In Defense of the Margin People → A More Beautiful Life Collective

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Do you feel frazzled – like you are stuck in the rat race of the modern day’s focus on productivity? In today’s episode, we are talking about why you need margin in your life to hear God’s voice and recognize the needs of those around you. Then, we are going to talk about the special ability of those who have more space in their lives to truly serve and minister to others. We need more margin people.

S1E40 – What is Theology Proper?: 3 Questions to Help You Know God Better – A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast

We have to start our study of theology by looking at Theology Proper. This is the study of who God is, what God is like, and what God’s nature is. As we look at theology proper, we are focusing primarily on how knowing God more leads to (1) worship and (2) a deeper love. Our study of God should inspire us to know and love God more and more. This podcast will dive into 3 questions that will help you to know God better to start your study of Theology Proper. The Deuteronomy 34 passage is actually EXODUS* 34:5-7. Sorry! View the full post here. Get the Doctrine and Theology Cheat Sheet Here. Get a list of the names of God here. Get a copy of our personal statement of faith creation guide here. Get “Building Our Foundations: 10 Week Study” here. . Visit our Shop to get a copy of any of the resources mentioned in this episode: Read the full post here. I’m your host, Cayce Fletcher, and you can learn a little bit more about me here. While you’re here, would you consider leaving a comment, rating, or review? You can find our podcast, A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube. Subscribe to the blog for access to our latest content and some freebies. I love creating and sharing resources with you. You can find all of our resources at A More Beautiful Life Collective Shop. Keep creating a life you love, and cultivating your heart for God.

A Help in a Time of Trouble

When we first got married, Josh and I talked over our five-year plan. We had so many hopes and dreams. Little did we know, a year and a half later, we would be looking at a significant – not even halfway done – renovation, and we found out we were pregnant with our first. We had talked about homeschooling and me staying home, but it was too soon. What were we to do? We needed something, anything, to have a little more margin.

As we planned out the next year, we felt hopeless. It was 2020, and I couldn’t help but feel a little hopeless. All our best-laid plans had gone astray. That line, which is the namesake for the novel Of Mice a Men, comes from the lines in the following poem:

“But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,

In proving foresight may be vain:

The best-laid schemes of Mice and Men

          Gang aft agley,

And leave us naught but grief an’ pain,

          For promis’d joy!

Still, thou art blest, compared wi’ me!

The present only toucheth thee:

But Och! I backward cast my eye,

          On prospects drear!

An’ forward tho’ I canna see,

          I guess an’ fear!”
~ Robert Burns, from the poem “To a Mouse: On turning up her nest with a plow” (1785)

I felt like that little mouse. I had the best-laid plans as I said my vows and started a new marriage, in a new house, with a new job. As I started a new life, I had hopes and goals, but the Lord determined my steps, and those steps included circumstances that weren’t in the plan. But even in those circumstances, there was a glimmer of light.

Amid the (joyous) upheaval that comes with a little bundle of joy, one of the main challenges came in the form of childcare. When you are a two-income household, you have to figure out which sacrifices you are willing to make. Will you sacrifice not only wants but needs to have the luxury of time with your kids? Will you decide that first steps, first words, and first smiles are better seen through pictures rather than through eyes to keep your budget on comfortable terms?

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As a mom, you wrestle with these questions for your kids more than anyone else in the world. Whatever choice you make, you lose.

Staying home wasn’t in the cards with my first so started the long process of contemplating what we would do for childcare. As a friend once told me, you need to plan out childcare basically when you find out you are pregnant because it may take a year before a spot opens up in a good daycare facility.

It was at the moment of being overwhelmed with the decision of childcare that my parents stepped in to save the day. It was at that moment that the margin people stepped in.

The Margin People

Let’s back up for a minute and focus on who these margin people are.

Margins are important. When I taught ELA, I would teach my students about text features, including margins and white space. As students located and identified these features, we would try to include a conversation about the why behind these text features. What is the purpose of margin? Of white space? They seem kind of meaningless, but as my students could tell you, they exist to make the text on the page easier to read and the ideas easier to understand. Margins are important.

Incorporating margin in your life is as important as incorporating margins on the page. Margin is the space of sabbath rest that keeps you focused, energized, and disciplined. It allows you to mentally and physically rest, stopping to savor the moment. It also allows you to reflect. Without margin in your life, you may feel like a hamster caught in a squeaky wheel, feverishly running towards nowhere. That pace of frantic movement keeps you from stopping and assessing if this situation is where you want to be. You need margin to quiet your mind and quiet your heart. Normally, it’s in those margin moments that you can solve the problems of life that you have been facing. You can read more about Margin in your life in Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives by Richard Swenson.

A call for self-care is fairly prevalent today. I’ve recently been reading through The Whole Life: 52 Weeks of Biblical Self-Care. In this book, there is a focus on proverbial wisdom that we all know is important for us to do. Exercise, get enough sleep, and create quiet times in our lives. I don’t think that repeating the need for self-care is essential. We all know that we should do that.

