Everyday Grace, God's Deep Love

What does it mean to be Weary?

Weary looks a lot of ways to a lot of different people.
Weariness looks like buying the weed whacker and leaving it in the van because you just cannot make the extra trip out.

Weariness looks like dinner dishes left on the table when you go to bed but at least you put the food away.

Weariness looks like making nice with your nice neighbors and wishing for a nice way to get inside.

Weariness looks like sitting when you should stand, crying when you should laugh.

Weariness looks like tired ears that don’t hear the question, a tired mouth that can’t form the words.

Weariness looks like frustration that you are weary because what do you have to be weary about?

But weariness is real and legitimate and sometimes physical and sometimes chemical but often spiritual.

We get weary from walking alongside the broken hearted. We get weary from standing strong while the earth under their feet crumbles. We get weary from the bending to embrace and to serve.

And we don’t want to be weary because there is work to do, callings to be fulfilled, and rides to be given. We know that we want to just be but the work requires that we do.

I have been through a time of great fulfillment that has come to completion and I am weary. I’m weary of the growth and the stretching. I’m weary of the slap dash nature adapting to a life with extras in it. I’m weary of combining the pieces into who God has made me to be and the ‘wherever next’nature of an exciting and ambiguous future.

So after putting the food away but not doing the dishes, I sit on my deck because I’m tired of bed. Because it’s not tiredness and not sleep I need, but rest.

What I need is a cave. The retreating Elijah space where God says to me ‘stop, and be filled’.

And I don’t need the extra sleep/chocolate/Netflix cure for weariness. I need the submitting, dedicated rest for the weary and heavy laden.

But my soul is tired and the physical and mental make the spiritual so much more difficult.

Like Elijah in the cave I recognize that this is journey. A journey of the three in oneness of my restoration. Where the physical, mental, and spiritual all weave together in the formless and void before being restored and recreated.

And I wonder what the ravens of God’s restoration will bring. Because I know they will come.

Right now, in this moment they bring the scent of cut grass in the twilight and the return of the creative impulse. Earlier they brought the energy to eat salad rather than cookies and the wonder of Narnia offered to young eyes.

And there are tears of release and cleansing and a willingness to someday again venture forth into the murk of walking alongside others, those others who need a conduit to the ultimate bearer of burdens.

But for now, among the cut grass, twilight, smell of pot smoke from the other side neighbors, I can recognize the end of one journey and the transition between another and find the potential for rest.  The rest that is offered by Him in grace and time and space and obligations of life that walk alongside the rest. And in that I am tentatively content and will be content.