A Spacious Life
A Spacious Life: Trading Hustle and Hurry for the Goodness of Limits
By: Ashley Hales
“If we say the good life is a happy one, and what makes a person happy is freedom, and we define freedom as unlimited autonomy, then all our unlimited autonomy should create happy, contented people. But our unlimited autonomy isn’t bringing happiness; it’s producing stasis, exhaustion, and hurry.”
“We are lonely, exhausted, and unsure what success or joy even looks like anymore.”
What do you picture when you think of a ‘spacious’ life?
I think of time. A spacious life looks like time.
The reality is, time is a constraint. We cannot make more of it. So how do we use the time that we do have? Is it filled with things that distract us, distance us, depress us?
Especially living in the Western World, life looks full. Full of work. Full of stuff. Full of achievement and striving. Full of standards and measurements. But in all of that fullness, we are left feeling empty. An emptiness that doesn’t feel spacious.
Ashley Hales understands this.
She has written A Spacious Life to invite us into a life that embraces limits.
This is a counter-cultural concept.
We are told the possibilities are endless. Our options are endless. Freedom is ultimate. But as the quote above states— the definition of freedom matters. And we are not all using the same one.
The ‘freedom’ offered by the world is actually a cage. Bondage. Paralysis.
Doing whatever we want whenever we want, having no constraints— it sounds nice.
But humans don’t flourish in a limitless world. Limits and boundaries are good; they are what produces security and flourishing.
Hales poses:
“What might happen if we tried embracing our limits as gifts for our flourishing rather than barriers to our success?”
She goes on to say:
“[After the fall] We began to believe the good life is a life without limits. More fruit, more knowledge, more suspicion, more work, and more on our to-do lists to try to earn for ourselves the things we had already been given: a name, a relationship, a life, a purpose.”
“Limits are built into the fabric of creation as part of God’s loving rule and care. Limits are not a result of sin, strictures to hold us down, but a part of God’s very good plan. Limits create for us a home; they create the condition for flourishing.”
It’s easy to get lost in the hustle and the hurry. When I sit back and ponder that, I think I do try to hurry through life. That doesn’t mean we should try to make every second last as long as possible. It just means we are conscious of our time and we are conscious of our limits.
Hales subtitles her chapters with invitations. Invitations to ways of building a spacious life.
She invites us to:
reconsider freedom and significance (freedom isn’t freedom from, but freedom for)
smallness (this is a recognition of our place in this world and our posture before the Limit-Giver)
set aside social media (our digital lives are not our real lives; the internet lures us in with the poisonous fruit of limitlessness in many ways)
wait (remembering our dependence on a sovereign and omniscient God)
rest (reorienting ourselves toward God instead of serving our work)
delight (this brings us back to our identity in Christ and delighting in the Lord, a dance of joy)
pay attention (are we seeing others? listening to them? how can we love our neighbors if we’re not paying attention to them?)
community (our faith is not just about our individual experience but the affect of the gathered body of Christ living and acting in community with one another)
remember the stuff of the kingdom (remembering God’s faithfulness; seeing things as markers of where we’ve been and how God is making all things new)
abide (means “to stay put, to remain, even to wait defiantly, to stand ready, to sojourn, and to watch” during the hard or dark times)
be surprised by hope (though we are limited, our Savior is limitless)
purpose (“Our purpose has less to do with what we do and more with who we are becoming in Christ.”)
In short, “The spacious place is God himself.”
All of the limits he has given us draws us to him in dependence, rest, hope, love, purpose, and truth.
“However God has made you, wherever God has placed you, with the limits that are yours to embrace, you get to be a part of his great mission: finding ways to connect the ordinary with the story of God. That is your job: to bear witness, from the budget-doing, to the carpooling, to working to end injustice, to your work and leisure. All of it is holy. All of it can be redeemed, multiplied, and given in love— from the cup of cold water given to the prayers prayed.”
If you’re now wishing for a ‘How-To’ book that tells you how many activities you can sign your kids up for, how many hours you can be on your phone, and how often to serve in your church, etc., you’re missing the point.
Your life will become spacious when it is oriented around God. When you stop finding your purpose in what you’re doing but in who you’re becoming in Christ. When you feel the freedom of limits.
The way we spend our time, minute by minute, hour by hour, is not prescriptive. But is your life characterized by rest, hope, attentiveness, joy, and community? If not, maybe it’s time to rethink how you view your life and make some changes in your schedule, your attitude, your family, and your heart.
This book can feel like abstract ideas when we desire concrete tasks. Even as I’m writing this review I’m feeling challenged to explain it. I don’t know if my life is spacious. I don’t know if it’s something we can ever really achieve long-term.
But what I love about this book is that even if I don’t get a list of steps, I am reminded of a Person. And I think what Hales is getting at is that if we lean into Him, we will find our lives become more free, more spacious, and more meaningful.
I think you should allow this book to challenge you as it did me. I think it’s one I’ll have to revisit frequently to check in and see if I’ve fallen back into the alluring cycle of hustle, hurry, and striving.
Further Reading:
She quoted a few books in her book that I really enjoyed and would recommend as well:
To Hell with the Hustle by Jefferson Bethke
Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortlund
On the Road with Saint Augustine by James K.A. Smith
Raising Worry-Free Girls by Sissy Goff (on my TBD)
I also recommend:
When Strivings Cease by Ruth Chou Simons
Humble Moms by Kristen Wetherell
More Quotes
“My biggest growth point in parenting is realizing that though it has narrowed my “free” time, attention, and availability, it has also helped me grow in empathy, to practice asking for forgiveness, and it reminds me I cannot meet everyone’s needs. This is a gift.”
“As God’s creatures made in his image, we are limited by our bodies, by our personalities, by our places, by our circles of relation, and by those for whom we are responsible. We are limited in our power and authority and by particular seasons of work, health, and faith. We are limited in our time, our attention, and our calling. Our God-given limits are the doorway into a more spacious life.”
“We must start by putting screens away. We use them to push off dissatisfaction with long lines, the emotional fallout from a fight, boredom, and loneliness. We’re being formed by screens instead of through embodied and habitual spiritual practices that move us toward Jesus.”
“When we wait we leave behind hurry; we slow down to see the beauty of being a creature, a part of God’ good created order, not the masters who are responsible for keeping it all spinning.”
“Waiting time isn’t wasted time… In the waiting we are becoming.”
“Waiting is trusting that our normal human limits aren’t mean as defects but as guardrails that guide us to God.”
“In pursuit of freedom, we instead serve our work. We are desperate for rest and so very fearful of it.”
“The order of the universe is always grace first: we receive first and then we work in response to the rest and care we’ve been given. We do not work for rest or in order to earn our rest. We start with rest.”
“The general human failing is to want what is right and important, but at the same time not to commit to the kind of life that will produce action we know to be right and the condition we want to enjoy.”— Dallas Willard
“We think guardrails restrict our freedom. When freedom is freedom from constraints, we live in a world we can’t control— yet we find ourselves caged by the things we chase.”
“Part of our work as followers of Jesus is resisting the limit to create our own purpose and instead receive the one God gives us, even if it doesn’t look like what we imagined. My children were not inconveniences to more important things; they named the boundaries of my body and the limits of that season of mothering little ones.”
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