Letter to the Woman Who Is Tired

Dear friend,

I am not writing about the tired that comes from one hard day. I am writing about the other kind — the tired that has been building for months or years, the kind that sleep does not fully reach, the kind you carry into the morning before you have even opened your eyes.

You may have stopped naming it. You may have grown so accustomed to it that you have begun to mistake it for your personality. This is just how I am. But I do not think it is how you are. I think it is what you are carrying.

I want to say something carefully: tiredness of this kind is not a spiritual failure. It is not evidence that your faith is thin or your trust is small. Some of the most faithful women I know are tired. They are tired because they have loved well, worked hard, shown up consistently, held things together that would have come apart without them. The tiredness is the receipt of the effort.

But a receipt is not meant to be carried forever.

Jesus said — and I think He meant it plainly, without metaphor — Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Not: sort yourself out and then come. Not: rest is available once you have resolved everything. Come as you are. Weary. Burdened. Now.

The rest He gives is not always immediate. It is not always sleep, or the removal of what is tiring you. But it is real — a kind of inner settling, a shift in what you are carrying and who you are carrying it with. The weight may not change, but you are no longer carrying it alone.

You are allowed to be tired. You are allowed to say so. You are allowed to bring it to God without first making it presentable.

He is not waiting for you to recover. He is where the recovery comes from.

With steadiness, A fellow traveller