Margin to Margin
Why grace and creativity need the white space of your life
I've been quiet for a few weeks. The transition back to Johannesburg and into less transient living situation filled every available line — logistics, storage, packing, unpacking, banking, cell phones – the hundred small decisions that come with resettling. In the middle of it, I noticed something I've watched in other people for years, now happening in me. The fuller my days got, the less I could actually think. Not think harder. I was thinking hard all the time. I just couldn't think clearly.
The page with no margins
Picture a page of writing where the words run right to the paper's edge, top to bottom, no space between the lines, no break between paragraphs. Every word is there. Nothing has been removed. And yet it's exhausting to read, and almost impossible to absorb.
The white space was never decoration. It was the part that made the words usable.
We understand this perfectly on a page and forget it entirely in life.
We fill every gap. The queue becomes scrolling time. The drive becomes a phone call. The evening becomes catching up on what didn't get done. Rest gets scheduled somewhere after everything else, which means it doesn't get scheduled at all.
And here's what that does: a mind under constant load stays locked in narrow, task-solving mode. It never drops into the slower, wandering state where insight, perspective, and creativity have room to breathe. That's why your good ideas ambush you in the shower, on a walk, in the ten minutes before sleep. It's not a coincidence. That's the only white space you left.
Meanwhile, the narrowing does its own damage. Attention tightens. The thing directly in front of you swells until it fills the whole frame. You fixate on the problem, replay the conversation, rehearse the worry. Anxiety is remarkably good at convincing us it's a form of preparation. Mostly it's just a full page with no margin.
You can be busy and lost at the same time
This is the trap that people can fall into. A full life feels like a purposeful life. If every hour is spoken for, surely we're getting somewhere, right? But hyper-focus and fixation don't hold you on course. They drive you off it. Because the things that matter most — a relationship that needs attention, a quiet dissatisfaction you've been tolerating, a sense that God has been saying something you haven't slowed down enough to hear — none of them shout. They don't compete well against the urgent. They only surface in the space.
Fill the page margin to margin, and you won't notice you've drifted. You'll just be very, very busy while it happens.
Rest as something you're given, not something you earn
"He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul." (Psalm 23:2–3)
He makes me lie down. There's a kindness in that word, and a mild indignity too. Sometimes we don't choose the pasture. We arrive there through illness, exhaustion, or a season that takes the decision out of our hands. (There's a saying in the life coaching world: give yourself rest, or your body will force you to...) Notice the order, though. The lying down comes first. The restoration comes after. We keep trying to reverse it — to feel restored enough to justify resting — and it simply doesn't work that way. My daughter often reminds me that you don't earn rest. I have to remind myself to practice what I teach...all the time!
Where to start
Margin isn't a retreat or a holiday. It's small, unallocated space held on purpose.
Leave the gap empty. The ten minutes between things is not waste to be reclaimed. It's where the last thing gets processed.
Take one thing off the page this week. One. Not to be more efficient with the time — to leave it unfilled.
Notice the fixation loop. When you've turned something over and over with no movement, more thinking isn't the answer. Walk. Sleep. Let the wider mind work.
Let something be enough before it's finished. Most of us don't rest because we're waiting for a completion that isn't coming.
Where is your life running margin to margin right now? And what would it cost you to leave one edge unharvested this week?
If you haven't yet thought about doing a complete RESET on yourself, just like you do for your phone...maybe this is a good time. Online, self-driven, the Life Reset Transformation Journey is a personal retreat you can do often. Pay once, use it for life. Life Reset will help you do an honest inventory of YOU and find the space to get back on track toward what you truly want.
💡Check it out: Life Reset
Comments