Tired of the pandemic and politics. Tired of the day in and day out trying to adjust and adapt and rise to the occasion. Maybe you are even tired of your people and your places. And furthermore not only can you rise to zero more occasions, if you have to make one more meal or look over the shoulder of one more online learner or attend one more Zoom event you are going to lose your actual shiz.

We are all weary friends. All of us.

And maybe today is maybe the day you just cannot with all of it. You just feel the cannot in your bones and also you just DO NOT WANNA thank you very much.

I sometimes cry out in my day for a pass card…I’m all done with this God. Message received. Lessons learned. Call off the dogs, we are ready for our boring old lives back.

We’ve gained patience and strength and resiliency and we really don’t even want to use those gifts right now as it turns out. As noted above we are tired. So FYI we get the message…live in the moment, love each other, it’s the little things that matter, it’s OK not to be busy, we are all in this together. We hear you loud and clear.

Can we just call it good and end all this suffering and madness?

Sometimes I feel like God doesn’t hear a word.

But oh….oh He does.

Just when I cannot go on he gives me gifts in the form of those people I sometimes tire of and those places I don’t feel like going.

He gives me a friend who stops by for our first hug since all this started. #noregrets

He gives me a phone call from my parents or a squirly boy who makes it all the way through an hour-long online math assessment like an actual boss.

He gives me a grateful teenager (this is real and amazing) and a husband who does all the things (all of them).

He gives me the sight of students walking through the halls, masked but chatting as they go just the same, and of awesome teachers who are there for those students in a way that is so beautiful it may or may not bring me to tears.

He gives me texting threads with my sisters and hot coffee in the morning with a mountain of whipped cream on top.

He gives all of us small wins and small moments…we just have to look around (maybe look really hard) and notice them and realize they are His way of whispering, “Keep going. You can do this. I am here with you. All is not lost.”

And each of these moments is a chance for us to be the ones to chip away at the madness and the suffering. For us to not only see what we have been given but also to be the one to put a bit of good into the world. For us to be a part of one of the small moments someone else sees the good of the world in He will use us if we let him.

And best of all, when you really cannot even, He gives us his word, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest”. (Mathew 11: 28-30)

When we are weary and all done (so very all done) and we don’t feel like we can do one more thing and we can’t even see the small bits of good, we can take a minute to rest in Him. He’s got this, and US, even when we are just D-O-N-E.

And that is the most beautiful thing of all.