Margins

Even though I've been "back" at work after my sabbatical for exactly a year now, it has continued to be difficult to integrate my inner world with my daily responsibilities and roles. Internally I continue to grieve, to feel a loneliness that is both missing Midi and the reality that I no longer have this person who was so a much a part of how I was known and cared for, to feel some amount of disconnect with Jesus, to wrestle with how life feels difficult and disappointing most of the time these days. Externally I either spend my time leading a ministry to college students, being focused on things like vision, evangelism, leadership development and pastoral care, or caring for two young kids, shuttling to soccer games, interacting with other moms, washing clothes, making meals, and working hard to be both compassionate and authoritative with them in healthy ways. Neither of those roles either lend themselves to mourning or internal struggle readily or leave much practical space for those kind of things.

Two things have proved to be helpful, though. The main one has been creating margins for myself. I need more time to just be, to pray, reflect, read, to have space for things like exercise or just resting, than I used to. Perhaps some of that is just getting older; I can't function at high RPMs all the time anymore without serious burnout. But I think a good deal of it is simply that I need more space of the internal stuff to come to the surface. Rushing around the house or the various campuses I supervise does not give me enough room for the deeper issues to come up, but if I don't make space for that surfacing, it becomes even more painful at times. So as difficult as it has been for me logistically, I'm trying to get better at giving myself margins at least weekly, if I can't manage daily.

The other thing that has been helpful is being able to go deep, to be fully myself with people. This is no easier logistically than having margins; the people I'm closest to have as many competing responsibilities as I do, and it takes a work of God sometimes to have schedules converge for a deeper conversation. Even with David, the window where we have time and energy for depth can be pretty small some days. It doesn't really work at the dinner table to share our struggles with each other; conversation there tends to focus more on homework, Star Wars, and the like, and by the time the kids are in bed and we both have finished other responsibilities, the level of tiredness doesn't lend itself to prolonged sharing. But I've noticed that I am more down the months I haven't been able to connect deeply with anyone. It doesn't help that I don't feel like initiating as much as I used to. But as difficult as it's been to make space both for myself and for deeper conversations, they both have been elevated to the level of needed spiritual disciplines that make the rest of my life more feasible.