Tired.

It was so hard to get my sorry self to work yesterday. I had the flu a couple of weeks ago - I don't recommend it - and the cough and fatigue have lingered. I entered this stretch of shifts feeling sluggish and still a little short of breath. My coworkers cracked good-natured jokes the whole weekend about how I needed to check in as a patient. Considering I've spent most of the last two weeks first feverish and vomiting, then alternately passed out and hacking up a lung, it felt more accurate than amusing. I'm pretty tired.



The more I thought about it, the more I felt like I've been tired for a lot longer than just this illness, though. There is always something, something that needs doing, that needs my attention, that needs my time and energy. I'm busy. Aren't we all? Being an adult is at least partly about being tired all the time, it seems. I started to think back over the past ten or fifteen years of my life. When did it start? When did I truly start to feel ready for a nap at the drop of a hat? Medical school? College? High school? I patted around in my memory, searching as one searches for a pen in a drawer, picking up and discarding memories in turn as I went back through the years.

And there I ran into a mental roadblock, because I was abruptly reminded that things used to be so much worse.

By the time I was eighteen I was not just physically exhausted but personally depleted, worn thin by the suffering I'd endured and the heavy burden of hatred I carried. Tired doesn't even begin to cover it. Those of you who did not suffer at a young age don't know what it does to the core of you, and I'm glad for you, because it is a horror. I was trapped in it, unable to progress, unable to stay where I was. I spent most days at the edge of crisis. I am aware some people manage to live their entire lives this way. I am also aware some people take it upon themselves to end the pain however is necessary.

Then, the Lord.

The Lord pursued me, called me, healed me. He stole into my heart as a dawn breeze warm with the coming sunshine. He lifted my burdens and replenished my soul. He ended a struggle at the deepest level of me that I didn't even know was going on, one that was with Him, and He won, and in the losing so did I. He gave me Himself, and He was everything I barely knew how to want but craved more desperately than my own breath. I thought back to that incredible first day with Him, and I felt the warmth of that dawn again, and I remembered that I live my life in the daylight of His presence. What joy there, and here, and now - even now, feeling the effects of sickness and long hours.

Yesterday morning the Holy Spirit reminded me that I am never alone, and that I never have to feel that kind of tired again. He is with me always. I am with Him. And He restores.