The Free Time I Didn’t Know How to Handle

Claire and I had just spent the last stretch of the project refining what we affectionately call the sizzle level — the final 15 percent that turns competent work into something worth talking about. She’d been an active partner the whole way through, unafraid to flag what would sharpen the process, and only a couple of times did I need to explain why something couldn’t happen the way she proposed. We ended the call with her heading off to build a checklist as the next step. I said goodbye, ended the Zoom meeting, and sat there for a second in the quiet that followed.

Then I lay back on the loveseat in my office. Free time. What a concept.

C.H.E.W. with Me

New here? What is CHEW? — a 30-second practice that grows into a day woven with God’s love.

C — Clarity — The Resting Felt Wrong

If I’m honest, it’s almost uncomfortable. I am so used to staying busy that I don’t know how to hold the fact that I suddenly have room I didn’t have last month.

H — Hear — Keeping the Focus on the One Thing

“But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13–14)

This is not a verse telling you to feel guilty about rest. It is a Father showing you what Paul did the moment his hands were free — he did not scatter into everything available to him. He pressed toward the one thing. Stay with what is said: “one thing I do,” not “many things I try to fit in.”

The word behind “press on” is diōkō — a hunting-and-racing word, used elsewhere in the New Testament for chasing someone down at a dead run. It’s not a leisurely stroll toward a goal; it’s pursuit. And it pairs with “forgetting what lies behind” — epilanthanomai, the same verb used for a runner who doesn’t glance back at the pack because looking back costs speed. Paul isn’t managing a calendar. He’s running a race with his eyes fixed forward.

Paul had every reason to diversify his attention — churches to plant, controversies to referee, a body aging in a Roman prison, letters piling up from every direction. Instead he forgot what lay behind and strained forward. One thing. Pursued, not drifted toward.

“Free time is not empty time. It is undirected time waiting for direction.”
— The Daily CHEW™

E — Exchange — What the Margin is Actually For

The most important part of my role has always been helping Christians — including me — get God’s love from head to heart, so we love Him and others better, and heal, grow, and gain strategic clarity as the fruit of it. I already do that in sessions, applying God’s love to what clients bring me. But this free time is an invitation to go further than sessions can go — to actually study how the head-to-heart process happens, not just practice it. So I am picking up the next course in my PhD. Two courses stand between me and my first dissertation classes, and I cannot wait to dive in.

The discomfort I feel in unclaimed time is not laziness catching up with me. It is busyness finally running out of hiding places. When I really believed the free time Claire’s growth handed back to me was not a gap to fill but a room to furnish with the one thing that moves the needle furthest, the discomfort started to loosen its grip.

Because God’s love is not proven by how full your calendar stays, how does that change the way you spend the next hour that gets handed back to you?

Sit with that for sixty seconds.

W — Walk — Name the Margin Before You Fill it

Before this week ends, find one hour that delegation, a completed project, or a lighter season has actually freed up. Do not let it get absorbed by the next available task. Write down, in one sentence, what the most important part of your role actually is. Then block that hour for it specifically — a class, a study, a conversation, a piece of the work only you can do. Let the free time be direction, not drift.

Closing Question: What is the one thing you would press toward if busyness stopped being available as an excuse?