A few years ago, I missed a phone call from a debate mom. She left a voicemail, and tucked inside it was a phrase I had never heard before:
“Just give me a call when you have capacity.”
That word— capacity— it stopped me.
Not because she explained it. Not because she made some profound statement about boundaries or self-care or any of the other things we’ve turned into Instagram graphics. She just used the word like it was normal. Like it was a thing people had— or didn’t have— and either way was fine.
I think that was the first time anyone had ever given me that kind of room. Every other voicemail, every other request, every other ask that I could remember had always come with “as soon as you can” or “when you get a minute”— language that assumed I had a minute. Language that assumed the answer to “can you?” was always “yes, just tell me when.”
This was different. This assumed I had a life that was already full. It acknowledged that I might not have room right now— not because I was disorganized or uncommitted, but because I was already carrying things. And it didn’t ask me to set those things down faster. It just said: whenever you’re ready.
I think about that phrase a lot now.
When you have capacity.
What a concept.
what capacity actually is
I’m realizing ever-so-slowly that capacity is not how much you can do. It’s how much you can do and still be a human being at the end of it.
Anyone can white-knuckle through a to-do list. Anyone can push past exhaustion and check every box and collapse into bed and call it productivity. <<cough>> That’s not capacity. That’s survival. And there’s a difference— even though our culture has worked very hard to convince us there isn’t one.
Real capacity includes this thing called margin. It includes the ability to be present— not just performing— in the things that matter most. It includes having something left at the end of the day for the people who live in your house and for the person who lives in your skin.
If you are getting everything done but you have nothing left— that’s not capacity. That’s borrowing from tomorrow. And tomorrow always collects.
why it changes
Here’s what nobody ever warned me about (maybe because we are all simultaneously learning it…): capacity is not the same from year to year. It’s not even the same from season to season. The version of you that could juggle five things with energy and joy three years ago is not the same version of you sitting here today. And that’s not because you got weaker or lazier or less disciplined.
It’s because the load changed.
Maybe you picked up a caregiving role you didn’t plan for. Maybe grief walked in and sat down and hasn’t left. Maybe your body is doing something different than it used to. Maybe the emotional weight of your relationships shifted— someone who used to fill you up started draining you instead, or the support system you thought you had turned out to be thinner than it looked.
Capacity responds to all of it. Quietly, without announcement, it adjusts. And one day you look up and realize that the life you built for a version of yourself with more margin is now being maintained by a version of yourself with less. The structure didn’t change. But life did.
You did.
And nobody recalibrated.
Least of all you.
It reminds me of wineskins, in a way…
new wine, old wineskins
Jesus told a parable about this— though we usually read it as being about something else entirely.
No one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.
We usually read that as being about religious structures— old law, new covenant, why the Pharisees couldn’t hold what Jesus was bringing. And it is about that. But I think there’s something in it that’s closer to home if we let it be.
Because here’s what happens with wineskins: old skins have already stretched. They’ve already expanded to hold what was poured into them before. They’re set in their shape. And new wine is still fermenting— it’s still active, still expanding, still demanding more room. Pour something that’s still growing into a container that’s already been stretched to its limit, and something breaks. Not because the wine is bad. Not because the skin was bad. But because what you’re asking the skin to hold doesn’t match what the skin has left to give.
That’s what we do to ourselves.
The wineskin is your life— your schedule, your body, your emotional reserves, the shape of your days. And it was formed around a previous season. It stretched to fit what that season required. But the season changed. New wine got poured in— new grief, new responsibilities, new demands that are still fermenting, still expanding, still taking up more room than you expected. And instead of acknowledging that the old skin can’t hold the new wine, we just… keep pouring it in. And we’re confused when something bursts.
The answer in the parable isn’t to force the new wine into the old skin. It’s to get a new skin. Not because the old one failed— but because the old one already gave everything it had. It did its job. It held what it was built to hold. Asking it to hold more isn’t faith. It’s just physics.
Sometimes protecting your capacity means admitting that the shape of your life (or at least the expectations about it) needs to change— not because you did something wrong, but because what you’re carrying is different now, and the old container wasn’t built for this.
why we fight the change
This is the part that gets us into trouble.
When capacity shrinks, we don’t adjust. We push. We compensate. We perform the version of ourselves that could handle it— even when we can’t anymore. We say yes at the same rate. We show up at the same pace. We show up at the same place. We meet the same expectations, because the expectations didn’t get the memo that we have less to give.
