These days I don't very often feel "totally exhausted." But for most of my life I was chronically exhausted. Around the time my husband Ken died it had reached critical mass. Things had to change. And they did. If they hadn't I wouldn't be here to experience this, My Best Time.
This morning I talked with somebody I love like crazy. She loves me just the same. She's not feeling well. She didn't say this but I know some of what she's feeling is exhaustion.
A while back in this blog I mentioned the book "Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope." I'm going to lead a Lenten study on this book at my church. It's chuck full of gritty reality. I know we'll have interesting discussions as we search for the truth over lunch.
Here are a couple of quotes on a chapter called "Exhaustion" from this book by Joan Chittister:
It is not so much "struggle"....Rather, it is the bone-sore deep-down, heart-wearying, never-ending weight of struggles, the effects of which never go away that wears us down and turns our spirits into dust....It is the day-in, day-out tenacious cling to the amorphous anger, the depression, the unacceptability of it that stand to defeat us in the end.
Exhaustion is the invisible enemy, the real enemy, in struggling.
Yes, I believe all of the above to be true. But how do we fix it? Chittister says in her on wisdom filled way that, essentially, we have to, first of all, want to see some light in all that darkness.
And in her next chapter, called "Endurance," she gives us lots of clues on how to do this.
***
This morning I talked with somebody I love like crazy. She loves me just the same. She's not feeling well. She didn't say this but I know some of what she's feeling is exhaustion.
A while back in this blog I mentioned the book "Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope." I'm going to lead a Lenten study on this book at my church. It's chuck full of gritty reality. I know we'll have interesting discussions as we search for the truth over lunch.
Here are a couple of quotes on a chapter called "Exhaustion" from this book by Joan Chittister:
It is not so much "struggle"....Rather, it is the bone-sore deep-down, heart-wearying, never-ending weight of struggles, the effects of which never go away that wears us down and turns our spirits into dust....It is the day-in, day-out tenacious cling to the amorphous anger, the depression, the unacceptability of it that stand to defeat us in the end. Exhaustion is the invisible enemy, the real enemy, in struggling.
Yes, I believe all of the above to be true. But how do we fix it? Chittister says in her on wisdom filled way that, essentially, we have to, first of all, want to see some light in all that darkness.
And in her next chapter, called "Endurance," she gives us lots of clues on how to do this.
***
