As I sit down to write this essay, I am wiping the smeared mascara that coats the skin just below my eyelashes. The black smudges cover up the bags underneath my eyes, which reminds me of the layers of exhaustion most of my days have held. My eyes aren’t smudged from crying this time, but rather from a long day, the humidity in the air, and the thing that happens when moisture, weariness, and mascara mix.
A few weeks ago I sat down (virtually) with a new spiritual director. Our initial meeting was supposed to be a consult, but with Dawn’s question, “What brings you to this moment today?” vulnerability came barreling in like a tornado sweeping everything up into its wake, leaving nothing behind.
“I guess I’ve been feeling like I got on this hamster wheel a year ago and have never gotten off. The hamster wheel just keeps on turning, and I’m just running and running and running. But it’s like one of those cartoons, where my feet can’t go fast enough and I trip and go round and round and round on the wheel.”
With tender and gentle eyes, Dawn asked, “How are you experiencing God?”
“Oh no,” I thought. I could feel the pressure behind my eyes welling up, the build-up of what felt like a whole year’s worth of grief and stress.
Choking back tears as best as I could, I muddled through something like, “I don’t really know. I do a lot of thinking about God and processing life with God. And I feel like I’ve been living in this Christian and ministry ‘hustle’ for so long that I’ve confused thinking about God with actually being with God in some cases.”
I paused. A few tears puddled in the corner of my eye and slowly traveled down the hill of my cheekbones and rested in the nook of my dimples.
“I…I think through everything that has happened this year, I know in my head that God has been nearer to me than I am capable of experiencing. I know that. I know that he is with me. Through the miscarriages, the insomnia, and having to just push through and keep going through all of that. Being in a position of leadership as a female with no other female leading me directly has felt overwhelming. I don’t feel like I know what I’m doing, I just want to be led by someone instead of being the one leading. I think I feel alone, like God has sort of left me alone.”
At that point, my voice was cracking, and tears flowed freely, offering a sort of release that felt almost surprising to me. I could feel my cheeks tingling from the way that tears wash and sort of exfoliate my skin, as if to remind me that in the naming of my pain, the presence of my tears, and the way I let my spirit succumb to the moment, there is healing even there.
Dawn led me through a time of Lectio Divina, which felt in and of itself like a balm, to be led through something by another who has come before me. As I listened to each movement of Scripture reading from John 11, Jesus raising Lazarus and interacting with Martha, I pictured Martha running toward Jesus and Jesus embracing her.
I wept through the entire practice, holding my desire to experience God’s with-ness alongside my sadness at what has felt like loneliness for so long. I imagined myself running toward Jesus, and Jesus embracing me with the same fullness as he did Martha, as I buried my face in his shoulder, like I used to be held by my own dad.
As I prepared to write this piece, I didn’t know what I would say.
How am I supposed to write about flipping tables of oppression and injustice when I am barely keeping it together?
For a long time, I naively thought that I could do all the things, because I had to. No one else looks like me, has the skills I have, or holds the position that I’m in, in the location that I reside. I thought, “If I can do all the things, then I’ll show the value of having women, people of color, and education in evangelical spaces.”
And now I am thinking, “At what cost?”
Cole Arthur Riley, creator, author, and the voice of the instagram account “Black Liturgies,” has invited me to consider that my exhaustion won’t serve me as much as my rest. In an Instagram post she writes,
Let rest deliver you back to yourself.
Exhaustion won’t save you in a world more interested in using your body than protecting it.
Lie down. Breathe slow.
We rest that we might dream.
I am not convinced anymore that the Lord needs me to hustle, even if it is for justice, for equity, or for my own sense of rising. I understand the weight and privilege that statement holds, and I also acknowledge that I am pretty useless when I’m flopping around on that hamster wheel.
My prayer for this season is that God would use rest as a sacred tool to deliver me from and back to myself and into the arms of the One who is the Resurrection and the Life.
Haley Wiggers is passionate about discovering how the messy, painful, and unexpected gifts that come with being human connect, relate to, and offer understanding of how God relates to and cares for us. She’s been married to her husband and loving partner Tyson for seven years, and together they have a nearly three-year-old, Theo. Haley is learning to notice, lean in, and respond to all the invitations God offers through parenting, pastoring, mentoring, marriage, friendship, and the fullness of life. Haley is a certified Spiritual Director and has found it to truly be a gift to companion with people as they attend to God.
