breathing room

I received this email today from the principal at Kate and Elia's school, as part of the school's weekly newsletter:

Andy Stanley defines breathing room as the space between our current pace and our limits. Good things happen in our families and marriages when there’s breathing room. When we have breathing room, we’re more likely to see the needs of others and more likely to attempt to meet those needs.

Unfortunately, in our family, “hurry up” seems to be our refrain each fall as school begins. Exasperation creeps in, and the idea of breathing room becomes almost laughable. If we allow our schedules to simply take shape, we’ll never achieve the margin we need.

There are good opportunities we should say "no" to. Something that might be great for your child or your family, but might not be great in this particular season of life. I know that striving for breathing room is somewhat counter-cultural, but it is absolutely worth it. As we’ve strived for this as a family, here are a few things we’ve learned:

1. No opportunity or activity (or cumulation of activities) is worth causing your family to be weary or exasperated.

2. Few activities will benefit our kids as much as dinner together every night.

3. Keeping the TV off and limiting other screens will make you feel like you’ve gained hours every night.

4. Plan times to hit pause. Know what keeps you and your family refreshed and be disciplined enough to do it.

Dallas Willard said, “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life, for hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our world today.” Let’s strive as a community for the elimination of hurry and an abundance of breathing room.

Stronger Together,

Tim McAboy Head of School

What strikes me so much about this, is that, well, first of all, it is brilliantly counter-cultural, and secondly, Greg and I were just talking about this until 11:30 last night. (To be honest, it's a topic that comes up quarterly in our home.) I think for the most part we've been able to create some space to breathe as a family--we eat dinner together almost every night, I take a walk with the girls most nights (so our puppy doesn't implode), and Greg reads to them still--but even we aren't perfect. (What?!) We go in fits and starts of business. Mostly with great, fun things, but from time to time we have to recap what our priorities are for ourselves and for our family.

What we were discussing last night specifically, was the fact that while I see Greg every day, I don't always feel like we have time to connect. And then I begin to wonder where I rank on his priorities, and I get bitter about feeling like, how did I put it, "his unpaid servant," so I can free up his time to focus on everyone but me, and when I finally go to relax at night nestled in my bed with an episode of Friends, he comes in and says, "Do you think it's a good idea to watch TV before bed?" which never goes over well, and shouldn't one want to spend quality time with the person they're married to? Yes, it was a fun conversation, and lest you think I am without blame, I sometimes under-commit and am "too guarded" with my time (says Greg), so you see how we must balance each other out. But we are re-committed to putting our relationship over others, however that looks. Because our relationship is the cog of our family. (I had to google that one, but yes, cog will do just fine.)

It's like I always say, if you're saying yes to one thing you're saying no to something else. While I don't want our kids growing up seeing us saying "no" to hard things, I do want them seeing us making each other, and them, a priority. Because I believe if we can only do a few things really well in life, I want one of them to be us raising our daughters to know balance and space in life, so they can most effectively be confident, unfrazzled contributors to this world.