morning thoughts on margin and life

It is amazing what a little sunshine will do for your perspective!  We have been spending our days outside (when it isn’t raining at least!) and it has been wonderful for my soul, as well as wonderful for my kiddos.  It reminds me why I love summer so much, we are able to just relax and not stress and instead have fun!


The book that I am reading right now (and talked a bit about yesterday) is called Say Goodbye to Survival Mode.  I am not far into the book, but it has already gotten me to think about my daily schedule, what I want to accomplish on a daily basis, and how to grant myself some grace when I don’t check everything off that to-do list, because lets be honest, I never check everything off my to-do list.


One concept that the author has talked about is scheduling margin into our day, so that when those little emergencies (or big ones!) come up, we are able to handle them without thinking about the 5 other things that we now will not accomplish.  


Now, I love to make schedules, but I never seem to follow them.  So, instead I started creating rhythms for our day, which seemed to work so much better, but still I was waiting for everyday to be the perfect day.  Unfortunately, that never happened.  


The process of taking out some of the unimportant tasks off my to-do list and replacing them with a blank block of time, that really appeals to me.  I think that as summer approaches it will be easier to start adding that margin.  We all want the lazy days of summer.


One of the quotes that really resonated with me at the beginning of this book was the following:


Stop letting people manipulate you into a miserable existence.  Stop doing things just because you feel obligated to do them.  Stop doing things because you’re afraid of what people might think of you if you don’t do them.  Stop over-committing yourself.


Now, it may seem a bit harsh, especially that first sentence – which I almost excluded – but I think sometimes we need that shock of something harsh to really break into our minds and make us think.  It certainly made me think a bit more about what I am doing, what we fill our days with, what I want to fill our days with.  I think that the people referred to in the above quote can be people from the outside, but can also be me.  I want to make sure that we have lots of fun activities, I want to make sure that my kids are getting the best homeschool education I can give them, and sometimes I really just need to step back and let the kids be kids and let me sit to knit or write or read.  


Will it be easy to create margin?  Probably not, but it is something I am going to work on, for myself as well as my kids.


Do you schedule margin into your everyday?  Do you feel the need to agree to just.one.more.thing often?