Some years ago, I worked for a company that insisted we use day planners with everything we did. To introduce us to the day planner world, they sent us to a two-day seminar on using these tools.
I thought two days was excessive to learn how to use a day planner. But to my surprise, the course was one of the best I have ever taken and is where I was first introduced to the idea of margin.
One conversation from that two-day seminar that has stuck with me was about whirlwind. You all know what a whirlwind is. Sometimes referred to as a dust devil, a whirlwind is when air rapidly moves around in a cylindrical or funnel shape. As kids, we'd ride our bikes through them, thinking they were tornados. They would start our fierce, and usually, within moments, they were gone. In the big scheme of things, whirlwinds were a phenomenon that furiously used up a lot of energy but never really accomplishes anything.
When you think about it, there is a lot of whirlwinds in our lives. It is usually someone else's "urgent" needs" that get put on us. It furiously comes at us, requiring lots of immediate energy, but ultimately is a waste of time and costs us our margin.
I had a boss who insisted that by 8 am every day, my team had sent an email to his inbox detailing everything we were doing that day, such as client updates, court meetings, etc. It took so much margin to complete this task, and if we were five minutes late, we got an angry email back noting our infraction.
At some point, I realized he was not reading these daily communications because he would ask me about things that were clearly included in the emails, but he had no clue about them. The information was there; he just wasn't reading it. So, I asked him what the purpose of the emails was if he wouldn't read them. He told me that it was important for the team to inform him, not that he actually read them. The emails were his way of feeling like he was managing the team, creating nothing but a whirlwind that helped no one at all.
The antidote to whirlwind is discernment. Discernment is the spiritual practice of obtaining guidance and understanding, which helps us make better decisions.
The Apostle Paul writes this to the church in Philippi,
"And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ." - Philippians 1:9–10
Discernment is a gift of the Holy Spirit that we can use to make choices and guide our lives. The Greek word for discernment used in that passage, aisthesis, is also translated as insight and understanding.
Discernment invites us to insight and understanding of those moments we are presented with whirlwind. Discernment allows us to measure the situation, how it makes us feel vs. the reality of the problem, and clarify what is being said. It also allows us to know if we have the personal margin to sacrifice for the whirlwind.
Even when it comes to good things, saying no can be a measure of discernment that protects the margin God has gifted us. If you struggle with discernment, reach out to me, and let's have a conversation about how you can begin to tap into that gift and use it to protect (or add) margin in your life.
