Margin

Our life revolves around the counter in our kitchen. Not only do we spend a majority of our time sitting or standing around it, it collects everything!  We only eat meals around the counter when we are in a hurry or not all of us are planning to eat, because it becomes pretty crowded and is uncomfortable.  We have a dining room table and we have been asked many, many times if we actually use it and the answer is YES! Almost every evening for dinner and for lunches and breakfasts when Josh is home.

Recently, I've been working on striping the wallpaper off our kitchen walls.  As part of that process, Josh took off all the baseboards and trim.  For over a week some of them laid across our dining room table, making it unusable, and we just had no time to bang the nails out of each one, so that we could lay them down on the floor.  So we had been crowding around the counter to eat every meal.

One evening recently all 4 of us were gathered around the counter to eat.  The counter was already full of mail, the contents of the kids backpacks from that day, the makings of a book report, and more.  As I tried to push the stuff to the back edge of the counter to make room for our plates, things began tumbling off the backside of the counter.

We always tend to be busy and our lives full, but these last two months our lives have been bulging.  Our counter overflowing was a snapshot of our lives at that moment.

A while back, there was a message preached about margin at our church.  Margin, like the white space around a page that prevents you from running off the edge.  The point of the message is that you have to leave margin - physical and emotional margin - in your life. In that margin, you can listen to God and your relationships with others can flourish.

Having no margin effects every area of my life.  It effects my relationships with God and others, but it also effects my own ability to think and react appropriately.  Add to this the fact that lack of margin also nicks away at the amount of sleep I get and it becomes an even dicier situation.

We have had bad sleeping habits for a long time now.  We go to bed too late for the early hour we have to arise.  When I have no margin in my life, I often don't sleep well even in those few short hours that I allow myself the privilege to lay in bed.  And when I have little margin in my life - no "white space" in my time - my mind and body decide to make it for me.  So often I wake up at 5:30 a.m. and can't go back to sleep.  It is like I have to have that think time and if I don't take it, my mind and body demand it.  (Though later in the day, it usually catches up with me!). 

We are coming to the end of a few things that will provide more white space, but there will always be something that I want to fill in the margins with - good stuff, but a little more than I need.

I have no enlightening thing to say about this.  No new discovery of how I am going to guard our margin.  I just know that we have to clear that space and manage it to keep it clear. 

This week, we have pretty much nothing on our schedule, basically the first one since school started, and I have already felt the relief of a little space. I have plenty of things I need to get done (like the walls mentioned previously), but I don't have any appointments or extra things scheduled and Josh has nothing extra scheduled, either. I have already been asked to put 2 good things into that space.  It is so tempting to look at my calender and think that I have the space because the days on my calendar are blank.  But then when I add those good things, all the things that don't get written down, (like laundry, dishes, Bible study, thinking time, communication with Josh and the kids) are pushed into the margin.  They don't just disappear, but they get regulated to the edges.  Then when I am bulging again, they fall off the edge, just like the stuff on my counter.

Today we have an unexpected snow day and it has created some extra "white space" (pun intended). I think I may go and put some Christmas music on and cook a hot meal and enjoy the down time that the weather has created and thank God for the electricity that so many are without right now!