When you're tired

Daily Devotion - May 6

I will send a brief message each day (except Mondays)
while we are pausing gathering in person.
- Kara

Fatigue is an interesting phenomenon. In my house we keep marveling at its unpredictability. "I didn't do anything yesterday! Why am I so tired?"

Sleep has been a strange companion during all this.  Sometimes it's restful; sometimes it's fitful and filled with troubling dreams. Often it's interrupted and sporadic.  It starts later or earlier than we are used to, goes longer or shorter than we'd planned, and feels like another person in the house, with its own opinions and agenda, that we have to be living around and getting to know differently.

I'm tired today.
Yesterday was a hard day as it relates to all of this - not just personally, but especially as a pastor.  There was new information, or maybe information I knew sunk in differently. I went to bed feeling heavily aware of the enormous toll this is taking and will take on congregations.
Like, until there's a vaccine, no more singing in groups.  Or, for the foreseeable future, it's not safe to gather indoors, especially in the ways churches do - lots of people sitting close to each other, sharing food, passing peace, shaking hands, hugging. Blah, blah, blah, all things we know, but to know know them is hard. I want an end to this. There is no clear end in sight.  I went to bed sad.

I woke up tired.

So I am experiencing fatigue today.  And instead of fighting it, as I've been trained to do by... everything, from my own anti-nap stubbornness as a toddler to college cramming and FOMO, a good Protestant work ethic, energy drinks, the Way of Fear's insistence on measuring our worth by productivity and comparison, the bizarre reframing of rest as an earned reward, instead of a basic need, and so on.  Instead of fighting my fatigue, I'm noticing it.
I'm letting myself feel tired.

I can feel it in my itchy eyes, my foggy head, my heavy body.  It's a combined sensation I know to call, "tired."  That in itself is remarkable.

We humans are amazing, resilient, complicated, beautiful, finely-tuned social, spiritual, emotional and physical creatures whose bodies, minds and hearts work together in a spectacularly complex and valuable interplay.  Unfortunately, for much of our adult lives we override our instincts and ignore or numb our needs.  Especially when it comes to rest.

Fatigue is a gift, a message. I can listen to that message. I can stop. I can rest. I can sleep, or do what the Dutch call "nikson" - literally to do nothing, or do something with no purpose whatsoever. Sit and gaze out a window.   Not mindfulness, but letting your mind wander. Not walking to some place or for exercise, just walking.  As long as what you are doing is not productive, it is nikson.

We forget what babies know:
When you're hungry, eat.
When you're sad, cry.
When you're happy, laugh.
When you're tired, sleep.

Today I am tired.
I am going to go take a nap.

CONNECTING RITUAL:
Perhaps tonight at bedtime, whenever that is in each of our homes, we might pray in this way and so join our hearts.

Bless me this night, O God,
and those whom I know and love.
Bless me this night, O God,
and those with whom I am not at peace.
Bless me this night, O God,
and every human family.
Bless us with deep sleep.
Bless us with dreams that will heal our souls.
Bless us with the night's silent messages of eternity
that we may be set free by love.
Bless us in the night, O God,
that we may be set free to love.
Amen.

(Prayer by J. Philip Newell)