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Margins
“Life in modern-day America is essentially devoid of time and space. Not the Star Trek kind. The sanity kind. Chronic overloading is the culprit: margin is the cure. Margin is the space between our load and our limits and is related to our reserves and resilience. It is a buffer, a leeway, a gap; the place we go to heal, to relate, to reflect, to recharge our batteries, to focus on the things that matter most. Margin restores what culture has taken away: time to listen, strength to care, space to love” (from the book Margin by Richard A. Swenson, MD).
I don’t know about you, but it seems like there’s just so much to do in the busy world. For my wife Cathy and me, that’s with both our kids out of the house! About a month ago I told her that we needed to find balance in our lives. It all changed on March 2.
That was the day Cathy slipped on the ice in our driveway and hit her head, causing significant injury to her brain. Over two days filled with the emergency room, doctors, an MRI, and admittance to North Memorial Hospital, we learned she suffered severe trauma from the impact, resulting in bruising and bleeding on
her brain.
Through it all, we had prayer support from our families, our church family here at Grace, our small group, Cathy’s colleagues, and from many friends.
Other than losing her sense of taste and smell, we were blessed that she did not need surgery and with medication and time, she should be just fine. We will continue to offer this up in prayer, hoping for a complete return of both.
Here’s what I realized. During Cathy’s time in the hospital, I was struck by the fact that there was margin. Before the accident, we were out of balance and there was no white space on the pages of our lives. Sitting by Cathy’s bedside, there was white space. It was like a page that had only three words inscribed in the center: Cathy, brain injury.
At that point nothing else really mattered: work, to-do lists, bills to pay, a house to clean, a dog to feed, clothes to wash, dinner to cook. It wasn’t written on the page of my life at the time.
What did happen through this scary, traumatic experience was my awareness of blessings that have come from it. The blessings of prayers from many people have been comforting, and the chance to communicate my reliance on God to people who haven’t yet come to faith. Who knows, God may use Cathy’s accident to nudge them closer to Him.
Yes, I am realistic that we need to be mindful of deadlines, commitments, schedules and the other responsibilities, but we also need to stop and remember what’s really important. For those of us who profess to a saving faith in Jesus Christ, it means taking time with Him. Sometimes He wants to remind us that nothing else matters except reliance on Him; to write GOD in the middle of the page of our lives with lots of margin to be a disciple of Jesus.
For His Kingdom,
Pastor Chris