It’s not just that we’re carrying a lot from this past season (summer or winter, depending on your hemisphere!). There’s more to it. Many of us are feeling the weight of exhaustion and waking up to pain that has been with us for a while, things that we may not have had space to process during, say, a global pandemic. And now that we’re ostensibly on the tail end of this particular worldwide trauma (experienced in different ways for all of us, of course), it makes so much sense that it’s all catching up to us now. Our lives changed drastically. We lost things in that time period, no matter who or where we are. We may not have had space to process and grieve as those losses came, as we had to go into a kind of survival mode, to greater or lesser degrees. Even if the thing(s) you are aware of carrying now seem to have nothing to do with that particular world event, it still may be affecting your process, if there are things that are continuing to hum under the surface there. (There are, of course, many other sources of trauma—big and small—in our lives. This is just one that we all share in some way, in this season.) How might God be attending to the pain, exhaustion, burnout in you? How might you be invited to join in that process? Or not? If it feels overwhelming to you to even consider working through one.more.thing, let the healing be attended to by God in your depths for a while. With or without your attention. It’s not all up to you—even your own healing process. So, whatever you are carrying today—the weariness, the hurting places, the burdens that feel all too familiar at this point—what would it be to let stronger hands care for them today? To let someone else do the heavy lifting, and make space for your own soul to be cared for in ways you hadn’t even thought up yet? What might God be up to in you, that you haven’t even had space to hope for? Can you let it be, today? Let yourself be? As you are? The perfectly-held, mess-of-a-beloved-human?

Posted by Jamie Bonilla at 2022-09-27 14:12:54 UTC