Monday, August 31, 2015

Where Do the Hard Days Go?

Fatigue is like running in a dream... you know how fast you need to go to survive, but your legs and arms are so heavy. Your brain feels like it put on 40 lbs over night and took up chain smoking. All you want to do is curl up and watch Netflix in the sweet embrace of a squishy chair... brownies optional. (I'm just saying that to be nice. Brownies are a necessity.)

When joy and enthusiasm support us, we can take on all kinds of challenges like a boss. Yesterday, I Serena-Williamsed church with the kids by myself while dear husband was at a work event. Today I crushed the kitchen cleaning!

On the other hand, when we're fatigued... it's like having a broken leg and still being expected to finish the race. It's like running out of gas and still being expected to get the car full of screaming children and groceries home from the store.

Wouldn't it be great if we could just give ourselves grace in spades, stay in our PJs, and find the mute buttons our kids were so handily equipped with whenever we needed it? (What? There's no mute button!?! *facepalm*)

But real life never quits.
Monday never fails to follow Sunday evening.
Needs never pause.
There's never someone ELSE to answer the call, "Moooooooommy!!!!!!"
There isn't another person in this family who lactates.

You can squeeze grace into margins, but you have to keep moving.

Can I be the voice in the crowd today that looks you in the eye and says, "That is so hard. I'm so sorry."

I can't carry your burden... but I can tell you I feel it. In my deepest places, I am tired too today. Put your head down while I stroke your hair. Gentle Friend, you are fighting a good fight. You may feel trapped, you may feel invisible, you may feel voiceless... I see you. God sees you.

The Bible tells us that he has stored every one of our tears in a bottle (Psalm 56:8).
He has kept records of your hurting heart, your weariness, your fatigued hours in the rocking chair at 3am, your days spent on creaking knees scrubbing someone else's mess. When you say, "Not one more day, Lord! Please, not one more day!" he puts that day on the shelf next to the tear bottle, and he promises, "I will restore to you the years that the locust has taken" (Joel 2:25).

I'm sorry, Sisters. It's hard. But it is holy. The nose wiping, the laundry, the second pot of coffee... they are holy work... and they will be redeemed in glory one day. You are laying up treasure in a good place where no baby will come behind you two seconds later and pull it off the shelf AGAIN.

I hope that touches your heart.

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