What the heck is MARGIN?

What does it mean to have Margin?

What a question. 

No seriously, you have no idea what your asking.  At least I didn't when I first picked up the book that started it all. 

Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives.  by Richard Swenson. 

I was in the middle of one of the worst years of my life.  Desperately trying to fix what was wrong.  Frantically trying to claw my way out of the pit I was in.  When all I was really doing was effectively throwing mud around and making a mess.  WHAT WAS WRONG????? 

A dear friend suggested this book based on a comment I made on facebook.  Said I might like it.  Woh.  talk about understatement.  Little did I know when I started page one, that my life was about to take a sharp turn. 

So what is the book about?  Well, the title kinda tells you.  People, we have a problem.  Our lives are overloaded.  We are running too many places, too fast, with too many commitments.  This book is written by a doctor who has seen client after client come into his office with a myriad of heath issues all with a major problem at it's source.  Overloaded lives. 

So what exactly is Margin?  Here's his definition from the book.  "Margin is the space between our load and our limits.  It is the amount allowed beyond that which is needed.  it is something held in reserve for contingencies or unanticipated situations.  Margin is the gap between rest and exhaustion, the space between breathing freely and suffocating." 

As Grub from the movie Despicable Me would say, "LIGHT BULB". 

A few pages later I read this: 

"we must have some room to breathe. We need freedom to think and permission to heal. Our relationships are being starved to death by velocity. No one has the time to listen, let alone love. Our children lay wounded on the ground, run over by our high speed good intentions"

When did we all start letting our schedules run things and just trying to get thru and SURVIVE life, instead of really LIVING it? 

This concept of margin is relatively new to me, and it has changed my life.   The first thing I did was quit.  A lot of stuff.  Actually, God had been softly speaking to my heart for several weeks just one word.  "stop".   In my frustration and my need to DO something I was desperately trying to figure out what that meant.  Stop what?  What are you talking about?   But I kept moving at high velocity.  Then one day I just got tired.  and the word took a different tone.  stop.  stop.  ok fine.  I'll stop. 

I stopped pretty much everything.  Quit the ministry teams I was on.  Cancelled events.  Quit my Homeschooling Co-op.  Quit my support group.  Quit Quit Quit. 

With all this sudden free time, I now had time to be still.  I'm not so good at being still.

I won't take you thru the whole boring process, but I will tell you that once I stopped moving so fast, God moved in.  I finally had time to hear what he'd been trying to tell me, and I couldn't hear him in my flurry of activity. 

I have started to establish some margin in my life.  It feels good.  It feels right. 

My prayer is that I could maybe help someone else slow down enough to hear what God is trying to tell them.  Cause let's be honest, I am not the only one.  According to that author there are millions of us wandering around in a flurried daze wondering how life got this way. 

I'm still trying to figure it out.

Especially when the catalogs of events come out, with all sorts of amazing activities to do!  I'm tempted to sign up.  for all of them.  They all look great! 

BUT.....what's worth adding?  What adds to our lives and is worth getting that spot on the calendar?  Where is Jesus asking us to go, and where are we supposed to be?  Where should we be giving our time?   I am just beginning to learn that Jesus is more interested in my character, than in my calendar.  Do I really "presume that all that is good in life and all that God wants us to accomplish is possible only in a booked-up, highly efficient, often exhausted way of life" ?  (quote from the book)

AND I have 2 little ones watching me....learning.   Will they leave my home and live margin less, over scheduled lives?  I pray I have time enough to show them there is a better way. 

So that gives you a glimpse into the start of my journey.  I hope to share things I am learning along the way for as long as God tells me to do it.  

I am certainly not an expert here,  I am such a screw up.  Thankfully I do not need to have all the answers, I can go to The One who does.  

Maybe He and I can figure out my calendar together.