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the theology of tired (and a prayer for the sleep-deprived)

5 Comments

I am tired.

I am tired all the time. I’m tired of talking about how tired I am.

I know I knew tired before I had kids – tired from college, tired from work, tired from grad school.

But since 2009 I have been weary to my bones. This is the happy side effect of answered prayers and three growing children.

My husband and I joke that we could sleep for a decade and still be sleep-deprived. This would probably be scientifically true if I did the math. But you know. Too tired.

Sometimes tired feels like a character flaw. Take better care of yourself! Go to bed earlier! 

Sometimes tired feels like an inner critic. Stop complaining. Everyone’s exhausted. Move on.

But tired is the plain fact of my life. The contours of kids and work and home and every other devotion and demand to which I give my days and nights.

I love it all, but I am tired.

After a week where we tried to go to bed early every night – tried but got tied up with work again, caught up with chores again, tripped up by something hilarious on the Internet again – I’m hiding out during my children’s nap/rest time. Trying to think theologically about tired.

(Which is hard when we stayed up till midnight and then woke at dawn. Again.)

Tired is the antithesis of Sabbath. Since we’re supposed to be Sabbath people, am I failing by being tired? Maybe.

Tired is the cry to God throughout Scripture. The weary words of the people wandering too long, the Psalmist stuck in the pit. Is tired simply supposed to spur me back to God, swap whatever burden I’m dragging for the lighter yoke? Perhaps.

But here’s where I get stuck. Setting aside sleeplessness that’s stubborn or selfish, there’s a certain segment of sleep deprivation that cannot be removed. It is the side effect of sacrifice.

And I see it all around me – parents with young kids, parents with teenagers, adult caregivers for aging parents, students working toward degrees, professionals caring for those they serve.

I’m starting to think we’re Sabbath people who are meant to be tired, too.

(My six year-old just interrupted to ask if rest was done. The irony is not lost on me.)

IMG_2690

Vocations are tiring things. They wake us in the night. They pull us out of bed in the morning. They keep us working.

So if we are called, then we will grow tired along the way. We haven’t failed. We have given a fully faithful and perfectly human response. We have given ourselves, body and soul.

Children are stirring. Dinner is unmade. Four Word documents are still open.

I will be tired again tonight.

But setting aside a moment’s complaints and an afternoon’s acedia, I am deeply grateful for the bone-tired of my life. I’m called to love. And love is tiring.

A simple prayer for the sleep-deprived

God, I am tired.

Give me rest. Give me peace when there is not enough rest.

Grant me patience. Grant me forgiveness when there is not enough patience.

Lend me clarity. Lend me charity when there is not enough clarity.

Help me love. Help me believe there is always enough love.

Amen.

And let us not grow weary of doing good,
for in due season we will reap,
if we do not give up.
(Galatians 6:9)

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Val Starkgraf says

    8 August 2015 at 8:28 am

    I am reading this after spending pretty much all night (one nap) sitting criss-cross applesauce on the floor of the church nursery scrubbing toddler sticky and dust off all the toys. There is this existential moment when, at 1:15 AM, you find yourself sitting on the floor…scrubbing a grubby “Chicken Dance Elmo”…listening to a modern version of a Fanny Crosby standard… What. Am. I. Doing. With. My. Life.

    My day job is taking care of an adorable 18 month-old, and my nights and weekends as church sexton at my church.

    I “get” the theology of tiredness as sacrifice. I live in that place.

    Reply
  2. Laurel says

    8 August 2015 at 9:04 am

    Laura, this is a perfect prayer for a tired, weary soul. Thank you for sharing it. <3

    Reply
  3. Erin @ Humble Handmaid says

    26 August 2015 at 5:15 am

    What an amazing, encouraging, fortifying post! It struck a chord with me this morning when I, too, am up before dawn (again) to pray and prep the day for my family. Thank you so much. 😉

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. The Theology of Tired (and a prayer for the sleep-deprived) | The Catholic Wife says:
    26 August 2015 at 8:00 am

    […] But setting aside a moment’s complaints and an afternoon’s acedia, I am deeply grateful for the bone-tired of my life. I’m called to love. And love is tiring. [continue for a Prayer for the Sleep Deprived] […]

    Reply
  2. A Good Mid-Week Prayer | Ragamuffingospelfan's Blog says:
    16 August 2017 at 9:58 pm

    […] http://www.motheringspirit.com/2015/08/the-theology-of-tired-and-a-prayer-for-the-sleep-deprived/?su&#8230; […]

    Reply

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I’m Laura Kelly Fanucci. Mother, writer, wonderer. This space is where I explore mothering through writing. It’s where I celebrate how God shows up in the chaos of raising children. It’s where I love to build community with readers like you. Read More…

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thismessygrace

Mother, writer, wonderer.
Seeker of God in chaos & life with kids.
Author of Everyday Sacrament & Grieving Together.
Glimpses of grace & gratitude.

thismessygrace
Now you'd be three, I said to myself, seeing a chi Now you'd be three,
I said to myself,
seeing a child born
the same summer as you.

Now you'd be six,
or seven, or ten.
I watched you grow
in foreign bodies.

Leaping into a pool, all laughter,
or frowning over a keyboard,
but mostly just standing,
taller each time.

How splendid your most
mundane action seemed
in these joyful proxies.
I often held back tears.

From "Majority" by Dana Gioia, a poet-father who knows.

2.27.2016.
Always a birthday.
Even when not happy.
I am standing in a fluorescent-lit gym, dingy mesh I am standing in a fluorescent-lit gym, dingy mesh tank top hanging off my scrawny shoulders. I am eleven years old, listening to a grey-haired coach with a whistle round his neck.

