We Were Made for Rhythm

Sunday is the slowest rhythm of my whole week.

Coffee with Rob in the morning. No rushing anywhere. Late church at 12:30, which still feels like a small luxury after years of early service. By the time we walk in, half the week’s noise has already quieted down in me.

But my actual rhythm starts even earlier than Sunday, every single day, with my morning reflection, my scripture, my prayer time. And here is what I have learned about myself after doing this for years. If I skip it and start my day without it, I feel the missing of it. It shows up in my body. It shows up in my mood. It shows up in how I treat the people in front of me. That is not a coincidence. That is rhythm asking to be honored.

This month inside NOURISH, we have been talking about consistency, simple, faithful health practices repeated over time. Today I want to go a little deeper with you. Let’s actually talk about rhythm. Not just in our health, but in our days, our families, our existence as humans.

Did We Ever Stop and Ask Why?

Have you ever actually stopped to ask why day turns into night?

It feels too obvious to question. The sun rises, the sun sets, and we have just always lived inside that pattern. But our bodies were never made to function for 24 hours straight. We were not built to run nonstop, no matter how many of us have tried.

While we sleep, our brains are busy restoring, repairing, and reenergizing. Memories get sorted and stored. Toxins clear out. Hormones regulate. None of that happens if we never stop. Night was not an inconvenience tacked onto the day. Rest was woven into our design from the beginning. Work, then rest, then begin again. That is the first rhythm any of us ever lived inside.

Rhythm in Our Bodies

Once we start looking, rhythm is everywhere inside us, and science actually has names for it.

There is the rhythm we just talked about, the 24-hour cycle scientists call circadian. Cortisol runs on this clock, rising through the morning and dropping by evening. Melatonin runs in the opposite direction, building as it gets dark.

Then there are faster rhythms that cycle several times within a single day, called ultradian. Cortisol does not just rise once and fall once; it pulses every couple of hours in little bursts all day long. Our sleep itself cycles through stages roughly every 90 minutes all night, which is part of why a full night actually matters, not just any seven hours. Even digestion and blood pressure move in these shorter rhythms.

And there are longer rhythms too, the ones stretching beyond a single day, called infradian. Many of us live inside a monthly hormonal rhythm, one that shapes our energy and our mood across weeks, not just hours.

None of these rhythms works alone. They layer on top of each other, the fast ones nested inside the slower ones, all depending on each other to stay in time. Consistency was never asking our bodies to do something foreign. It was asking them to do what they were already built to do. Follow the rhythm.

Rhythm in Creation

Our bodies did not invent that rhythm either. We were placed inside a world that already runs on rhythms.

The sun rises and sets every day. The moon moves through its phases roughly every month, close to the same length as so many of our own cycles. The earth tilts through its seasons every year, planting and harvest, growth and rest.

For most of human history, our ancestors had no choice but to live in step with these rhythms. They planted by the season. They rested when the light disappeared.

We were made by the same God who set the sun on its path and the moon on its orbit. He did not build a universe that runs on chaos, and He did not build us that way either. The same faithfulness Scripture calls us toward, the kind that does not grow weary in doing good because in due time the harvest comes, is built right into the rhythm of the sun, the moon, and our own hearts.

Rhythm Beyond Our Health

Rhythm is not only a health concept. It already lives in so much of our days, even when we have never called it that.

Take a look at my own life, and you will see it everywhere, the sacred parts and the slightly ridiculous parts both. My evenings have a rhythm now, too, brushing my teeth, washing my face, layering on the skincare I only started taking seriously once I got older and finally understood what my skin actually needed. I wish I had built that rhythm in my thirties instead of my fifties, but here we are.

And then there is the rhythm I broke on purpose. dyeing our roots every 6 to 8 weeks unless, of course, you are crazy like me.” I’m growing out the gray. Which is how I learned something nobody tells you. Your hair can be three different colors at once, even when you have not had it colored for almost a year. The old color, the gray coming in, and whatever is happening in between. Lord, that is a whole other conversation.

Those are rhythms, too. The Sunday phone call to your mother. Your family around the table. The walk you take most evenings because something in you needs that motion to close out the day. And if we can find rhythm in something as small as a skincare routine or as sacred as a Sunday morning, we already have proof we are capable of consistency. We have just never called it that.

Let’s Explore This Together

Search out the rhythms you already have. Seek them in your days, your relationships, your faith, your family. Then ask yourself a simple question. Where else is my body or my soul asking for that same kind of faithfulness?

Anchor yourself there. Not in a rigid schedule, but in the rhythm that is already trying to find you. Our hearts have been keeping time since before we could ask them to. The rest of our lives can learn to keep time, too.

“Let us not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”
— Galatians 6:9

Health and blessings,
Ann

If this resonated with you, I would love to have you inside NOURISH. It is a faith-based, integrative health-coaching community for women in midlife where we do this work together. Simple. Small. Manageable. One faithful practice at a time.

Learn more about NOURISH here.

Ann Hackman is a certified integrative nutrition health coach and founder of NOURISH, a faith-based health coaching community for women in midlife. She helps women understand their bodies, balance their hormones, and build simple, sustainable health practices that last.