A smol life update because I need to put it somewhere and I've been bad about actually sending my newsletter: I am tired.

That's it. That's the life update. We can go home now.

Kidding. WAIT not yet.

My exhaustion has sprung from my need to be everything. I take on so much because I want my heart to not even have a chance to feel. If I feel pain, I will do something else, something to distract and strip me of the pain. Memories like to choke me, wrapping their fingers around my neck, reminding me that I'm never going to be good enough. I can only hope for strength to get through this thing, and then the next thing and then the next.

This semester, I went, finally, on meds for my most intensive chronic pain. It's always existed, but with it more controlled, I'm realizing just how broken my body is, and for how long I've lived with that. I'm realizing that there's a path to peace and to lesser anxiety.

That doesn't mean meds have "cured" me or changed me or fixed all my sin problems. What it does mean is that the curtains have parted and I'm more aware of my existence as a daughter of the King, able to be proud of myself not because I can do or accomplish so much, but because he loves me.

So where do you go when you're tired?

I would like to quit some things. I'd like to step down from my responsibilities and let them fall out of my hands, but I am committed and stuck with most of it, so I have to keep going. My body is running into the ground. My mind is fatigued. I find I can hardly keep up many days. This is so different from the me who made it through high school with over a 4.0 and got through my classes while working tons and watching a new movie every day. 

But I have reached the end of myself. It's crazy how long that took. There was a lot of will in me to get through before I got to the end. 

And now I can find rest in the one place my soul can actually rest: His peace. 

He is the only one who can hold me, the only one able to protect me in the darkness of my day-to-day life. I am exhausted, but where I am weak, he is strong. The Lord can hold me fast because I am not the one responsible for being held, much like a toddler desperate to get down from his father's arms. He can fight, he can pull, but in the end it is the Father's responsibility to hold onto him, and he is free.

I am not the one who has to hold myself. I can rest in the knowledge that my Father has me.

And when I come to the end of myself, he will hold me fast.