What I find important is how this idea of margin spills over into other parts of our everyday life. I’ve become fascinated with the idea of how structures and organizations develop and grow. Just like a living thing, there are certain elements that groups of people need to thrive. In my context, I am primarily looking at the most basic structure – that of the family group. But, I think that what helps families to develop, grow, and weather the storms of life can help us to understand our churches, friend groups, and businesses.

In the last months at my job, I felt extreme amount of overwhelm. I had reached past the point of just feeling stressed. It became a certain amount of bone-deep exhaustion. There was no break, no tap out. You just had to roll out of bed and do the same thing again the next day. We’ve all felt like this – whether you are a mom, a caregiver, an employee, or a volunteer. All of those responsibilities compound until there is nothing else in us to give. We need margin in our own lives. But, we also have a life full of responsibilities. I was reading a book that bemoaned the way that men write about self-care. It mentioned the recommendation to head to the gym right after work for an hour-long workout. (Because nothing else needs to get done between the witching hour of 5-6 right?) Sometimes you can’t just check out the responsibilities that you are doing to get the self-care that you need.

This is when I began to consider the role of people who shoulder responsibilities that are not their own to make life a little easier, a little more productive, and a little more God-glorifying for someone else. This is a margin person. They are the people that society has rejected as not being productive because they have chosen to step out of the realm of productivity in the world’s sense. Generally, they do not have a 9-5. They do not have a plethora of responsibilities. But, what they do have is a sense that they will use their time well. Time becomes a gift that they can lavish on those who need it. And, in a time-starved world, that is a pretty amazing thing to do.

Those in the Margins are the Most Important

If I gave you a sheet of paper and asked you to make it smaller, you would probably take your scissors and start cutting the margins off. Those white spaces with no productive use of words seem like the part of the page that makes the most sense to cut off. However, the truth about margins is much more counterintuitive than we think.

If we lose all the margins on the page, the words run together. The words become less effective by cramming them together, rather than more effective. Similarly, when we have no margin in our life, our work ‘runs together’ to its detriment. We become less productive when we try to work without rest. Rhythms of work and rest is something that culture has become more attuned to. The ‘productivity at all cost’ mindset of the 1800’s and 1900’s has given way to a focus on work-life balance. Even in Christian circles, where we are commanded to rest on the Sabbath, we often don’t actively try to practice regular rest periods in our lives.

In the same vein, we also frequently don’t consider how sabbath laws were not just relegated to the individual and how the productivity and rest cycle translates to people groups. Sabbath laws in the Bible were not just about the individual resting on the sabbath. It also commanded a communal, societal sabbath every seven years and on the jubilee year. It was so much more than just not working. Sabbath and rest changed everything. The margins gave the Israelites bookends to their lives. It made their life vivid and beautiful.

These sabbath laws, laws of self-imposed boundaries on work to mandate rest, also benefit those in society who were not able to be as productive. One example of this that I have found is the children and adults in society who are unable to work. Yes, the Bible commands that able-bodied ‘if you don’t work, you can’t eat.’ But, it also says that pure and undefiled religion is to take care of the widows and orphans in their distress. Those widows and orphans are the people in society who are unable to truly be productive members. They need the care of others to survive. These people are the margin people. The people in society are overlooked and undervalued because they do not add a dollar amount to the economy.

We would think that we have changed how we treat these people in modern times, but I would argue that these margin people are more undervalued now. The categories have just shrunk with women going into the workforce and people working longer into their golden years. Children are expendable. (They are frequently just seen as barriers to a successful career – in fact, NPR did a series a few years ago on people who received an abortion and didn’t regret it. The central reason is that it would have limited their career and financial prospects. This was a greater ‘evil’ in their eyes than refusing to give life to the child in their belly.) The same is true for those who have retired, as they are pushed to the fringes. What happens to someone’s mental well-being when their reason for living – their work – is taken away from them?

This idea has come into full focus for me as I become a margin person. Choosing to stay home means choosing to step outside the ‘productive’ part of society to be home with my kids. In society, stay-at-home moms are looked down upon, shamed, and viewed as less than, and I would argue it’s because they don’t play by the rules that make this capitalistic, materialistic society run. Rejecting an income for the chance to have time is countercultural just like valuing the margins of rest is countercultural.

I would even argue that the margin people are one of the most valuable people in society because they help to make life run more smoothly for everyone. If we go back to my childcare issue, before I stayed home, my parents were the margin people. Because they were retired, they had the time to be available and present to watch my kids. They also were able to volunteer at church and the community schools, stepping in to fulfill needs that working people were too busy to do.

Margin people can help bear the loads in other people’s ministry. They walk hand-in-hand towards others’ goals and help them reach them. They raise others up with a quiet voice that says, “I got this. What else do you need?” They are the servant leaders who help to disciple and mentor others. They are truly the hands and feet of Christ because of their ability to notice where the needs are in their homes, families, and communities. On top of this, they have the emotional energy and space to fill that need.

Margin people walk in the path of Jesus, another margin person, and, in doing so, they leave a kingdom wake behind them. We desperately need more of these people in our everyday lives. People who notice, who care, who serve.

The truth is, when we value the margin people, we all can live more productive and meaningful lives.

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