Sometimes you sit in the dark downstairs while everyone else in your house is sleeping, trying to sort yourself out.

Sorting out the jumble of thoughts that make it difficult to sleep. Thoughts that revolve around the detachment sometimes felt between what we know and what we feel, who we are and who we want to be, how we think of ourselves and how others think of us.

They’re tricky, these late nights. Because more questions come than answers.

It’s not the distinct event that places me in this space. It’s a load of tiny, tinkling weights that seem to gather and press down as I sift through what is heavy-making.

I don’t feel bad, I don’t feel bad about myself, but there is a distinct disassociation between how I’ve felt in the past and how I feel now.

It’s an introspective place, this one in the dark. Watching the frost covered neighbour tree drift slowly downward underneath its own small snowy weights. The weight of a thousand thoughts that slips unnoticed underneath our shield of peace and inattention.

I don’t know about you but I don’t always feel glum, yet I don’t always feel right these days. The things that I knew and how they were are not how they are now. Things are different and there’s a sense of unsettled not knowing. It’s not fear, exactly, at least not always. But it is something.

It’s the something of not knowing how we all fit. How purpose and gifting look when what you know and knew is not what is now.

I knew who I was. I knew how I fit. I knew my place and my value.

But then things change. There are new ways of doing things and new needs and I wonder how my place and space in the midst of it all work. Where am I needed. Not am I needed, I know I am, but where and how?

Perhaps it’s because words are few these days. I’m a words person. I drink them in like iced tea on Sabbath. Words help me orient myself in the world and in space with others. Their words, my words, all sort out expectations and goals and encouragement.

But words are fewer. We look at each other and expect that we have enough to be getting on with and in the midst of the push, in the midst of the just get it done and survive, there is something missing.

How’s your encouragement tank these days?

Full? Empty?

I know mine’s feeling a bit bottomed out.

This isn’t a call for encouragement, a seeking of affirmation. Things feel a bit in turmoil so that I don’t know what I could absorb and believe anyway.

But how are you?

Do you feel loved? Encouraged? Needed for who you are rather than what you can provide or how you can rebel or how you can follow the rules?

We’re all in line somewhere and there are sides drawn. We see the whites of each other’s eyes and it’s hard to distinguish the fear or anger that might lie behind them.

It’s hard right now.

We expect so much of each other and yet, we don’t have the heart energy to encourage each other. We’re so discouraged ourselves.

All of the love languages are affected. Touch, gifts, service, words, and time spent. We’re so easily and collectively running a deficit.

Our people aren’t available to us in the same way. Our church people, our play people, our family people. The people who’ve known me since I was a child are, at closest, 7 hours away and shuttered away. I miss them, and I miss their knowledge of me.

And in the missing and unavailability, we lose sight of ourselves. The healthy reflection of who we are in the eyes of our people is through a glass darkly.

So where is the hope?

Some days hidden, some days shining, but always present.

Hope is found when I don’t retreat in sadness. When I realize that my capacity for another phone call to a loved one is greater than I think. When I know that winter can shine in the midst of its blanketed weight. Realizing that God created us to be image bearers to one another, even in the battered and bruised time of our hearts.

Hope is when I muster the courage to encourage, not just overarching platitudes out of tiredness, but intentional-looking in their eyes-seeing them and their need words. In giving when I long to receive. In knowing that there will be times when I feel too soul weary to hear God but knowing that Jesus sits with me.

It’s so much in the grace, isn’t it? The grace extended to me not just to retreat but find soul rest in my chipped toe nail polished-late night-not yet resolved emotions.

There is no quick fix for this. This tired plodding and moving forward when all we want to do is lie down and give up.

When I sink in the sand, I could imagine that I’m carried and all that’s seen is one set of prints, but that’s not what I see.

I’m lying in sand and Jesus sits beside me. Quietly, hearing his breath, his waiting presence knowing me in the midst. Too tired for much movement of soul, but yet, knowing that drive to be frantically doing doesn’t come from the presence I most crave. Hearing my desire for both pressing onward and staying still. Not knowing which way to go because the path isn’t clear. And that’s….ok.

And both of us ok there together. Just as we are. Who I am and who I need to be is right with Jesus. Waiting, watching, healing, grieving, hoping. Together.