My children are working on writing research papers and one of the things I asked them to do was to leave a wide margin and double space. This allowed room for me to make corrections and add thoughts on their papers. It would in turn also make those thoughts and corrections easier for them to read and understand. This got me thinking about how important it is to leave margins in our lives. So often we completely fill our days with THINGS, rushing from one activity to the next, never allowing a margin for errors or corrections. If basketball practice ends at 4:00 and we have to be at dance at 4:00 there is no margin. I need to leave room for the child to change clothes, get a drink, eat a snack, get to the car, take into account the coaches need for last minute communications after practice and my drive time.
Some days, some activities require more margins than others. Our Mondays require a large margin, to the point that I do not require normal school work to be done. My nieces come early on Monday mornings. Three extra breakfasts to make, three extra children to dress, two heads of beautiful very long hair to comb and a young toddler to chase removes any time I would have to help dmd and dys with any of their work. If it is our turn to host a fellowship night for small group I will have to have dinner started early and in the crock pot because we have coop on Mondays which starts at 12:15. To build in margin we arrive at coop between 11:15 and 11:30 and eat our lunch there. Coop is over at 3:20 but again I have to build in margin. I know that I will have to clean up my classroom, find my children, chat with a friend and transfer my nieces back to their mommy. I don't ever plan on leaving at 3:20. We have small group on Monday evenings. I don't plan anything between coop and small group because I am worn out at this point and if I did I would arrive at small group feeling less than pleasant.
Building in margins helps me to arrive to activities on time and prepared WITHOUT STRESS! When we don't have margins we have stress, we feel pressured, and we are not able to enjoy the very things we signed up to do. The thing that could be fun becomes work. No one likes work so it becomes the thing we complain about and eventually need to quit because we can not handle the stress that is caused by it.
One of the ways that we build in margins begins when we are assessing a new activity. We only allow the kids a certain number of activities. By starting out with a limited amount of activity and a known rule regarding the limit, activities that are not worthwhile are immediately eliminated. Our rule is one outside activity and one church activity. When we are determining a new activity we have to take into account everyone in the families schedule. I don't just look at the individual because the individual is going to affect the entire family unit. This goes for us as the adults in the family as well. If Mr. has no margin in his schedule then when I need help with something like the infamous physics incident of last week, he won't be available. When the children were younger and I was home schooling as well as working full time in our store, having that margin meant that I could not volunteer for very many activities for myself. It ruled out bible studies that I desperately wanted to go to. It meant not helping in children's ministry at church. At one time, it even meant that I was unable to work as a volunteer at a crisis pregnancy center even though this was something I loved doing a couple times a month. We give up good things to experience better things. In this case we give up good activities for margin and less stress. More time people and less time for activities.
