Note from Barbara: Today’s post comes from my long-distance friend Sara Hagerty. As I read her words below, I felt myself nodding in understanding and identification because her struggle with fatigue and limitations is ageless. My daughters, like Sara, experience exhaustion most days from the relentless demands of their families. Then my generation knows lessening energy and abilities as age begins to take its toll. Sara’s words are for all of us. Read them and listen. Then exhale. Finally give thanks for the gift of weakness and fatigue, as Sara describes at the end.
Hosting the World Cup has its perks and also its annoyances. Construction projects for the huge soccer event went on for months across Kansas City.
One morning as I was driving to morning swim team practice, we were delayed by roadwork … again. Projected to be late, I pulled into the right-hand turn lane behind an overly cautious driver (in my opinion). One, two, three opportunities missed for an easy turn, and I said, “C’mon lady, you can do this.”
From the backseat, my son’s long-time friend said, “Mrs. Hagerty —it’s okay. America moves too fast!”
This kid’s observations were better than my morning coffee.
And, of course, it’s inconsequential when it’s a mere right turn — a chance to observe something profound, tucked inside the blip of two minutes added to my drive time.
But then there was this other thing just a few weeks before that …
I had a relatively minor outpatient surgery in April that should’ve kept me in bed for a day (max) and back into my normal pace within a week. I’m the woman who, two days after my son was born, crammed my post-partum body into jeans, put on makeup, and stopped at a coffee shop for a chai. (I took pride in this back then.) By nature, I assume that I can keep pace.
A week after surgery, and I was clipping along — piano practice, soccer practice, and packing two of my boys for a father-son trip. Within 24 hours, my body was back in bed, with vertigo and then a migraine.
This is the lesson of my life, I thought to myself, as I evaluated all that I’d planned against the actual state of my body. Years of the same reminder and I am paying attention: my body will tell me a story that my heart won’t, and perhaps it’s God’s way of reaching me. Just because I can breathe and hold down food and water, and my wound isn’t bleeding, doesn’t mean my body can keep up with what my mind expects out of it.
Again, I remember: My ‘tired’ is a gift.
Jesus slept, and He rested, and He wearied. He slid through the crowds, walked at a 3-mile pace, and took a nap in a storm. He tarried for days upon hearing of a beloved friend’s sickness. Not only our life-savior, but also our model, and He lived a limited life. He put himself into a body that burped and bled.
And yet something inside of me wants to outwork this man. Whether it be out of the fear of what is left undone or who I will be if it’s left undone, or the need to make a place for myself, the 48-year-old version of me still needs reminding that the very best parts of life are not when I can accomplish the tasks of three people or meet the needs of everyone around me.
Those loose-hanging threads:
… the friend for whom you couldn’t bring a meal because of the timing in your own life,
… the child whose need you couldn’t immediately meet because you landed sick in bed,
… the deadline you didn’t make, or the sporting event you didn’t attend, or the laundry you didn’t fold, or the house you couldn’t clean before the guests arrived …
These are all opportunities for our souls to brush up against the God who thrives in our weakness.
Verses like 2 Corinthians 12:9 (“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness’”) get real when you break your ankle the day before your mom’s 70th birthday party, and it’s a plane flight away, or you catch the flu days before the big presentation. These life misses feel terrible in the moment, but might they also be on purpose?
They are gentle reminders to us that the very best of life often happens when we can’t show up, when we come just short of the goal, when we let somebody down.
On a whim, we reserved a boat and hoped a dinner out on the ocean with the grandkids would be a way to honor this moment. (But in my heart, I knew it was a far cry from the thoughtful touches I’d once put into events like this; I love hosting parties for people I love.) On the day of the boat ride, it poured, and at 4 o’clock, we were scrambling to make this night memorable when our plans were canceled. On a whim, we found a restaurant in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, with an unoccupied upstairs room. We went for it, and I swallowed my shame: could I have botched this night any worse?
Just as my pregnant body was ready for bed, we ascended the third-floor stairs of a charming old building near Rainbow Row, Charleston’s historic district. A chandelier hung low over the single table in the center of the room, surrounded by windows, which housed our family. My in-laws, foodies, and wine connoisseurs reveled in this private gathering, featuring gourmet delights and our very own sommelier. We toasted them in between courses and basked in the beauty of a night that appeared as if it took months to plan, not hours. And this, all because of my weakness … my tired plan was re-gifted into something … wonderful.
Instead of going to bed celebratory over my own efforts, I sank into my pillow, thankful … deeply thankful for the way God works.
Friends, our tired mid-afternoons and unexpected sick days … the limits our bodies give to us when our minds refuse to stop the schedule and the pace … are perhaps on purpose, bringing us to the places when we have no other choice but to watch what God does.
What if our words became, as we listened to the story He is telling through our life: “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
Our tired is a gift.
(It’s such a gift that I wrote a whole book about leaning into the gifts of these life-limitations we all keep bumping up against. The Gift of Limitations tells the story of you and me and how God is reaching for us through the things we just cannot reach in our own lives.)
