Finding Margin When You Are Overwhelmed

I’m a big believer in keeping a healthy amount of margin in life. I’ve written many posts about margin over the years and highly recommend two books related to it in my list of My Favorite Simple Living Books.

But sometimes no matter how hard I try, I find myself with shrinking levels of the margin that keeps me healthy and sane. There is nothing I can do about it other than pivot, adapt, and move forward as best I can. I briefly contemplated putting my head down on the desk and crying, but that has never worked for me. I don’t generally find crying therapeutic or helpful. So I just acknowledge I feel like I could do it and move on.

So here is a little look behind the scenes in my life today.

This is a message and sticker I sent to a friend on Telegram this afternoon.

So that little bit tells you one of the ways I deal with overwhelm and a lack of margin.

I do one small thing that gets completed. Usually it has NOTHING to do with the things that are making me feel overwhelmed.

Today it was posting a short recipe post.

There is something about doing one thing that is tangible and complete that propels me forward.

It literally breaks me out of the feeling of being paralyzed by too much to do.

I don’t know why it works, but it does. I think it must be the feeling of taking back control of my life or something.

I don’t get the same push from simply starting in on one of the tasks that is before me. Trying to dive into one of the daunting tasks doesn’t have the same impact.

Nothing has changed in that I still have a stack of new high school homeschooling materials to sort through and prepare to start using this week that is literally two feet high.

I still have to complete a pile of forms for all three of us in order to change doctors from the hospital system we’ve used for years to a Christian Healthcare option. Caroline and I have not been able to see a doctor since before the covid situation due to the mask requirements. Now with the unconstitutional jab mandates, David and I realized we may never get to see our current doctors again since all three are part of the establishment system where we live. So we’re changing doctors to a Christian office with freedom – no mandates or requirements. I am so thankful for this option (even though it comes with a monthly premium). But paperwork times three people is not what I expected to be doing right now in September.

Pivot, adapt, and move forward. Buck up, make the hard choices, and keep going. I’ve been preaching the need to do this for a number of years. I’ve been practicing what I preach and sharing those choices with you for a few years now. (Some of those choices probably seem less weird or paranoid at this point, don’t they?)

I still don’t have satisfactory answers regarding the dangers of spike protein shedding around us. I’m trying to determine the best ways to counteract their impact on us when we are out and about, especially now that we are heading toward the indoors part of the year. As a family, we always took a step back from being around a lot of people during flu season. Now with all the unknows about the current covid injections, it’s rather overwhelming to contemplate how things might play out this fall and winter. I want to protect our health, especially Caroline’s, and trying to find the truth is like a part-time job when the media and medical establishment are working overtime to make sure no one knows the truth. This weighs on me more than anything because there doesn’t seem to be a lot of room for error in dealing with this situation. So I pray and ask God to show us what to do.

So I’m working toward increasing my margin again. Writing this post is a small part of moving forward. I’ve missed writing here the past two weeks, but other things for my family and home come first. I think I caught up on responding to all the comments this afternoon. I continue to add significant amounts of information to the Telegram widget in the blog sidebar. I’ve had to let the forum mostly go the past few weeks as I prioritized other things, but there is a lot of great info on Telegram. You can see most of it right here even if you don’t have a Telegram account.

God bless you as you care for your home and loved ones. How are you doing right now? How do you reclaim some margin when life gets to be too much? If you have ideas and tips, please share them. You might have the answer someone else needs. ♥