August 21, 2015

For When Evenings Find You Exhausted

Wake up early, get a shower, get dressed, clean up the bedroom, wake up kids, make breakfast, prepare for the school day. It’s only eight, and I want to go back to bed.

Come to me you who are weary…

Spend the morning teaching Isabel and Noah, Bible stories, math, reading, writing, science, spelling, play time, piano, make lunch, clean up. By noon, one day feels like two.

Come to me you who are weary…

In the afternoon answer e-mails, manage my online students, grade their papers, placate colleagues with questions and requests. By four pm I think I have nothing left to give.

Come to me you who are weary…

Soon it's time to make dinner, to welcome my husband, to eat as a family, to talk about our days, to pray as a family, to clean up, to do dishes, to bathe children, to brush their teeth, to read one more story, to pray once again. Twelve hours after breakfast feel like a week.

Come to me you who are weary…

Then the house is quiet, so it’s time to do the laundry, to pay bills, to sweep the kitchen, to wipe the counters, to spend a few minutes with the man I love, to get ready for bed.

Come to me you who are weary…

But the rest my pillow offers will not satisfy or take away the heaviness this day has left over me. I am bone-tired inside and out. My body aches and my mind is racing. 

There is only one place I can go to find the respite my mind, body, and soul desperately need.

So finally, finally...

When I surrender the busy-ness of the day and at last quiet my heart enough to notice, I hear the words the Spirit has been trying to whisper to me all day long as I rushed through each task:  

Come to me you who are weary…and I will give you rest.

And I breathe a sigh of release, of freedom, and of gratitude. I let go and unburden my shoulders of the weight of the world.

The days are heavy and long and weary. But I don't have to carry them alone.

I pray tomorrow I will remember this before my feet first hit the floor.


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