(This is a photo Phil took while on his mission's trip in Peru in May...God's amazing creation!!)
I'm linking up with Linny again on her Simplify Saturday. One of the easiest and yet insidiously difficult ways to simplify our family's life is to 1) Just Say No and to 2) Just Stay Home.
Years ago I read a book, Margin, by Richard Swenson, which profoundly affected my outlook on my time. Swenson is a medical doctor who decided to practice medicine only half-time in order to allow for "margin" in his life. He quotes in his book,
"Margin is the opposite of overload. (In the United States)We don't want to be underachievers, so we fill our schedules uncritically. It is rare to see a life prescheduled to only 80 percent, leaving a margin for responding to the unexpected that God sends our way." pg. 92
He goes on to give this example..."I think back to the nine years our family enjoyed on the lower slopes of the Kilimanjoaro in East Africa. There, while our work was sometimes tense, the pace surely resembled more a walk than a run. There were plenty of green trees to sit under and a conscience that allowed us to sit down under them,' comments former missionary Mildred Tengom. 'We weren't constantly being told that our value depended on how 'active' or 'involved' we were." pg. 96
Swenson recommends leaving at least a 20% margin in the areas of your emotional energy, physical energy, time and finances. Unfortunately I find, so much of the time, our family is going Mach 3 with our hair on fire, instead. It's hard to be obedient to the Holy Spirit's prompting to help our neighbor when our schedule is SO full or when we're physically exhausted because we're TOO "scheduled." (Can you tell the Lord is using this post to "remind" me of the truth again...ahem:)
We try to say "no" to over scheduling and overcommitments, so we have margin in our life.
2) The 2nd way we try to simplify our life is to just stay home. I know we are a little spoiled because we live on a really fun small family farm. (This farm is an answer to a prayer that I prayed for OVER 15 years. It's a really cool story of God's amazing, abundant provision. I think I will blog about that another day!!)
Back to simplifying...I find that when our family stays home....
we spend less money
we connect with each other by spending time together playing games, riding the horses, doing farm projects, etc;
we're not exhausted by having the children participating in multiple different activities each
we can invite other families over to the farm and enjoy their company.
Different things work for different families but simplifying for us means saying "No" to outside commitments that steal our time and keep us away from home and each other. Most importantly I pray we'll get better and better "at leaving a margin for responding to the unexpected that God sends our way."
This photo is of a sunset in the Keyes taken by friends of ours - Bill & Nadine Loftis.
2 comments:
Great reminders Elaine and thought-provoking. A question here so maybe you will answer here so others may benefit as well: other than horse riding lessons, do your children participate in other activities - dance, sports, music lessons, local theater, etc? I am so stressed just thinking of school starting and the activities. By the way, we DO limit activities, but maybe NOT enough!?
Jan, That's a great question. The only outside activities our girls participate in our swim lessons at some point. We want them to all be safe swimmers. Other than that...AnnaGrace takes piano lessons at our home (so we don't have to disrupt everyone else's schedule). Torie and Michaela each played volleyball for a few years, but only because Phil coached their teams, so it was a "family" sport and he could drive them both ways. Michaela took six weeks of fencing this summer (a one time summer-fun acitivity that didn't disrupt our homeschool schedule.) I know we are VERY unusual in limiting their activities so much, but they don't seem to mind. Since we homeschool, I just can't be away from home all the time driving everyone to different activities. I think if the girls didn't all ride horses on our farm, we'd let them each pick ONE activity to participate in?? It works for us but may not be the best solution for everyone. (Give Hudson a hug for us...and all the other sweet Bryants too:)
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