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Creating Margin in Your Life: Part 3

Friday, October 12th, 2012

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“Fatigue, studies suggest, often has its source in emotional rather than muscular or cardiovascular exhaustion…” – Richard A Swenson, author of Margin.

Are you at a point in your life where you are so tired that sleep doesn’t help? Maybe you’ve been in negative margin status for so long that you forgot what it feels like to be normal. Wouldn’t it be great to feel clear-headed and awake?

“Does anyone feel clear-headed and awake?” asked my sister. “That sounds nice. It sounds too good to be true.” My sister made this statement during a conversation with me ten years ago, back when she was single and had no responsibilities. I was pregnant in the first trimester of my third pregnancy. I had a 12-month-old baby who kept pulling over my parents’ Christmas tree and rummaging through the trash. I had a 2 1/2 year old who had trouble taking naps with his younger brother in the same room. I felt foggy in my mind every day, and I wanted to puke every time I smelled coffee.

Do any of us ever rest properly? Do we put unnecessary pressure in our lives through too much activity? The book Margin lists lots of practical ways to restore margin (and rest) into our lives. Here are some of my favorites, in my own words:

  • Drink more water, eat more leafy green foods, and sleep 8 hours a night.
  • Cultivate friendships that uplift you.
  • Laugh more.
  • Have a healthy hope for your future.
  • Spend less time in front of the television.
  • Don’t be afraid to say no. “If there are one hundred good things to do and you can only do ten of them, you will have to say no ninety times,” the author says.
  • Unplug from technology occasionally.
  • Don’t live beyond your means financially. Be content with what God has given you.
  • Plan for free time. (Block off sections of the calendar to intentionally do nothing.)

The author also mentions enjoying anticipation of an event, and then relishing the memories of that event. Because our schedule is so full, we don’t have time to look forward to an event. We have no time to think fondly back on an event that was highly anticipated. Half the fun is looking forward to an event. If you have no down time, you can’t feel that anticipatory excitement. The event itself is just rushed through to cram in another activity. This is no way to live. Let’s all take a deep breath and live the life that God has called us to live.

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Creating Margin in Your Life: Part 2

Wednesday, October 10th, 2012

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As soon as my husband walked into the bedroom one evening, I yelled, “Power minus load equals margin!” I like to see the look of perplexity on my husband’s face when I say the punch line first without introduction. So I do it on purpose just to get a reaction out of him.

Unexpectedly, he said, “Power without load will blow your fuses.”

Now it was my turn to look perplexed.

“No, honey, I’m talking about this book, Margin. The author defines power and load:

  • Power is made up of factors such as skills, time, emotional strength, physical strength, spiritual vitality, finances, social supports, and education.
  • Load combines internal factors (such as personal expectations and emotional disabilities) and external factors (such as work, relational problems and responsibilities, financial obligations, and civic involvement.)

“When our load is greater than our power, we enter into negative margin status, that is, we are overloaded…

“When our power is greater than our load, however, we have margin.” I read this statement in a “ta-da” sort of way.

I immediately started listing ways that my husband was in negative margin status. He listened for a while until I paused. Then he said, “Let me know when you can fix that…” and walked away.

“There must be some way to fix it. Here is the formula. All we have to do is increase our power and decrease our load,” I shouted, since he was now in another room.

I grabbed a sheet of paper and began listing the load side of my life:

  • homeschooling
  • running a home business
  • paying bills
  • relieving pressure from my husband
  • cooking, cleaning, laundry
  • prayer
  • ministering to other people
  • strained relationships

Then I listed how to increase my power:

  • spending time with God, feasting on His Word and opening my heart up to God in silence
  • asking God what to do every moment, yielding authority to God
  • spending time with my husband, pouring into him, connecting, planning date nights and getaways, and thinking about what his priorities are and doing them
  • spending time bonding with my children, where our relationship feels solid and strong
  • improving my skills and knowledge through reading
  • exercising regularly through Zumba
  • connecting to my sisters and closest friend, who always encourage me in my walk with God
  • repairing any strained relationships through more humility on my part
  • rest

I encourage you to make your own lists of load and power, and try to increase your power, even if you can’t decrease your load.

(Stay tuned for Part 3, Practical Ways to Restore Margin in our Lives…)

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Creating Margin in Your Life: Part 1

Tuesday, October 9th, 2012

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How can we hear God with no margin in our lives? If we are so busy that we are hurrying from one activity to the next, multi-tasking all the while, where is the down time where we mull over what God is teaching us? The busy junk that takes up our time crowds out the most important priorities, which are down time with God, down time with our spouses, and down time with our kids, when we can talk about things that matter and do things that energize us.

