Making Room for God in Our Days

Caitlan Rangel offers three practical suggestions for finding room for God to work in our busy everyday lives.

After I finished confessing my sins to the priest — a man in his 80s, whom we’ve also had to our home for a chicken pot pie dinner — he paused, and then spoke.

“The common thread I hear in what you shared is the need to grow in a certain virtue that we all need to grow in: humility.”

And then he did something with his hands that helped me more than his words. He first put his hands close together in front of him, palms facing each other.

“When you get to that point of frustration, overwhelm, overload (there was a lot of confessing of these emotions leading to sailor’s language in front of my children), make room for the Lord.”

And he slowly moved his hands, still facing each other, away from each other, making room.

Make room.

An Invitation to Remember and Rest

This invitation in Confession was not a condemnation, but a relief to remember: I am not God, though I sometimes act as though I am.

I am not in charge of everything, though I sometimes put everything on my shoulders. I cannot control the entire day, though my checklist waits to be thoroughly marked.

I say I trust the Lord, and also I need to remember to trust Him in the littlest moments of my day. The ones, if given the chance to pile up, will take me right to the point of overwhelm and overload.

Caitlan, do you trust Me?

Sarah Mackenzie writes about this in Teaching from Rest: 

Whatever is getting in the way of your plan for the day — the toddler’s tantrum, the messy bedroom, the sticky juice leaking all over the fridge and into the cracks of the drawers, the frustrated child, the irritable husband, the car that won’t start … whatever that intrusion into your grand plan for the day is, it’s also an opportunity to enter into rest … We can’t really rest in God’s care until we trust that He will indeed care for us. (3)

Rest, then, isn’t doing nothing, it’s trusting that God will show up and do something.

Making Room, Practically Speaking

How can we make room for God in our day, practically speaking? How can we work on trusting that God will indeed care for us?

Say It Aloud

One thing I have found helpful is speaking aloud the words “Make room” when I come up against something (or someone) that tests my limits. Instead of using poor language or raising my voice in frustration, saying “Make room” acts as a pause and reminder to take a breath and ask for God’s guidance.

You could also use other aspirations like “Jesus, I trust in you,” “Jesus, help me,” “God, show me,” or whatever comes to you naturally and gives you peace.

Keep Your Focus

A second helpful bit has been to simplify our day where possible and to remember to focus on the people and tasks at hand. I cannot homeschool and advertise my book and write a second book and search for online cures to my children’s random medical symptoms and make bread all at the same time … I know, because I have tried.

When my mind wanders and begins to fill with anxiety, taking my attention away from the people and duties in front of me, I can remind myself that God wants to provide for me in this very moment and situation:

"Can any of you by worrying add a moment to your life-span? If even the smallest things are beyond your control, why are you anxious about the rest? Notice how the flowers grow … If God so clothes the grass in the field that grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith?" (Luke 12:25-28)

Let God Handle It

Third, we seek to grow in our trust of God by surrendering the frenzy, rush, and anxiety that comes when we fight for our plan above the change in direction God may be sending.

C.S. Lewis once observed:

The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s “own,” or “real” life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day; what one calls one’s “real life” is a phantom of one’s own imagination. (Letters of C.S. Lewis, 499)

Cooperate

There is this lovely freedom that comes when we begin each day with, and circle back throughout the day to, the intention to cooperate with God and His plan.

Surrendering my perceived control to God does not take away from who I am or the work I do. Rather, God takes me, and you, and magnifies the good we do, softens our bristly edges, and trains us away from darkness into a lighter way.

This is a new way we can think about humility … making room.

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Copyright 2026 Caitlan Rangel
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