It’s 8:45am and I’m (surprisingly) perfectly content letting the kids sleep in.

After 17 years in the classroom, I often find it difficult to deviate from my schedule.   We’d normally be finished with Bible and most of History at 8:45.

We’ve been at home almost 2 years now and I’m learning to embrace the flexibility home schooling provides.  We’re diligent and I can justify days like today… days when I’m particularly aware of how important a little white space (as Lysa Terkeurst calls it) is in our lives.  In the hustle and bustle of 2015, I’m more and more convinced that Margins Really Do Matter.

Our home church hosted The Tabernacle Experience the week before Easter.  It was an amazing event.  Not only did I enjoy every minute of it, I know our community was blessed.  I’m so grateful our family was able to serve!

Monday was the first day I’d been at home more than an hour here and there.  After 10 days of quick ins and outs the house was a mess, the lawn was overgrown, and the laundry was in need of attention.  I’m not sure when the kids showered last and they were super grouchy Monday and Tuesday.   To be perfectly honest with you, I’ve been in a grouchy cleaning frenzy the last 2 days, too.

The house is clean, the laundry’s done… it’s time to rest.

I’m in the middle of Lysa Terkerurst’s book  Unglued.  She addresses this subject arguing, “The Bible makes it very clear that we are to pursue rest.  We are to hit the pause button on life once a week and guard our rest.  Guard it fiercely.  Guard it intentionally.  Guard it even if our schedules beg us not to.” She sums up her thoughts with a simple, “Where there is a lack of rest, there is an abundance of stress.”

Our Senior Pastor finished a series last month on Spiritual Disciplines.  Don comes from a printing background and explained the idea of rest in a unique way.  He spoke of margins on a page as being important to visually make sense of the text.  If every bit of white space on a page were printed on, the message would be lost.

These encouragements to rest have begged a powerful examination of my life.  Do I allow for some white space in my days?  Do I take time to process in such a way that I daily 1) worship and seek The Lord, 2) remember the beauty of these precious days with my family, 3) and build relationships with those around me?

Pastor Don used another powerful example of “margins” in our life.

Consider the traffic flow of a busy intersection.  The yellow light imposes “margin” that prevents accidents.  However, when we use every second of the green and yellow lights and a tiny bit of the red and the other drivers at the same intersection do as well, accidents will surely happen.

If you’re anything like me, you use all of the “green”, all of the “yellow” and a tiny bit of the “red” in your life as well.  I believe I’ll take today to hit the brakes and enjoy the scenery.  I hope you will as well.

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For more from Marea, check out Me and Thee Studios’ faith based leveled readers for 1st-2nd graders at http://www.meandtheestudios.com/early-reader-collection.html