What size are your margins?

When I read blogs I want to re-read and think more about, I often copy and paste them into a word document and print them out. I want to use as little paper as possible, so I delete all pictures, I set the line spacing to single and I set the margins to 'narrow'. I try to fit it all onto one sheet of paper.

I'm realising that's what I've done with my life too. I've crammed as much as I can in. The margins are narrow. There is no extra spacing between lines or paragraphs. No room to breathe between school and after school clubs, homework, piano practice etc etc.

How much can you get onto one page - one day?

Then when the 'extras' come along, they have to be crammed in too - shoe horned into the narrow margins.

Then all of a sudden, an email telling you someone's moved your crayons, and you flip. It's the last straw.

They're just crayons for goodness sake.

They can be moved back.

But not if there are no margins.

Or your child has fallen over and scraped their knee. But there are no margins for long cuddles to soothe the tears. So they just have to be got into the car as quickly as possible so that you're not late for the next thing.

Since when did getting to the next thing become so toweringly important?

My inbox gets crammed with more email than I can read or process.  I have 170 'starred' emails that I'm supposedly going to go back to when I have time.

Mail through my door goes straight to recycling (unless it's a lovely handwritten letter from a friend of course😀).  I skim read blogs and think 'I must take time to reflect on that' but of course that time never comes.

And so now my body is telling me: slow down.

My heart rate, timed by God to have margins to speed up when the pressure is on, has got stuck in 5th gear. I've spent so much time stressed. So much time always trying to do ten more things in my day, that top speed has become normal and then there's nothing left to give.

One of my husband's missions has been to impress upon me that rest is not only good but also important and necessary.  He points out that it actually makes it into the ten commandments. God doesn't just think it's a good idea. It's so important He COMMANDS us to rest one day in seven.

But, in Christian-ese that has translated into - get to church early on Sunday so you can set up for Sunday school,  take the Sunday school class, speak to 7 other people about various church-related activities you are planning, serve the tea and coffee and make sure you've said encouraging and supportive things to everyone you know is going through a hard time.  It's exhausting all this 'rest'!

So, what do good margins look like?  I don't know yet but I want to discover and I'm on a journey, a mission to find out. I want to go back to discovering that being a Christian is good news, not exhausting, demanding news.

I think it's going to involve not letting myself be intimidated by all the things everyone else has posted on Facebook. It'll mean being content with having less and doing less than others. And, Heaven - forbid, it may involve even saying 'no' when I'm not actually stressed to the max but because I don't want to get to 'stressed to the max'.

I've read Psalm 23 in a new light lately:

'He makes me lie down in green pastures'

Sometimes, when He's watched us strive and rush about for long enough, He lets us get to a point where we have to rest.

Thank You Good Shepherd for making me lie down and rest. Thank you that You are doing a good work of restoring my soul. I praise You. I pray for my brothers and sisters reading this post that they too would be set free to simply lie down and enjoy the blessings of the green pastures You bring in our lives.  It doesn't all have to be striving. Amen.

Too many processes

The other day I wanted to turn the laptop on quickly and to quickly show my son some things online. However, the laptop, having sat in its bag for maybe a month or so, took a bit of 'waking up'.  Eventually, it showed the desk top as normal but when I double clicked on the web browser icon, it took a while to come up.  Once on the internet, for every click the laptop was laboriously slow to respond.

The computer was trying to look like everything was fine on the surface but there was clearly something going on in the background - probably downloading or installing some update or other.

The computer was trying to show me a web browser and let me look around on the internet but everything was hampered by the fact that it was also trying to do a load of other things behind the scenes.

It struck me that this is a picture of where I'm at just now.  Everything seems hard work and slow. I find it hard to think and process stuff. It's hard to be as productive as I normally am.

There are too many processes going on!

God is showing me that right now is a time for slowing down and stopping lots of things I've been doing.  Not because I can't do them but because I have too many processes going on.

I've been trying to figure out  who I am, what I believe, how I came to be who I am and where I am, and what things should look like going forward, how to parent well, how to know God and love God well etc etc.

This is taking a lot of processing power.

I'm beginning to realise I can't process all that while also running full tilt at life. The result is that I'm not doing well at either.

So I've taken a step back from lots of the things I was doing. I've taken the pressure off myself to achieve so much. I'm letting my days be less crammed. I'm giving myself space and time to take longer over things and to have some time to rest.

On the surface it may not look like much is happening.  It just looks like I became a sluggish web browser.

But God is doing something. Something very important is going on under the surface, in my hardware. But it's going to take some time.

So I'm learning to patient. Mostly with myself. Which I don't find easy.

But I think that the fundamental downloads of knowing God, knowing who I am and what His desire and plans are for my life, are worth shutting down the frantic rush of running groups and keeping on top of every resolution I ever made.

Sometimes when the computer gets 'stuck' you have to go into Task Manager and force a few applications or processes to shut down in order to free the computer up to do something else.

That's what I'm doing just now.

I encourage you to consider what 'processes' need a bit of time and space to complete and whether there are any processes that just need to be 'shut down' for now.

Thank you God that You are our good IT Administrator. We trust You to download what is good, helpful and important for our lives.  Help us see what is cluttering up our minds and processing power and to be prepared to clear the space for what You have for us.  Amen.