This summer I read a book I had been meaning to read for years–Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives by Richard A. Swenson, M.D. The medical doctor who wrote the book took a year “off” to go to Africa, where he performed over 500 surgeries. For some strange reason, he felt rested and like he was on vacation. That’s because people in rural places in third world countries have something that we lack: margin. They sit beside the street and watch the sunset and talk to a neighbor in an unhurried way. There is no stress. Sure, people don’t have enough to eat, but at least they have deep relationships with other people and have lots of leisure time.

When the author of the book returned to the United States, he once again re-entered the hurried, stress-filled world of high pressure. He decided to cut back to part time as a doctor so that he could actually live a real life instead of working continuously until he plopped into bed every night. He and his wife decided to live on a smaller income on purpose so that they could breathe.

Every so often we must ask ourselves what is crowding our lives. Being without a plan is one reason that people never get around to doing what they really intend to do. Without a plan, the day fills itself up automatically, and often nothing of value is accomplished. What else squanders time?

  • Constantly checking e-mail or Facebook.
  • Not dealing with conflicts between children at the beginning. Letting the conflict escalate and not dealing with heart issues. (You can do this right by throwing yourself upon God, asking for wisdom, and taking whatever time it takes to do it right, releasing the other items on your agenda as not as important. God will always come through and give you help if you throw yourself upon Him for real, wanting His wisdom and not your own. James 1:5)
  • Not deciding ahead of time what you will do first, to make sure it gets done in your day.
  • Kids’ activities, maybe too many. Ask God before signing the kids up for sports, instruments, or other lessons. Only God knows if the child needs it, or if relaxing down time is of higher value.
  • Doing our chores in a haphazard manner so that they take up our whole day instead of just running in the background on auto-pilot because of good habits that have been established.
  • Spending time on the phone during the day that is not related to a home business or an emergency. If you call back anybody near the end of the day when you are fatigued rather than during your productive time, the phone call will energize you instead of stealing the time you should have spent with the Lord or doing what you know you ought to be doing.

These are just a few things I thought of off the top of my head that might flush our time down the toilet. We are accountable before God for the time He has given us. Why is it so crowded? Let’s start by crossing off everything that doesn’t matter and begin again with more space on our calendar.

(Stay tuned for Part 2, where I discuss the equation: Power minus load equals margin…)

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Catalysts for Prayer

Monday, October 8th, 2012

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A catalyst is something that causes or accelerates a chemical reaction, kind of like what starts a fire. What are the catalysts for prayer? What causes us to WANT to pray, and to be burdened to pray? In a recent sermon at my church, the pastor described three catalysts to prayer. While he was preaching, I was scribbling my own thoughts in every margin of my note page. This is the result of all my scribbling:

  1. Testimony – A sense of what is happening in people’s lives will give us a desire to pray for them. If we are disconnected from people’s lives and don’t care about them, we will never feel burdened to pray for them. I have to say, though, that sometimes in my own life, I would force myself to pray for someone who was injuring me, and God gave me a supernatural love for those people BECAUSE of prayer, not the other way around. So if you don’t love people, pray anyway, and the love will come. That’s what’s wrong with us. We just don’t love each other. Someone is going through a crisis, and the reason we forget to pray for them is that we are self-absorbed. But once we care about and have a burden for people, we want to know what is happening in their lives, and we have joy to get updates on their lives because our hearts are connected to theirs.
  2. Trial – Most trials are spiritual attacks from the enemy. God uses prayer to grow us. We acquire perseverance and patience through waiting upon the Lord through trials. We learn to trust God. We learn our own weaknesses and limitations. Trials drive us to depend on God and be emptied of our own resources so that He can swoosh through us and transform us. When nothing is wrong, for some reason our necks are stiff and we don’t walk by the Spirit. I wish this wasn’t true. This is why prosperity in our lives is usually a curse.
  3. Thanksgiving – The more we hear about how God is working in people’s lives, the more thanksgiving we give to God in prayer, because we feel so much joy that God answered our prayers. In my previous church, I was interconnected spiritually with almost every woman in the church. I spent two hours after church just catching up with what God was doing in the lives of those women. I was burdened with their requests and I cared so much that I sometimes wept before the Lord on their behalf. ALL of us ought to care about each other in such a way that we can feel the living pulse of the church. It is Christ emanating from each individual, however imperfectly we do it. God gets glory and thanksgiving and praise when we are praying for each other. He answers our prayers because we are focused on what matters in life, which is the spiritual growth of other believers in our lives. I am so blessed when I spiritually interact with other members in the body of Christ, because they provide what I am lacking. Christ in them is manifested in a way that I need, and Christ in me is what they need. And the result is joy.

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