Exhaustion: Rest For What Wearies Me

Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him.

“One of life’s little ironies is that some of our hardest times are when our dreams actually do come true.”

Paula Rinehart

Nothing compares to a sleepless night. Unless, of course, you string together a whole bunch of sleepless nights together right in a row, then you experience not only physical exhaustion but a special brand of craziness too. I’ve been there in the not so distant past and my memory of those months when I couldn’t sleep about drove me crazy.

Looking back, it was the perfect storm of events that took me to my knees hour by hour in complete and overwhelming exhaustion. If it wasn’t one (or both) of my loose shoulders paining me through those dim hours, it was the continual onslaught of hot flashes that stirred me out of sleep with a sudden and violent pounding in my heart that momentarily preceded an inside-out drenching. Hour after hour, I would wake up and have a difficult time going back to sleep. After a few months of this nonsense, I began hating bedtime. This is saying a lot since one of my favorite comforts in life has been to get a good night’s sleep.

Exhaustion Breeds Desperation

I tried everything I could find to counteract the combination of pain and the hot flashes. Nothing worked. I cried out to God to please send me someone or something to help me because I was out of solutions and feeling more desperate as the days went by. In the midst of my delirium I learned to never, ever take God’s promised provision for granted. It just didn’t come packaged as I had hoped.

I also learned to never say never when no amount of exercise, eating plans, vitamin regimes, or holistic solutions worked and I was forced into a corner with few options left except pharmaceutical ones. My physician offered me a short stint on HRT (hormone replacement therapy) and though kicking and screaming, I agreed to try it. Immediately, my quality of life increased one hundred fold. Sleeplessness was a thing of the past but I was forced to accept the hard truth that when I ask for God’s help, He has the prerogative in how to supply my need. Sometimes, I truly believe He allows us to get real uncomfortable so we can hear Him better. And, so that we’re reminded God is the creator, sustainer, and life-giver.

God Alone Is In Control

We all like to believe we’re in control of our lives. We love to mentally tabulate that what we’ve achieved is all a result of our own doing. For sure, it’s our blood, sweat and tears that got us the job, house, spouse, friends, or vacation. As Americans, we’ve got the corner on independence. But it’s not true.

Every single one of us is where we are in life because of God’s good gifts of specific talents, bents, abilities, and blessings. If we’re born with superior intelligence, thank God. If we’re born with physical strength and stamina, thank God. If we’re born into a family with parents who love us, thank God. Still, we often forget that who we are and what we accomplish is always sustained by our Heavenly Father.

Trouble Comes Packaged In Different Ways

We like to believe that if we take good enough care of our bodies, our minds, our souls, then God will pave a smooth path in front of us. This isn’t what Scripture teaches. In fact, over and over, Jesus tells us we will have trouble (lots of it) in this life. The Good News is that Jesus has overcome this world and all its troubles. Once we accept that all our doing the right things onto exhaustion won’t inoculate us from the world’s pain (physical, emotional, mental) we can learn to rest from that which wearies us.

Throughout those tedious months of long sleepless nights, I begged the Lord to allow me one good night’s sleep. For months on end, that prayer went unanswered (from my human perspective.) In the worst moments of my exhaustion when it was hard to concentrate and speak a coherent sentence, I felt my humanity, my frailty, and my weakness more keenly than ever before. And I learned something during those dark hours when everyone else was slumbering sweetly, I realized how much I count on God for every breath I take. In and out, in and out, it’s all Him. It always was, I just hadn’t realized that truth yet.

Real Rest Comes From God Alone

All our laboring is in vain, it is. He wants to give us rest. Regular daily (and nightly) rest to recharge and rejuvenate our bodies, our minds, our souls. It is one of life’s ironies that often when we believe everything is going our way, we are in reality, struggling more mightily than ever. The lesson I know to be true is this, God governs our days and nights and whether we work or we sleep, He longs to give us rest from whatever wearies us. Our choice is to come into His quiet presence long enough to hear Him speak.