get up at 4 am every day, but I shuffle inside and outside things with the seasonal light. Living by the sun and getting outside with the rising and falling of the sun is a great way to calm your nervous system and appreciate creation. You will find it far gentler than alarm clocks and time changes.

‍Rejecting the need to go-go-go and embracing calming mornings and evenings is hard to do. Our culture sees it as lazy, wasteful, and impossible. We pile on the false guilt as soon as we set a start time and a cut-off time for going out of the home or things coming into the home. Try telling anyone that you “end” your day at 5:30. Watch their facial expression; it’s usually something along the lines of “well, that must be nice”, if it’s not straight up “you are so lazy.” Ask me how I know. We have glorified activity and chronic franticness to the point that we view it as taboo, sinful, and selfish to not drive our bodies, homes, and families to the breaking point. And we women are the worst. We pile on that false guilt just with our body language. We respond with ugly envy or judgment to women who manage their lives differently than we do, and heaven forbid, better than we do. (I’m not saying I’m better; I’m saying we get ugly, especially when we feel convicted.) We passive-aggressively talk about how busy we are, all that we’ve accomplished in a day, all the things we’ve committed to, with a side of martyr complex about all that we have to do, all the while communicating that the woman calmly taking on her day, which she didn’t overpack, is useless and lazy and wasteful. Pushing back against this pressure, preaching to ourselves that it is not wrong to not be stressed and frantic, is challenging, but it is worth it.

‍It can be tough to enforce these bookends because life doesn’t always go smoothly. Each season of life, each day has its own troubles and struggles. It can seem easier to just throw up our hands and accept the stress and franticness of our day and age, especially in seasons of high need – teenagers with jobs who can’t drive yet, summertime activities, community commitments, health crises, caretaking, etc. It is difficult to believe that a slow start and slow finish are worthy of protecting when the to-do list is so long. But if you can live this way, even a little bit, it can calm your nerves. No matter what you face throughout the day, you will have some gentleness to enjoy, to strengthen your heart and mind and body. Isn’t it a funny thing that gentleness is what strengthens women? It seems a bit counterintuitive, but most women find courage, strength, and endurance in gentleness. Being gentle with those around us, being treated gently, and treating ourselves gently doesn’t generally grow laziness in a woman; it grows fruitfulness. We know this is true about beauty. Beauty inspires the woman towards more beauty. But do we think of gentleness as our armor, our weapon, our shield wall? Do we think of it as the ground we grow in and the fruit and flowers we’re producing? Something to ruminate on.

‍You high-energy, high-achieving women can still do this. Your “hours of operation” may be more like 5am-9pm. Your windows of softness may be shorter in the morning or go later into the night, but you should still have those pockets where you move slowly, go gently, say “not yet” and “we’re done” to your mind, soul, and body. You should find cut-off points where you tuck away the lists, projects, and chores, and just enjoy your people, your home, your cup of coffee, your glass of wine, and breathe, with no need to mark anything off any lists. Wind-ups and wind-downs are important for our health. For those of you who don’t function well with structure, just focus on slow starts and slow finishes no matter what the timeframe actually is. Slow start. Slow finish.

‍And what about the delight? If we want these gentle, slow pockets to be deeply helpful, then we need to fill them with things we enjoy. As you can see, mine is filled with books, outside time, and chickens. I love to read and am always reading 10-12 books at a time. I love being outside. I love trees, grass, wind, flowers, clouds, birds, wildlife, and some bugs. I am often happiest and calmest outside. I love animals, and the animals I’m currently blessed with are chickens (and three goldfish), so I spend time with them. I love stories, so I read or watch them daily. I love exercising my mind (way more than exercising my body), so I read things just outside of my current reading level. Starting and ending the day with the things the Lord has created me to delight in, with things I find fun, helps my attitude. It keeps me from wading in the woe-is-me swamp. It keeps me from indulging in a doldrums perspective. So many wonderful things can fill these moments: puzzles, arts and crafts, conversation, food, daydreaming, naps, flower arranging, cookie decorating, cloud watching, music, and more. These pockets aren’t time for chores, but for enjoying what the chores have provided for us. We can never be good homemakers, growing HearthKeepers, if we aren’t just absolutely tickled about some common, ordinary magic every day, from a budding flower to a visiting bird to the antics of our children to the smiles of our husbands to silly text messages. Slow starts and slow finishes give us the gentleness we need to see and be engaged in these delights.

2026 has been stressful and has included challenging and unpleasant things. Due to my husband’s health problems, maintaining morning and evening slowness has been even more necessary. It has helped me stay calm. It has helped me sleep. It has helped me not destroy my health while trying to help him heal his. It has helped me retain some joy at my baseline even when I’ve cried, shut down emotionally, or had nightmares. My roots are in my loving, good, heavenly Father. From that root, I’m using the tools He’s blessed me with to stay Merry, Durable, Cheering, and Strong. This is one of the tools I’ve been most grateful for in this season.

Delight and Healing Found in Soft Mornings and Evenings

Am I A Failure?