I’m about two months into retirement now, and things are a bit different. For one, when I walk outside now, on a regular basis I notice vultures circling overhead. At this point, I’m just assuming there must be more roadkill around than I’d ever realized.

A second thing is that my life doesn’t really revolve around much of a daily routine at the moment, which is an odd thing after 40-plus years in the workplace. During those decades, there was almost always someplace I was supposed to be in the morning and things I was expected to do there for most of the rest of the day. 

Now, a routine can be a good thing: According to people who’ve studied that kind of thing, it can make us somewhat more efficient and less likely to procrastinate, give us some necessary structure, and help us manage time and stress better. There is truth to this, as I had a job for a few years that involved having a boss based in another state and a daily routine that was left up to me. It didn’t work out well.

That said, it seems there are at least as many good reasons for breaking up a routine regularly as there are for sticking to one. Some of the aforementioned experts also say that doing so will allow you to alleviate boredom and unpredictability, grow and learn more, and be more creative.

Breaking up routines enough that it almost becomes routine also sounds good because I think a carefully-followed schedule can easily become an obstacle on our spiritual journeys. I’m about as far from an expert on time management as you can get, but here’s something I do understand: We humans are almost without exception control freaks (it’s usually just a matter of degree) and routines are, for many of us, one way to create the illusion that we’re steering the ship. Unfortunately, we almost all eventually find that we have precious little control when it comes to the things that matter most.

I believe, ultimately, that God’s at the helm and, as pastor and author Mark Batterson puts it, “You can have faith or you can have control, but you cannot have both.”

In no way does that mean that our choices don’t matter. They sure do. But for me, routines have sometimes been a kind of comfort zone — and the best things in my life have usually happened outside those zones. Routines don’t necessarily challenge us all that much. I ran into this sentence by Jason Boyett, in his book, O Me of Little Faith, a few years back, and it’s stayed with me: “It makes sense that for a person like me, who loves his routine, stepping out of that routine might be a step in the direction of finding God.”

Ditching the routine to stretch a bit doesn’t guarantee that we’ll find God, but I think it boosts our chances in ways that sameness never will.

“We must put ourselves into situations that will thrust us forward in our journey,” says author John Eldredge. “So much of our daily lives is simply routine, and routine by its very nature is numbing. Get out of it. Break away.”

Most likely, any breaking away most of us end up doing won’t mean dramatic life change, like moving to Botswana or training to summit Everest. These thoughts, from Rob Wilkins in his book, Taking the Child’s Way Home, seem a bit more practical for most of us: “Nothing dulls as much as a cycle of events and hours. Hire a babysitter and rent a Jet Ski or hike a trail or make midnight love…We must do what we can to see the larger picture, to develop a constantly unsettled realization that life is beyond comprehension.”

I’d like to have more unsettled realizations about the mystery this life holds. Before those vultures get any closer.