The Space In Between

Ever feel like you’ve reached or exceeded your limit?

That life, and all that comes with it, is a bit heavier these days?

If this resonates, you’re not alone.

Many of us are overloaded. It’s not a lack of anything, it’s actually too much of everything, even good things. Even though we may need to be less places these days, the weight of our world and its obligations have almost made it impossible to rest. As everything continues to bleed together, boundaries are harder to define and margin is harder to protect. 

Our world continues to bombard us with messages that “more” or “better” and “now” will satisfy, but all these well-intentioned messages can leave us overwhelmed and feeling like we are coming up short. You’d think with so many things to make our lives simpler, we’d have more margin, not less.

We understand margin is important in business profit. We use margin to frame words on a page or white space to highlight a picture, but we are hard pressed to let margin exist into our schedules. Rest feels unproductive. Idle feels boring. Slow feels lazy and open space on the schedule feels irresponsible. Silence feels scary. We crowd out and fill up every white space so that we don’t have to feel what the emptiness brings. 

But there is a different way of being. 

Margin, best defined by Dr. Swenson, is the “space between our load and our limits.” This month at The Oaks, we are talking about creating more margin in life. Margin isn’t a just a great idea or a self-help concept. It’s not a luxury. We are made for it. We need it now more than ever.   

Do you know what the difference is between a professional athlete and an olympian? An Olympian rests with the same discipline as they work. They understand rest is just as important as practice. Moments of intentional rest, or margin, allow us to become stronger, smarter, and ultimately better.

Margin creates space for peace, relationships, dreaming, love, time, breath, clarity, art, control, agency, and health. It’s goodness for goodness sake. Margin is the space we find what we’ve been chasing with overloading our life all along. 

So join us as we take a closer look at the idea of margin and create space for more margin this month.