"Here is how you pivot," he says, grabbing the ball & crouching down. "Plant your foot, solid like a rock. Don't ever move it."

I am trying to learn, because basketball is cool & I am not. I desperately want to be good at shooting, scoring, stealing, anything. But he is teaching me something I will not forget.

“The power of pivoting is you can turn any way you want. You can move where you need to go. You just have to keep this foot planted."

Today I pivot.

One day between birthdays. 24 slim hours to turn from joy to grief.

Yesterday the bouncing babe turned a whole year old. He has seen all sides of the sun by now. He gets to keep going: an ordinary miracle.

Tomorrow his sisters would have turned 5. A ghost of a birthday, shared by twins, lost to us, held & gone all at once.

All I can do is pivot.

Here is my foot planted firmly in the ground of now. I can turn in any direction I want: from joy to sorrow & back again. This is the only power I have, but it is enough for today.

I will wobble. I will feel the frantic rise in my throat of attack coming at me, blocking my view, trying to steal what I hold. For a few desperate moments I will want to pick up both feet & run far away, run fast as I can from what I never wanted.

But my pivot foot is stronger & steadier. It will stay where I have asked it to stay, from when I learned deeper truth.

Pivoting is still movement, still freedom, still control over a small corner of here. You are the one who decides to stop & plant your foot.

And the pivot is not forever. It is part of a move, not the end point. It is an interim, a passage, a survival strategy.

Part of me is forever awkward & eleven, scrawny & uncertain. But more of me is almost-forty, scarred & stronger. Knowing I can stop when I need to stop & go when I want to go, even in a full court press out of my control.

Today I pivot. I never want to forget the strength here too, the potential to turn between all that comes at me. The power of knowing this is not the end.
One day I’ll tell him the story. How after days One day I’ll tell him the story.

How after days of long labor, sick & scary, heaps of drugs to save both our lives, I stared bleary-eyed at the hospital clock: ten to two, clear as night, & made a decision.

How with no midwives in the room—unknown OBs now, nurses we didn’t know, no familiar face among them—and the clock ticking, I had to do what all those strong women I trusted had taught me to do.

How I decided to midwife my own birth.

How with no strength left, I struggled up through fog & pain, fumbled for my phone, scrolled through the dark until I found the song, & turned it up to rise above the beeping & the monitors & the awful alone sounds of awake at 1:50 am in the hospital.

How I closed my eyes & waited for the beat to come & prayed for the strength. To be my own midwife.

Drop beat. Beat drop. Pause.

The battle of Yorktown. 1781.

I cranked one weary smile. Closed my eyes as the song picked up. Turned my clumsy body to the left side to bring on a contraction.

Gotta meet my son.

Breathed through the pain. Timed it. Heaved to the right side to bring on another wave.

The world turned upside down.

Smiled when the night nurse came to check, surprised. Feigned shock when she raised her eyes that things were changing.

How as soon as she left the room, I glared at the clock, hit repeat, turned to one side, then another, kept contractions coming & coming, coaching my body hour after hour to do what I knew it could do.

History will show that this child was born from pitocin for induction & magnesium sulfate for preeclampsia & a failed epidural or two & eight shots of epinephrine when maternal blood pressure tanked.

But I will know that he was born from sheer grit & the strength of every midwife I’ve loved & the back beat of Hamilton at 1:50 am in a lonely hospital room.

The world turned upside down, then 100 more times in the tumultuous first year of his life.

But I did what I had to do & what I could do & I did it all for love of him. That day & every one that followed.

That is a story worth telling.

His birth. (Mine, too.)

2.25.20
A story and a word of thanks. You are amazing huma A story and a word of thanks. You are amazing humans.
Want to do some outrageous good with me? If our d Want to do some outrageous good with me?

If our daughters had lived, they would turn 5 years old this week. Our grief is enormous. But our gratitude for their lives is even bigger.

So in honor of Abby and Maggie's big birthday—one whole hand—I want to do something big.

Hunger has gnawed at my heart for the whole pandemic. It's all around us, growing every day. Yet often it flies under the radar of our concern because it's constant, while a thousand outrages and injustices rise up anew each day.

But I know our neighbors are struggling to put food on their tables. I believe we're called to feed the hungry.

And I'm convinced that in the worst of times, we can show up with our best selves.

So I want to do something outrageous. I want to raise $20,000 for Second Harvest Heartland, one of the largest food banks in the U.S., located right here in our beloved Twin Cities.

Their need has skyrocketed by 30% during the pandemic. Food shelves across the country are seeing record levels of need.

Feeding the hungry is a work of mercy. A work we must take up in earnest.

I know many of you are struggling, too. Stretched thin, worn through, tapped out. Most of us don't have a lot to spare these days. So here's where we can help each other.

If each one of you who follows along to read my words gave $1 to @secondharvestheartland we could meet this crazy goal TODAY.

Could we do it? Should we do something spectacular this week?

I'm willing to try. I bet you are, too. If you give small—or big if you've got it, or simply share this post if you can't give right now—we could do it in HOURS.

That's the power of social media for good. The power of loving our neighbors in tangible ways.

Let's do it. I'm with you. Right now I'm giving in honor of two sweet girls that I wish were swinging their feet at our kitchen table, scarfing down dinner alongside their brothers.

Do it in honor of the kids you love. Or the kids you'll help but never meet.

Make it part of your alms-giving this Lent. Or make it today's small sacrifice: the cost of one cup of coffee.

I'm ready to do some wild good in this hardest week. Thank you for loving with me.
Caught myself dizzy from scrolling here and rememb Caught myself dizzy from scrolling here and remembered—we aren’t an island of misfit toys. We’re one big book of psalms.
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