Jen Pollock Michel
9 min read ⭑
“I guess you could say that I’ve finally given up on time management (and I tell that story in my most recent book, ‘In Good Time’) because the whole project of managing our time assumes a control we don’t actually have. Instead, in my rule of life practice, I’m trying to pursue consistent rhythms of faithfulness in my everyday life.”
For the past 20 years, Jen Pollock Michel has been writing about the life and practice of the Christian faith. As a wife, mother of five and passionate Jesus follower, Jen fills her books — including “Teach Us to Want,” “Keeping Place,” “Surprised by Paradox,” “A Habit Called Faith” and “In Good Time” — with a wide range of topics, from hope and grief to desire and surrender. Join us for an honest conversation about her favorite hobbies, biggest regrets, the ancient “rule of life” practice and unexpected resources that strengthen her faith.
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
There’s much more to food than palate and preference. How does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind the web bio?
Our family moved to Cincinnati two years ago after having lived in Toronto for 11 years. I so miss all the ethnic food that we could get in Toronto, including the Nepalese restaurant in our midtown neighborhood. But I guess the consolation of being back in the States is getting great Mexican food! Honestly, we have five kids (three in college, two in high school), so we’ve never had the habit of going out regularly to restaurants. That’s changing a bit now, and our oldest daughter, on a recent trip home, asked, “Hey, when did we get permission to order drinks with our meals?”
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QUESTION #2: REVEAL
We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests. So what are yours? What so-called “nonspiritual” activity (or activities) do you love engaging in, which also help you find essential spiritual renewal?
Probably the last thing people might know about me is that I like rock climbing. This isn’t really to say that I do it regularly, quite honestly, despite that last Christmas, my husband gifted me my own gear. It started years ago when our family regularly attended a summer family camp in the Adirondacks of New York. We would climb outdoors with some of the camp’s trained guides, and it’s just become something we like to do when we’re on vacation when it’s possible. The weird thing is that I don’t love climbing inside, so my actual climbing skills are terrible. I’m a complete hack! I know I’d enjoy it more if I could get a little better. I think what I love most is being outdoors and pushing myself beyond fear and physical limits.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness. Every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite, and how do you hide it?
Most people would say that I’m really vulnerable, that I talk easily about doubt and disappointment and grief. I had early pain in my life — my dad died when I was 18, and my brother committed suicide five years later — so there was really no avoiding the darker underbelly of life.
What’s harder now, in terms of vulnerability, is admitting regret, especially in the context of parenting. I wish I’d been a perfect mother, but I’m facing ways in which I wasn’t present for my kids and wasn’t intentional about offering them some of the guidance they wanted and needed.
By God’s grace, there’s been mending in these relationships, and I’m thankful for that. There’s also been greater freedom to say: “Hey, this is what it means to be human. You don’t have all the wisdom you need all at once, even when you’re praying and reading Scripture and participating in the church. Failure is a part of human life. Regret is inevitable.” But these aren’t easy to admit when you’ve spent your entire life trying to do things perfectly.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?
If you looked at the schedule of this past week, you’d wonder if I was working enough! I’m always writing, but in this season, I’m also caring for my mother, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. It’s a full season where I’m trying to live the material I’ve been presenting through intensive workshops.
The content is related to the ancient spiritual practice called a rule of life — and I know it’s something lots of people aren’t familiar with, especially if they’ve been raised in more typically evangelical contexts.
If I could say it very simply, a rule of life is a practice of many practices. It’s an intentional patterning of our lives in response to God’s voice, and it calls us to faithful habits and intentional commitments in every area of life: spiritual health, work, family, friendship, leisure, money and service.
I guess you could say that I’ve finally given up on time management (and I tell that story in my most recent book, “In Good Time”) because the whole project of managing our time assumes a control we don’t actually have. Instead, in my rule of life practice, I’m trying to pursue consistent rhythms of faithfulness in my everyday life. I read Scripture and pray. I participate in Christian community. I write and read. I call my college kids and send them UberEats gift cards during exams. I take my mom to appointments. I have Sunday breakfast with my husband. And hopefully, I’ll get another book written on the subject!
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Cashiers, CEOs, contractors, or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
Funny that you’re asking about the Holy Spirit. A friend and I were just talking about occasions we’ve recently heard the voice of the Spirit and heeded it. For me, I think I’ve been listening to the Spirit say, “Wait,” as I’ve entered a season of discernment in my writing vocation.
Over the span of the last 10 years, I’ve written five books. That rhythm was familiar to me: write a book, publish it, conceive the next book, rinse and repeat. (And there was grad school thrown in for good measure for three years, too!) But when we moved to Cincinnati, I really felt a bit aimless in terms of the next book projects. I released “In Good Time,” and I started offering rule of life workshops. But in terms of long-form writing, I was at a loss. I just had no clarity to pursue anything. That’s been extremely frustrating, and there’s, of course, been a little fear in it.
