To My Dear Friends Who Are Tired

Dear Sweet, Ragged, Wrung Out Darling…

I am sitting here rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and thinking of you.  I know that you are doing whatever you can to keep it together.  I bet you’re sleep-walking through this morning looking for another cup of coffee, protein bar, apple or other source of energy.  I’m sure that you are trying as hard as you can to hold your emotions together, and it’s getting more difficult; like you’re carrying around a leather bag full of water; which is dripping and sagging and starting to rip.  You may doubt whether rest is really coming or if you’ll ever see the backside of your eyelids.  Maybe you fall asleep when the conversation gets too slow, or you are forced to hold your body still for too long.  Perhaps you hear yourself snoring when you thought you were sitting in your chair, watching a television program; or while you are rocking your baby.  Your body aches for a bed or a place to really get comfortable; a place to let your body relax and a place where you can breathe and let your muscles melt into something less tangled and tortured.  You want to just collapse.

Maybe your exhaustion isn’t physical.  Suppose it’s mental.  Like when you’ve had stress after stress upon more stress and you just don’t know how to make the money pay all the bills.  You’re in treatment for a disease you know has taken some of your best friends or close family members.  You’re affected by mind games at work being played by people who do not know the daily struggles in your life, and do not know the weight of the words they throw onto others.  Perhaps you have elderly parents or young children to care for; you must ensure that they are receiving all of your support and encouragement as possible so that their quality of life can be satisfactory.  Maybe you have a mental illness which has no cure, no explanation, and causes you to feel unworthy.  Maybe you have a secret.  Something that’s happened to you or something you’ve done.  A hidden burden which wasn’t heavy at first, has become painfully weighted now.

Perhaps it is a combination of both physical and mental.  More than likely, if it is both, it goes even further… it’s spiritual.  You need a break.  You need a place to rest.  You need time to rest.

But I know life won’t let you.  You’ve got a sink of dishes to be done.  Perhaps you have a deadline to meet.  Work is calling.  You may have to get kids ready for school or some extracurricular activity. Maybe you have an article to write.  There is always laundry.  Laundry that waits for you to wash, dry, fold, or put away.  Food.  You must eat, and so must anyone in your care.  You’re exhausted, and there is never a moment to just sit and be without a thought or plan or list.  Maybe you’re in school, and you have papers to write or assignments to complete.  They demand your attention and must be done now, so that you don’t have to worry about it until it’s done, because worry only makes you more tired.  There is always something to clean – the car, the counters, the kids, the house.  What started out as something positive, like an extracurricular activity or an after-work work-out class has become something invasive, something too much.

I’m tired too.  I’m trying to hold my emotions together, to walk around like nothing is wrong, to pay attention to what I’m writing or thinking.  I’m trying to make my eyes stop burning and my brain stop thinking and my body stop moving… I’m trying.

I just wanted you to know, dear friends, that I am trying right along with you.  Perhaps as I learn the discipline of rest, I will share some of what I’m learning with you.  I know that people are praying for me, and that’s probably what has gotten me this far.  I’ve been running on empty for about a month now.

But it’s Halloween, and it’s time to go trick or treat.  I have a sick kid and I’m sick myself.  A sore throat and tender ears have been bugging me since this morning.  And so… I must go and do something.  Because I don’t have the time to just do nothing.