Fumes.  That is what my energy tank is running on.  It’s not just today, this week or even this year.  I’ve been pregnant, breastfeeding and waking up every single night with young children for over 5 years now and I’m spent.  This is just my story but there are so many others who are also exhausted for different reasons:  A chronic illness, a divorce, work, poverty, stress or athletic training.  At some point, we all feel tired so where do we find the energy to soldier on?

The answer is: Each other.  We lean on one another.  Tonight, when my children wouldn’t go to bed, my husband took them from me, recognizing my exhaustion level.  Other nights it is reversed but the bottom line is we lean on each other.  When he is not home, a phone call to a friend sometime suffices- they encourage me, make me laugh and tell me to quit whining and get back to work.  We were not meant to live this life in solitude.  However scared we may feel by sharing our weakness with someone else, we must do so in order to find the strength to carry on.

Sometimes it’s tough to trust someone else with our feelings, particularly when others from our past have let us down.  But we must recognize that when we fail to try again, we are allowing fear to dictate our well-being.  When we live in fear we are not living as our authentic selves and that is supremely exhausting in and of itself.

In the back of my mind, I know there is someone I have neglected to trust for fear of being duped, fooled, and let down.  I can trace the root of my apprehensiveness to my childhood but at what point do I make peace with this and stop allowing it to define my present and future?  I keep waiting to feel “ready” as if it is going to resolve itself.  Deep down, though, I know progress is not made for those who wait.  It is made for those who seek.  They seek treatment, forgiveness, peace, stability, courage, and improvement.  They seek hope.

I don’t feel “ready” but I feel exhausted and in my heart, I know what is missing above all else.  As much as I try to rationalize, dismiss and avoid, I know I am missing a relationship with my God.  I fear He doesn’t exist.  I fear putting my faith into something that isn’t there just to make myself feel better.  I fear being let down.  And yet, every. single. time. I have attended the church I grew to love last year, I left service feeling uplifted.  I felt hope.  I felt amazing clarity.  I felt humbled and I felt an immense amount of love and kindness surrounding me.

I’m running on empty and its because I have failed to fill my tank with the one Being whose energy and love has no bounds: my God.

We weren’t meant to do this alone.  We look to each other but above all else, we look to our Creator for there is no one in this great, big world that knows what we need more than Him.

I kneel down.  I ask for forgiveness in thinking I could do this on my own.  I ask you to hold my hand.  Fill me with gratitude and grant me the energy to carry on.  In your name, I pray.