And we do this for a few reasons, if we’re being honest.
Pride is one of them. Not the loud kind— the quiet, sneaky kind that says I should be able to handle this. I’ve handled worse. As if past endurance is a contract for future capacity. It’s not. But it feels like it should be, and that feeling is enough to keep us grinding long past the point where we should have stopped. And maybe even <<gasp>> rested.
Fear is another. Fear that if we admit we have less to give, people will take it as permission to stop counting on us. And for some of us— if we’re really being honest— being counted on is the only way we know we matter. We were taught that as a small child and just kept on taking that identity with us right on into adulthood. Take that away, and who are we? The question is too terrifying to answer, so… we just keep going.
And then there’s this one, perhaps the most vulnerable of all: we fight the change because we liked who we were when we had more capacity. That version of us was competent and generous and available and strong. This version? This one running on fumes, this one who can’t do what she used to do— she doesn’t feel like someone we even recognize. And rather than acknowledge that, and grieve that, and maybe even love this new person anyway… we pretend she doesn’t exist. We keep performing the old version, hoping no one notices the gap.
But the gap is there. And even more undeniably… it’s growing.
protecting our capacity
Here’s what I’m learning— slowly, imperfectly, and honestly a little lot bit against my will:
Capacity is not something to spend.
It’s something to steward.
And there’s a difference. Spending says: I have it, so I’ll use it, all of it, until it’s gone. Stewardship says: this is finite, it matters, and it is not all mine to give away.
Because here’s the thing— your capacity doesn’t just belong to your to-do list. It belongs to your kids. It belongs to your marriage. It belongs to your health, your creativity, your faith, your personhood. And every time you hand another piece of it to something that demands more than it deserves, you are taking it from somewhere that needed it more.
We don’t think of it that way. We think saying yes to one more thing is generous. But generosity that comes at the expense of the people closest to you isn’t generosity. It’s just misdirected sacrifice. And the people who pay the highest price for it are the ones who never asked you to carry that thing in the first place.
Your children didn’t ask you to run yourself into the ground. Your body didn’t agree to be ignored indefinitely. Your soul didn’t sign up to be the last thing on the list, every single day, for years on end.
At some point, protecting your capacity isn’t selfish. It’s the most faithful thing you can do. Because, as cliche as it sounds, you really canNOT pour from an empty cup. You cannot give to the things that matter most if there is genuinely nothing left. And pretending there is— performing capacity you don’t actually have— that’s not faithfulness.
That’s a slow unraveling you are trying to dress up as strength.
start where you are
So, you might be thinking… what’s the answer? How do we get more capacity? How do we actually steward it?
Great questions.
Unfortunately, I don’t actually have any answers.
Because in this category— as much as I hate to admit it— I am definitely in the “say one thing and do another” camp.
But I do think that the first thing to learning how to steward capacity is to accept the fact that it is simply… different.
So, step one: Name the fact that your capacity has changed. Say it out loud if you need to, even if no one is in the room. I have less to give right now than I used to. That doesn’t mean I’m failing. It means the season changed and I am learning to live in it.
And then— gently, imperfectly, maybe even grudgingly <<ahem>>— start asking a harder question: of all the things I’m carrying, which ones are actually mine?
Not which ones landed on you. Not which ones you’re good at. Not which ones would fall apart without you.
Which ones are yours.
Because some of what you’re holding, you picked up out of love. And some of it you picked up because nobody else would. And some of it you picked up so long ago you forgot it wasn’t yours to begin with.
You are allowed to set things down.
Read that again.
YOU are allowed to SET THINGS DOWN.
Not all of them— maybe not even most of them. But some of them. The ones that were never yours. The ones that cost your family more than they’re worth. The ones you carry out of guilt and call it faithfulness.
(Faithfulness sounds better, doesn’t it?)
Capacity is a living thing. It changes. It shrinks and it grows and it needs to be tended.
Tend it.
Not because you’ve earned the right to rest— but because the people and purposes you love most deserve a version of you that still has something to give.
You are not a cup. You are a person. And persons need protecting— even from themselves.
That leads me to step two.
Except… I don’t know yet.
I’m still on step one.
I’ll let you know it as soon as I do.
embracing essentialism 