Acknowledging the Need for Margin

If you are like me, I’m sure you’ve said a time or two that you wished you had more hours in the day, more days in the week, more time to get all the things done. We never seem to wake up early enough or stay up late enough to get all the laundry, dishes, reading, tidying, loving on our people done. Depending on our goals and priorities, we have to cram in all the things we want to accomplish in a day and something always falls through the cracks. Why is that? Why can’t we just get everything done that we want to get done today? Were we even created to get all the things done all the time?

I think the reason we can’t get all the things done all the time is because we are trying to do too much. We are competing with the world around us. If we are on social media, we are competing with everyone else’s highlight reels, the best parts of their lives. Because who really shows all the dirty corners and unwashed piles of laundry. (I’m certainly not poo-pooing on social media, but for all the good there is on the socials, there is no denying the negative impact it can have on our mental and emotional health.)

Do we have to be so busy?

We calculate down to the minute when we have to get up to make sure we have time to workout, make a healthy breakfast, drink enough water, and make lunches all before the kids get out of bed. We steal little moments here and there in between errands and lessons to read that book we’ve been working on for 3 and a half months.

We have to throw all our meals in the crockpot because we don’t have 30 minutes to stand over the stove cooking a fresh meal. (Again, no disrespect to crockpot meals, I often feel I could use a few more in my life.) We pack our meals into containers and eat on the go, forgetting what it’s like to gather as a family and enjoy a slow meal together.

This is a busy season of life

We’ve recently entered the very fast paced season of youth sports. Yay us! Seriously, there are moments when all the practices, games, and events are life-sucking to me. But, then I see how much my boys are learning and how much they enjoy pushing their limits and growing in their strength and agility. Sports CAN be a good thing for our family. BUT, it is in these seasons (baseball in the Spring and football in the Fall) when we REALLY have to guard the rest of our time as a family. The nights we don’t have games or practices become precious to us and we want to savor them.

Our family is also very involved in our church. It is a joy to see our children thriving in their church family and our pray is that they would come to a saving knowledge of the Lord and surrender their lives to Him one day. Church will always be a priority to our family. It’s not just the act of attending services and Sunday school classes, but the act of corporate worship that brings us each and every week.

On Saturday nights we have the boys pick out clothes for church, partly because it makes our Sunday mornings easier, but partly because it is the beginning of our heart preparation. When our kids struggle to get up on Sundays, or are slow to move, we remind them, “Hey guys, we get to go worship today!” It is such a helpful reminder for our heart attitudes for the day too! At church, we get to be around likeminded people and laugh together, cry together, encourage one another, and challenge each other to grow in the Lord. Going to worship as a family is one of the most refreshing times of our week.

Our Homeschool

If you didn’t already know this about our family, we homeschool. Because “homeschool” means different things to different people, I’ll tell you a little about what that looks like in our family. We are still in the early years, so this is where homeschool looks a little gentle, maybe too gentle for some people.

We spend a lot of time outside, enjoying being kids. But, when we sit down at the school table, we are enjoying our literature based math program (Life of Fred), playing math baseball, struggling through handwriting, unlocking the door to reading (We use IEW’s Primary Arts of Language for these.), and asking A LOT of questions. I’m doing my best to soak up these little years and enjoy the time to be together. As they get older, theyw ill have more independent work, but for now, we do a lot together.

Part of the benefit of homeschool is the ability to go do things throughout the school week. We go to the library and on field trips a couple times a month and every Friday, we meet with our Classical Conversations group for community day. All of these are wonderful things, but sometimes fill our calendar to the point where there is no rest.

The Homemade Mama

On top of all our family things, I recently launched a podcast with a dear friend, and am trying to stay on the blog. Back in the summer, not long after i launched the blog, I started selling bread and other baked goods at a local market. I LOVE doing market. It is so much fun to chat with all sorts of people and I genuinely enjoyed the work, but it started to take priority over things that should’ve had more of my attention, like homeschool.

I spent 2 days a week baking and then another morning selling and by the time I got home, I was too exhausted to do anything fun. I had to take a step back and regroup. I will do an occasional market there and there, and ultimately would love to grow a small customer base that I can bake for from home. I’m working on that.

On top of all the others things, I’m trying desperately to grow a garden that will truly supplement our grocery bill and maybe even reduce it a little. During the football season this past Fall, the garden became over grown with weeds because we simply did not have the time each week to get out and work in it.

Room to Breathe

To say we have a busy schedule would be an understatement. Over the past few months I have learned just how much that busyness has taken a toll on me and had to just drop a lot of things with little to no notice. My boys did not play basketball this year, even thought we knew they would’ve loved it. we jsut couldn’t do a single extra thing over the holidays.

We slowed down A LOT with school and just did the bare bones while I got a handle on some health issues. While saying no is sometimes difficult becasue you don’t want to miss out, saying no can also be liberating because it allows you to refocus and prioritize the most important things in your life.

Now we are in a season of rebuilding our schedule and trying to be very picky about what we let in and what we have to say no to this season. We are striving to live a life with margin. We want blank space on our calendar to breathe and be a family, or even just clean the house. Yes, all you homeschool and sports moms know how easy it is to put off the cleaning until it’s too much to ignore. Creating that margin, that blank space, is a lot easier said than done.

Visualizing Margin in the Schedule

One way I’ve tried to visualize the fullness of our schedule is with my calendar app. I will block out everything, even meals, and try to find little pockets of empty space throughout the day. Our mornings are usually pretty packed, mainly because we like to hit the ground running and be done with household jobs and school before lunch so we have the afternoon to play and work. I am not a morning person, but on particularly motivated days, I would rather get things started early and allow for rest in the afternoon.

We recently joined a local gym so we could intentionally exercise again. I didn’t’ realize how much I missed the purposeful movement until I started going. Again, I would rather go in the early morning, but our schedule doesn’t allow for that, so I’m fitting it in where I can and it’s so worth the extra effort.

It’s Your Turn!

All of our lives look different because all of our priorities are different. We all have different wants and needs, but we have this in common, we were all created to rest. When we live in a constant state of turbo speed, we are eventually going to burn out. Burnout looks different for everyone, but for me, it was adrenal fatigue; exhaustion to the point of not wanting to get out of bed in the morning; giving up on basic household tasks because they seemed too big to tackle; sleepless nights caused by anxiety over all the things I couldn’t control. I had to slow down.

In the slowing down, I have found more energy than I thought I would ever have again. That doesn’t mean I’m not still tired by the end of the day, I definitely am! But, I go to bed and can rest knowing it’s been a good, full day of the work I was created to do. A day with breathing room. A day where people are more important than productivity.

If I could encourage you to do anything this year, it would be to take a step back and evaluate your schedule, consider your family’s goals, and find places to create blank space on the schedule. This life we have to live is short, and I don’t want to miss a single minute.