Capribythelake’s Weblog

A couple of years ago I listened to a podcast by Pastor Matt Chandler.  He talked all about Margin, and It was very significant to me, and a lesson that I really took in.  I am constantly living without margin.

This morning I woke up to a house that is a total disaster.  I thought to myself,  “How the heck did this happen?”  Well, I know how it happened.  It happened because nothing was ever really clean before, I was just barely maintaining- doing only what was absolutely necessary for us to move around and function.  I had no margin in my home, and if anything were to happen (like yesterday we were gone most of the day, and the day before that I didn’t feel well) then all of the sudden I am in disaster, can’t breathe there is so much mess zone.  I mean, when you have to wash a dish to eat, and wash a shirt to get dressed, things aren’t okay.

Money is another huge area of need for margin.  I mean, its so easy to not save, and spend everything you have, and then when that happens you totally always have the “the car just broke down, or my daughter just grew two shoe sizes in one month and needs new shoes” unexpected sort of expenses.

Or how about Spiritual margin?  Sometimes, I will not have spent any time with the Lord, and then something really hard hits, and I struggle with pouring out my heart to the Lord, because I feel like I have to “catch up” first.  I usually do “catch up” and for the most part, I think the really hard thing happened to draw me closer to Him (at least that’s one reason).  It is SO nice though, when something does hit, and I have margin in my relationship with God, where we are already having a never.ending.conversation and I can just jump in and be held by Him.

Or, what about your marriage?  There might be a week that goes by that I don’t connect so well with my husband, or we are just really busy, and don’t make time for each other.  Then- we will have one of those oh.so.normal little arguments, but it will turn into a huge fight, because we aren’t connected, we have no margin.

Sometimes this lack of margin is forced on you, and for us it always seems like once we get one area of life to have margin, another area lacks it, but I think its worth the effort to not just get done what needs to be done, but to do more then needs to be done, so you have margin, and you can take a hit without falling apart.

You can apply this “rule of margin” to most things in life.  Well, I’m going to try and dig myself out of my whole, and create some “bumpers” for my life.

What areas in your life needs some margin?