What Is Margin Anyway?

Why is margin important? Jesus’s own life and ministry on earth give us some clues.

Here I am, writing to you on a Saturday during football season.

It’s not the best timing, but I’m writing from the margins of motherhood I have available, which typically fall on a Saturday right now.

Oh, well.

What is “margin” anyway, and why is it important to have it? Before answering that question with what I’m learning, I want to share part of a blog post I wrote in 2021, shortly after my oldest child turned one:

I follow a woman on Instagram who manages to care for her three small children, run a successful business, exercise every day, and post about all of it by herself. 

Well, I thought she did. 

She had her second child around the same time I had my first in October 2019. As a new mom, I would see her pictures and wonder how she had so much time and energy to do all of that while I was barely maintaining my laundry and basic hygiene. 

Then one day she mentioned her assistant. I laughed and thought to myself, “Ohhh, that’s how she does it all—she doesn’t!”

In the early weeks of motherhood, I was anxious because I was always multi-tasking, trying every day to check off as many items on my to-do list as possible. Others encouraged me to sleep when the baby sleeps. I always thought to myself, “How is that possible when I need to wash dishes, fold clothes, pump milk, and respond to a text I received hours ago?”  

I was constantly frustrated by my own limits, and it left me depleted physically, emotionally, and mentally. Not only was I trying to do too many things, but I was trying to do them in my own sufficiency. 

In None Like Him, Jen Wilkin writes, “Our God is self-sufficient, needed by all, needful of nothing… We were created to need both God and others. We deny this to our peril. We are not needy because of sin; we are needy by divine design.”

Read that last part again: we’re needy by divine design. As a new mom, I thought something was wrong with me because I couldn’t juggle “all the things.” But my anxiousness was pointing me to the truth that God didn’t design me to keep all the balls in the air that I was trying to juggle. 

Some balls needed to drop. 

Our Need for Margin

I wrote those words in May 2021. By December that year, it was like I’d forgotten this truth because I was running on fumes again. I was pregnant with our son and working 20+ hours a week while our daughter was home with me all day every day. I was near my breaking point when I read The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer. 

“Eliminating hurry sounds great,” I thought.

In this book, Comer shares Richard Swensen’s definition of margin, which Swensen defines as “the space between our load and our limits.” Comer wrote, “For many of us there is no space between our loads and limits. We’re not at 80 percent with room to breathe; we’re at 100 all the time.”

That definition of margin was life-changing for me. I realized I had been living with ZERO space between my load and my limits from morning ‘til night for several months. Maybe you can relate, but I found it hard to rest. I couldn’t even watch a television show without also folding clothes because I wanted to get “one more thing done” before I slept. 

I started to piece this together with what I’d learned earlier that year. I wondered, “How does the truth that I’m limited affect how I live?” The answer wasn’t to fill my load—things like my schedule, my responsibilities, and my mind—until it equaled my limits, which is what I’d been doing for months.

I needed room to breathe, which means protecting some white space between my load and my limits. 

But why—why is margin important? Jesus’s own life and ministry on earth give us some clues. 

Margin in the Ministry of Jesus

First, we need margin for rest. 

When our load equals our limits, not only do we deprive our body of the rest it needs, but we also deprive our soul of the rest in God it needs.

The gospels describe how Jesus was frequently alone with the Father. If Jesus, who was God incarnate, needed time alone to rest in God, how much more do we need that rest?

Second, we need margin to love. 

I don’t know about you, but it’s hard for me to love people when I have no white space in my calendar or my mind. Those I love catch the brunt of my stress and burnout, and I’m less welcoming of interruptions—those “unscheduled” opportunities to love others.

In Scripture, I’m always struck by Jesus’s willingness to be interrupted in order to love and serve others. He was sometimes on his way to do ministry in one place when he’s interrupted by a question or need, and he doesn’t dismiss these exchanges. It’s like he anticipates—even welcomes—interruptions to his itinerary.

When we preserve some margin in each day, we're more likely to see a friend’s urgent phone call or our child’s plea for Mommy to read a book less as an inconvenience and more as an opportunity to love like our Savior. 

The Good News about Limitations

Sometimes, I admit I don’t like my limitations in this season. We have two children under four years old, so we say no to a lot right now because our days are already so full with meeting needs all day. Our children hit the ground running at 5:30-6:00am each morning (bless those of you whose children sleep late!). Preserving 20 percent of margin in my day isn’t always realistic—it’s more like 10 percent most days.

However, the reality of my limits and need for margin keep the Good News of the gospel in view. God is the only limitless being. He’s the only one who’s omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful), omnipresent (ever-present), and righteous (without sin). 

Unlike God, you and I are limited. When I recall seasons in my own life when I was fighting my God-given limits, they involved somehow trying to be like God in his unlimited power, knowledge, presence, or perfection. 

This temptation isn’t new. It goes all the way back to Genesis. God had set a limit: Adam and Eve could eat fruit from any tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But they rejected this limit when they ate from the tree after Satan told them they could be “like God.” 

We face similar temptations today, but we must remember that we aren’t resisting sin but our design when we fight our God-given limits. Fighting our divine design eventually leads to destruction—physical, mental, spiritual, or relational destruction. 

Here’s the good news: once we understand that God is the only limitless one, we begin to see our limits as a gift instead of a curse. Christ frees us from the crushing expectations we place on ourselves—and others also place on us—to push past our limitations. As we rediscover our limits and learn to rest, we begin to say no to some commitments or activities so we can say yes to others, including the “good works” (Eph. 6:10) God has prepared for us each day. 

When I began thinking about margin in terms of the space between my load and my limits (space that I truly need!), I began to write this question at the top of my planner every day: “Do I have margin built into this day?”

I didn’t and still don’t always have 20 percent of my schedule freed up for rest and love. But the question serves as a reminder that I’m limited, yet my unlimited God is sovereign. He is always working where I wish my limits could reach.

So try it. Write that question at the top of your planner or place it on your refrigerator. 

Let it serve as a reminder, too, that you were made with limits by your Creator’s loving design, even when you want to get “one more thing done.”