Only in the last couple of weeks have I had more direction, and this has largely come through community and Scripture reading, specifically the parables in Luke about the barren fig tree (chapter 13) and the shrewd manager (chapter 16). I’ve been asking specific questions and waiting on specific answers, and while I don’t have all my questions answered, I think I have a recognizable invitation from God. Try ... and trust.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you right now?
For years — for decades, really — I’ve been mostly reading through the Bible every year. I have a separate Bible in the New Living Translation that offers, each day, an Old Testament reading, a New Testament reading, a Psalm and a few Proverbs. This habit has been a foundation of faith for me, allowing me to take in, year after year, the arc of God’s redemptive story. It has gotten me into parts of the Bible I would never have freely chosen to engage.
But over the last year or so, I’ve mostly abandoned that kind of reading of Scripture. This year, I’m mostly just reading the Psalm and the New Testament passages. It’s because I simply can’t prayerfully (which is to say, slowly, meditatively) read more than that. Honestly, an hour in the morning — with my coffee, between 5 and 6 a.m. in my living room with the gas fireplace on — isn’t enough time. Of course, not every day pays that immediate reward of, “I’ve been in conversation with God!” but most days leave me with something to consider about his character, his work in the world and my proper response to him. I read Scripture — and it reads me.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what top three resources stand out to you? What changed the game and changed your heart? What radically altered your life? What changed your reality?
Oh, this is a hard question. I feel like there’s a memoir in me I’d love to write about all the books that have shaped my life. In terms of books, maybe I’d start with Tolstoy’s classic novel, “Anna Karenina.” That was a book I read a couple of years into college when I’d been a Christian just a few years. No book has more powerfully shaped my imagination of sin and its utter rottenness. Sin isn’t pleasure we have to resist. Maybe it’s that for a season. But ultimately, it will rot our lives from the inside out. That makes holiness not a bitter pill to swallow but a generous promise to pursue. “His commands become our happy choice,” as an old hymn says.
That notion — of having our desires shaped to love what God loves and hate what he despises — was the premise of my first book, “Teach Us to Want,” which was strongly influenced by James K.A. Smith’s work, first in “Desiring the Kingdom,” then in “You Are What You Love”. I was a bit of a Smith devotee for many years, and I really do think “You Are What You Love” can radically change our perspective on discipleship.
Lastly, just for a twist, I’ll suggest a movie, “The Marriage Story.” It’s a gut-wrenching look at the failure of a marriage and the human ache of the dissolution of our promises. I want everyone in mid-marriage to watch it and to remember it’s worth persevering.
We all have things we cling to to survive (or even thrive) in tough times — times like these! Name one resource you’re savoring and/or finding indispensable in this current season, and tell us what it’s doing for you.
I have become a publicist for the boring analog planner I use. Honestly, every year, I publicly extol its virtues and convince a few more people to try it. It’s called the “Planner Pad,” and I think what I love about it first is that it’s paper, giving me boundaries to what I can actually put on a to-do list for the week. I also love the way it organizes priorities and weekly appointments, allowing me to think through the various dimensions of my life (not just my work) so that I can be intentional across all these important spheres. I’ve been using the Planner Pad for probably five years, and I can’t give it up!
QUESTION #8: dream
God is continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
My husband once told me that I had never met an idea I didn’t like! It’s to say that I’m given to creative imagination, to dreaming up what might be possible. Thank God I’m married to someone with a little more realistic approach to life. We’re good together. What I’m trying to take a risk on now in my creative vocation is writing in some new spaces, especially pitching longer essays to these new outlets. I find that with my own creative work, I can easily get stuck in a rut of doing the familiar, safe thing. But it’s often the newer, riskier thing that produces growth for me: working with a new editor, trying on a new essay structure, pitching a new idea. There’s a book in the background, too, but I’m taking that slowly. I realize that book writing can quickly swamp the rest of my life, and I really don’t want it to.
Our culture does a pretty good job of making sin look fun and void of consequences while making virtues like holiness seem stuffy and boring. Apparently, the same was true in ancient Israel. The psalmist recounts feeling envious of sinners who always seemed to escape the consequences.
But when he entered God’s presence, his perspective changed, and he realized the slippery slope that sin truly is. When we, too, recognize the long-term effects of sin on our lives, our hearts can respond like the psalmist:
“Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For behold, those who are far from you shall perish; you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you. But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works” (Psalm 73:25-28, ESV).
Jen Pollock Michel is an award-winning author and speaker. Her fifth book, In Good Time: Reimagining Productivity, Resisting Hurry and Practicing Peace, was released in December 2022. She holds a B.A. in French from Wheaton College, an M.A. in literature from Northwestern University and an M.F.A from Seattle Pacific University. You can follow Jen on Instagram @jenpmichel and subscribe to her Monday letters on Substack. Jen lives in Cincinnati with her family.
