Making Room for Life: Trading Chaotic Lifestyles for Connected Relationships

This is such a simple book to read and yet it may have the most profound impact on our lives - I hope and pray! We fit exactly the type of family who desperately needs this book: suburban, near a very large, fast-paced city and living somewhat frazzled, disconnected lives (other than with our children) because we are working all hours of the day (my husband) and our church and church friends are 30-45 minutes away. Frazee talks about how the greatest problem in the American Church today is our fragmented lives - the fact that we have so many relationships with many different groups of people, and rarely do these groups overlap. My husband and I have bemoaned for years now that we are not able to "do life" with those in our small group nor church as we live all over the city. I have also felt for a long time that not observing a Sabbath Day (one of the Ten Commandments) is one of the greatest sins of omission of our church today and in our lives personally. Frazee's book resonates with us to the core! And, I might add, that we are parents of 2 children under age 3 and that my husband works from home - often working evening hours and weekends since he can wrap up for early dinners and time with the kids. While we may not be able to implement everything that Frazee urges (I sure would like him to address those with preschoolers), we are already praying about what kind of changes we can make. We can live with the tension of it not really fitting our life-stage exactly as we trust God to show us how to build community right here in our neighborhood/community. It is a beautiful picture of what life CAN be and what we were created for - deeper relationships and more sane living. You must read this book for the picture he paints of family dinner time, if nothing else. While we do eat dinner together every night as a family, I love his vision of making it a reward and festive occasion at the end of every day and also of enfolding others into it. Beautiful! It is also a book that has given me permission to take the time I need to step back from the frenzy, refresh my soul, and to consider finding a church closer to our home sooner rather than later. Thank you, Randy Frazee and thank you, Lord Jesus! May we trust Him for the wisdom and application in our specific lives.

If you're so busy living life that you don't have time to actually enjoy it, this book is for you.Despite the abundance of resources, technology, entertainment, and opportunities that surround us, more and more people simply aren't satisfied with the life they're living. What's missing for so many of us is real relationships. Unhurried time of really knowing and being known. The type of lives most of our grandparents enjoyed and took for granted, but which "progress" and the advancement of technology have all but eliminated for most people today.Randy Frazee offers excellent insight into the things that keep us from experiencing authentic relationships, and ultimately from enjoying life itself. "In America, success is defined by the next purchase. In other places around the world success is defined by a simple meal and conversation with family and friends."Frazee offers practical ideas about the things that crowd authentic community out of our life and suggestions about how to rearrange our lives to once again (or for the first time)experience the joy of living.I found this book to be extremely relavent, to be supported by both biblical foundations and scientific research, and to be challenging. I have already begun making some changes and expect to make many more as a result. I have to admit, I fear some of it may be too idealistic, but I anticipate that over time the lives of myself, my family, and my community will be better because of attempting to live out the ideas expressed here. I think you should read the book.

The back of this book has some hooks that grab the attention of the modern American rat racer (as someone has well said - "even if you win the rat race, its still a race for rats." The book asks: "What if you could?" get all your work done by 6:00pm?eat dinner with your family every night?form deep, satisfying relationships? naturally blend the world of church with everyday life? spend hours a week on your hobbies? While all of those questions may not resonate with everyone, they resonate enough because all of us have the feeling that we are overworked and overstressed, that life is out of control. He has an exercise in chapter 1 on managing your relationships where he walks you through all the many disconnected and fragmented relationships we have in our lives. By the time you add your spouse, your extended family, spouse's extended family, your work relationships, your spouse's work relationships, your children and their relationships at school and extracurricular activities, your hobbies, your church involvement and a host of other relationships, most of us have dozens of disconnected and fragmented relationships. The problem is that none of these relationships intersect with each other, so we are pulled in all different directions. This helps explain alot of our frustration in life. We are built for community, but because we are so fragmented, it is impossible to develop deep community in any area of our lives. Having set up the problem, he spends the book trying to solve it. Frankly, most people will see his solutions as undoable at first glance. However, I would highly recommend that you not write his suggestions off as undoable. A friend of mine says that there is a predictable pattern whenever we are given new information. First we reject, it then we consider it, then we embrace it. If you read this book and automatically reject it, please go back and at least consider it, and see if you can't embrace at least some of what he says. One of the keys to "Making Room for Life" is to live life according to the Hebrew Day Planner, which basically follows the clock set down for us in Genesis 1. We work during the day, and relate and sleep during the night. Because we moderns are so work-obsessed we work so much at night that we never have time to relate to one another. He offers some helpful suggestions for those who travel, or have shift work, on how to do this. He also addresses the need for consolidating our relationships - he suggests that we recover the idea of neighborhood - where we spend lots of time working and playing close to home. This will enable us to build relationships with our neighbors. He cites some studies that show that the automobile is the number one detractor from community. The more you drive, the less you can build community. He issues a clarion call to cut down all the driving and going. I also like his emphasis on the dinner table. The dinner table is where community is built in the family and amongst our neighbors. H

"Making Room For Life" is an enlightening book with a unique approach to resolving some of the problems todays busy families face. Though our kids are nearly grown and gone and our lives are quieting down some, this book has made a huge difference in my life in an unexpected way. Three days after following the Hebrew Day Planner that Randy recommends, my diabetes, which had been out of control, fell within normal ranges and has remained there without the assistance of insulin. I highly recommend the book!

When my wife and I read Making Room For life, we had one very strong reaction. We felt encouraged that we were reading this book while our kids are young. Our lives are pretty simple right now because of the age of our children and also the fact that we homeschool our oldest two (7 and 5 yrs old). We have an opportunity to order our lives in such a way now (while our kids are so young) to promote the value of community as a part of our lives. The book challenged us to put boundaries on our evenings and on our relationships. Often when we think of boundaries other terms come to mind...like 'restrictions' or 'limitations'. But I would like to suggest that the word 'freedom' is best felt by the boundaries that we can set for our family, as laid out in Randy's book. If we set appropriate boundaries on our time, our work habits, our spending and on our relationships, then we are free to experience a depth of intimacy and closeness that we could not have known otherwise. It's like letting your children play by a steep cliff. You are not at ease to allow them to run with reckless abandon, like most children do. But, if a boundary was set, preventing them from coming close to the edge of the cliff, then you and they are free to run and play within the safety of the boundary lines. That's the way my wife and I see the 'boundaries' that we set as a family. We have more time to spend together because I have ordered my day to be at home at night and on the weekend. We have more frequent times to build relationships with those who live near us and are in our community group and home group. We avoid the helter-skelter lifestyle that many people wake up to 'one morning' and wish they had not gotten themselves into. We live a more simple life which allows us greater financial freedom to use our money for God and His people. We have a vision for reaching our neighbors and we share that vision with our biblical community, who are also part of our 'neighborhood' community. Randy's book is extremely practical and applicable to life. You don't have to do a 180 degree turnaround to make a difference in the way you go about life. You certainly can make the more dramatic changes, and that would make a difference, but you can take simple steps that result in major change as well...like living by the Hebrew Day Planner (as explained in Randy's book). In my opinion, Randy is just sharing his jouney with God as it relates to his own personal life, his family and his community. He never claims to have created this idea. He just desired to find it and live it out. Community has been part of God's design since the creation of man. Randy has decided to do whatever it takes to see God's vision lived out in his life and to use his resources to share that vision with his own congregation, the Church at large and the world around him. I love what I see happening in my family and in my communty. I know that it doesn't come naturally, at least not in American culture. But, it is wort