The Art and Necessity of Slowing Down: Five Ways I'm Learning to Weave Margin Back into My Life
Many years ago I switched into maximum productivity mode, and I haven’t slowed down much since then.
It all started when a friend asked me to take over production of a local Christian publication.
I said yes, and that decision changed my life.
I loved the ministry. It gave me a chance to write a monthly column, where I got to speak to hundreds of local Christians each month. I got to keep my finger on the pulse of news of interest to Christians. I had the opportunity to highlight ministries that I wanted to support.
But the workload was grueling for both me and my wife. I was teaching at the time, and we had three children, one of them in diapers. I was responsible for producing all the copy and layout, and my wife had to produce all the ads.
There were times when we would stay up all night to meet a deadline, and then I would go to teach a full day of school, while she would stay home to care for our infant son. And as soon as we finished one issue, it was time to get started on the next month’s edition. It was some of the hardest work I’ve done in my life.
To cope with the workload, I became a workaholic.
I learned how to fill every available minute with something productive: I studied for Sunday school lessons between turns while playing Scrabble with the family; I didn’t have as much time to play with my children; and because my mind was always in high gear, I had a hard time relaxing.
Eventually, I forgot how to relax.
And I forgot how to play.
The publication passed into other hands a few years later, but by then it was too late. I had firmly established the habits and mindset of a workaholic, and I had forgotten the art of maintaining margin and enjoying leisure. If I wasn’t being productive, I got antsy.
As I’ve reflected on it, I’ve realized that there’s a lot of arrogance baked into the workaholic mindset. There are always things that must be done, and it fills me with self-importance to imagine that I’m the only one who can do them. I must always perform at a high level because people are depending on me. (Did you notice all the first-person pronouns in this paragraph?)
Clearly, this frame of mind didn’t make me a better parent or husband. Keeping my foot on the pedal 24/7 didn’t do much for my faith practices, either. Being still before God is a sheer impossibility for a man who is running at top speed.
That five-year stint was thirty years ago, and I’m still recalibrating, still learning the art and necessity of slowing down.
I’m finding that old habits die hard, especially when you live in a culture that prizes the toxic habits that lead toward burn out and an early grave. But I am learning, slowly.
Little by little I am learning how to gear down and bring my heart and head to a different place, a place where I am more available to God and to my loved ones.
How am I learning to slow down?
I’ve already spoken to the necessity of slowing down, now to the art. Here are five things I’m doing to weave margin back into my life:
1. This may be the most important: I set aside quiet time to be with God in the morning. What I do in that time is important: I engage with His Word, and I pray. But it’s also important that this time is quiet. There is nothing to distract me. A quiet 15-20 minutes to still my soul and speak to and hear from God is priceless.
2. Another important change I’ve made is that I am resting on my day off. Being a pastor, Monday is my day off, and for a few years I treated Monday just like another Saturday, another day to get things done. My wife and I decided recently that I needed – we both needed – to treat Mondays differently. Now I devote Mondays to resting and spending time with my wife. It’s made a huge difference in how I feel when I go back to the office on Tuesday.
3. A friend who discipled me back in the 1970s taught me how to take a day alone with God, just me and my Bible and journal, maybe a devotional book. A few hours away from the office shields me from the constant bombardment of questions and demands, and it gives me some time and space to decompress and talk things over with God.
4. Walking: After my knee replacement surgery, I have needed to rehab the muscles around the new joint. So at least once each day I take a long walk. There are about 160 stair-steps in our facility, and I will often use every one of those stair-steps on one of my walks, doing all the work on each step with my healing knee. Sometimes, if the weather is fine, I’ll walk all the around our campus. I’ve noticed something about these jaunts, away from the office, away from the constantly pinging email: I have time to think. And sometimes I find myself doing some of my best (slowest, most careful) thinking while I’m walking.
5. Social media (you knew this was coming): We all wonder what we did with our time before social media consumed so much of it, and we wonder what we would do with our time if we cut back. Just the fact that we are mystified by that question says all that needs to be said here. For my part, I am trying to cut back on scrolling and do more talking with actual people and reading of actual books.
This is my own list.
These are some of the things I’m doing to weave margin back into my life. Your approach might include other things I haven’t thought about.
But I know I need to be intentional about this. I know that if I let my natural inclinations have their way, I can easily fall back into toxic habits. I also know that it is not God’s will that I neglect my dearest relationships and constantly hover on the brink of exhaustion.
A personal note:
I taught school for forty years and am in my fifth year in the pastorate. Both kinds of work can be exhausting, but for different reasons.
Once when I was teaching, I saw a colleague after school, exhausted, sprawled out on a couch in the teacher’s lounge. I knew why he was so tired. It is exhausting working with teens all day. I knew he had spent seventeen years in the pastorate before he became a teacher, so I asked him which was more tiring: teaching or pastoring.
He didn’t hesitate: pastoring was far more exhausting. It’s the long, slow burn of constantly caring for people that wears you out, he said.
I didn’t understand when he meant then, but now that I’m a pastor, I get it. I can understand why pastors burn out.
All that to say this: please pray for your pastors. Pray that God will strengthen us in the inner man and give us wisdom and grace as we try to navigate an ever-changing ministry landscape.
And pray that we’ll have the wisdom and courage to maintain margin in our ministry life and in our personal life.
Persevere,
Paul Pyle
Discipleship Pastor