Margins

Our family would like to go on a camping trip over a weekend sometime this summer. Will thought it would be fun to rent an RV, head to a local lake, and see what it was like to spend the night in a camper. This sounds like a glorious idea. I checked our calendar, and...

EVERY SINGLE WEEKEND is booked for our entire summer, from when school gets out to when school starts again for the kids. EVERY. SINGLE. WEEKEND.

At first, I thought there must be a mistake. I only had a few work trips, the kids only had a few overnight trips, we only had a few family vacations, and we only had a few people visiting. How could we possibly not have space for an overnight at the lake?!

I looked again. Technically, Saturday, June 15th is available, but Annika will just have been gone on a mission trip to South Dakota all week and my parents are coming for the day, so that is not the ideal weekend. We could also squeeze in Saturday, June 22nd, but Vacation Bible School at church starts on Sunday and Will and I have traditionally needed the weekend to prepare.

But that was it. No other weekends until the kids start school on August 14th are even a possibility for an RV trip to the lake.

When we made commitments for the summer, I looked at each activity as one discrete plan at a time. These obligations rarely overlapped with each other. But I neglected to look at the big picture, of how these discrete commitments would end up stacked on top of each other, crammed into the calendar, leaving us no margins to breathe.

Margins are important. I discovered this sentiment when we decluttered our house over Christmas. We had so many books piled in the corner we bought another bookcase. Then we did something revolutionary - we bought an additional new bookcase, to give us margins. We no longer had to cram everything into every space - we had room to breathe. And these margins gave us space for making new acquisitions. Rather than trying to pack books into an already-full bookcase, we could now spread them out into luxuriously empty shelves.

It is too late for our summer plans. But next time, I want to look at our summer plans as a whole and not only whether there is an open slot. I want to breathe. I want to have room to make new plans, or do nothing at all. I want to have margins.