The Gift of Margin

We are primed and ready to live a life that denies that busy is the only way to blessed. We can choose to live in the blank spaces that are watermarked with our Maker’s good gifts.

I vividly remember being bored as a kid. The panicky feeling that my friends were probably off having their daily adventure while I was left to rot on my bedroom floor with nothing to do. How quickly I abandoned myself and found someone else to blame for my unjust inactivity, usually resulting in no longer feeling bored because now I had to copy “I will respect my parents” fifty times at the kitchen table. My Mom had twins when my brother and I were nine and ten years old and she was not about to facilitate our fun while figuring out tandem nursing.

I was a late bloomer when it came to loving to read, my brother on the other hand could often be found with his nose in the pages of some 600 page novel that I could not care less about. Often I was left by myself to fend for my own entertainment.

I would trot down to the creek in our backyard and imagine being lost in a forest. I would lay on the floor in my room and daydream about everything I could be when I was a grown up, my heart racing with anticipation. I would rearrange my bedroom furniture, draw and dream up outfits and write journal entries to my future self. Those journal entries are a painful kind of hilarious now.

As I got older, it was boredom that led me to pick up the guitar. I was already writing poems so why not set them to a tune and learn a few chords! Boredom led me into songwriting, which was the saving grace of my fragile teenage faith and ultimately brought me to the university that changed my life.

Boredom is a gift, but it won’t just happen if we don’t plan for it. Planning for boredom. I know that sounds like both an oxymoron and even a time-suck, but I believe the magic of creating and the sparkle of dreams are born in the corner spaces of our lives.

Every year when I plan our homeschool year I list out the priorities and unique qualities of our family, this helps me not to compare my homeschool with everyone else’s homeschooling. Our days look very different than those that hold academics as their number one priority. It has taken me years to accept the fact that while academics are important, and ironically the main focus of school, they are not my first priority in raising our kids.

Margin is my number one priority. Planning for margin in a society with everything we could ever want to do or want our kids to do has felt like swimming upstream. I have had to say no to some really good things and I’ve had to say yes to literally nothing. Saying yes to a day with nothing to do can feel a little selfish and even downright unproductive! But I have watched my kids and even me and my husband make and enjoy some of the best things on days with nothing to do.

Margin won’t just happen in our schedules. We will have to disappoint people in our lives, but if they are your people they will come around and support and even celebrate your objective for more margin. We will have to reconcile the guilt we feel for not signing our kids up for that league or that class, trusting that our kids are not in a pressure cooker with only eighteen years for us to instill and invest in.

Planning for regular margin is ultimately an act of faith.

I am trusting that I don’t need a busy schedule to feel like a good mom.

I am trusting my friends to still be my friends even when I am unavailable.

I am trusting that things take time and I don’t have to set the pace.

I am trusting that the good life doesn’t only exist in my plans.

I am trusting that I don’t need to be at everything and be there for everyone.

I am trusting that things won’t fall apart if I’m not a part of it.

I am trusting that the slow life won’t slow down my kids.

I am trusting that my worth is not tethered to my productivity and availability.

Planning for margin is an opportunity to live open-handed and find my satisfaction in the person of Jesus Christ and nothing else.

Over the years I have grown much more comfortable giving my “best yes.” Side note: If you haven’t read Lysa TerKeurst’s book “The Best Yes”, go add it to your reading list now. This book changed my thinking in the best ways. When I give my “yes” to something or someone I am always giving something or someone else a “no.” This thought has made me reconsider what I say “yes” to, being thoughtful to make sure that what has been entrusted to me is hearing “yes” more often than what I’m anxious about losing.

I’ll admit it, I have been guilty of saying “yes” simply because I’m afraid I will lose something if I say “no.” This is anxious living, not abundant living. No relationship is going to be tended to because I tend to it from a place of anxiety. My children will not grow into brilliant mathematicians and kind humans because I pellet them with activities and serving opportunities.

Living life in the margins forces me to humbly live my life from my values. When I make sure that the most important things are being patiently tended to first, the things that haven’t been entrusted to me often fall by the wayside and the relationships that I feel like I can never measure up in either drift away or adjust in connection and priority.

I want to teach my kids how to lean into boredom. I want to be patient with their progress. I can’t expect them to make beautiful art or write a song every time we have margin. Sometimes the win in the margin is simply the unhurriedness of it. Its communicating to myself and my family that our worth is not tethered to our productivity and availability.

Stillness is uncomfortable. But great things begin with discomfort, confusion and boredom. Some of the best ideas and movements of our world began here.

In a poignant twist of events, I have found myself tethering greatness with the margin that I’ve planned for! What if my kids don’t follow the pattern for success or acceptance? What if I plan for all this margin and they never really excel in anything? I must ask myself; what if the margin that I am giving them is where they become thoughtful friends, deep thinkers and lovers of Jesus? What if we need margin to remember that we are only satisfied in Christ, and that the things of this earth will fade? What if the gift of margin is simply to love and enjoy God and His beautiful gifts? That’s a win for me.

Progress that we can’t measure is sometimes the most progressive. Visible progress is so tantalizing because it gives us something to be proud of, it motivates us to keep going after the prize. However, some of the best things in life cannot be measured, they can only be enjoyed. I want to have a life that enjoys what cannot be measured and treasures what looks like nothing to the world.

The Christian life is riddled with so many upside-down truths. By Christ’s death we live. We become greater in the Kingdom of God by becoming less in the world. The way to abundant living is to give our lives away for the sake of the King. We are primed and ready to live a life that denies that busy is the only way to blessed. We can choose to live in the blank spaces that are watermarked with our Maker’s good gifts. These good things aren’t always obvious to ourselves and others, and they are often waiting for us to slow down long enough to enjoy them.

I want to remember that little girl laying on her bedroom floor, heart beating fast with dreams. I want to honor what God has done in my heart when I have stopped moving long enough to see Him. I want to live a quiet life blaring with God’s goodness.