Let’s Soar

Exhaustion. I’ve had many opportunities to experience utter physical exhaustion. I bet you have too. My first encounter with this type of weariness was as a young mother with two boys under two. There were plenty of interrupted nights with feedings, fevers, stomach aches, and bad dreams. And then, once I returned to full-time employment and signed up for 12 hour shifts – those often turned into 13 or 14 hour shifts; only to have to be back to do it all over again the next morning. Two or three of those in a row and physical exhaustion creeps over into mental as well.

Because I remember these times, it attests to the declaration that they were significant events for me. But no event kept in my “exhaustion file” stands out as prominently as the time I collided head first with the Epstein Barr virus – better known as mononucleosis. I’m not one to get ill often, but when I do it always hits hard. Dr. Kirven told me my labs looked worse than any he had seen with mono. There were many symptoms that went with this – but none as bad as the total physical exhaustion I experienced for weeks. I had two preschool children that more or less ran wild while I was in bed and their dad was at work. One time a day – usually around 3:00 – I had enough energy to make it from the bedroom to the living room couch and on a good day, I might have been able to wash a few dishes. Friends from work brought us out meals and took up an offering to hire a housekeeper to come clean our ram-shacked house.

Charles Spurgeon describes a comparable exhaustion of the dove that returned to the ark with no olive leaf. I had never thought about this poor bird and the state that it must have been in. But it makes sense – there was no place to light – not a bush or a tree branch or a rock. She likely flew and flew and flew over the expanses of water for hours upon end. Once she had given up, she still had a return trip to make. By the time she saw the ark, she may have felt there was not one more flap to be had in her spent wings. Charles Spurgeon writes, “She has just enough strength to reach the edge of the ark. She can hardly align upon it.” Genesis 8:9 picks up the story….then he (Noah)put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark.

Wow…isnt’ that just beautiful and isn’t that what God does for us….takes us in no matter what our condition? We don’t need to wait until we think we are presentable. His desire is for us to come in our rags, our sins, our mistrust, our doubts, our addictions, our shame….just as we are. When he holds out his arm to us we feel His strength uphold us. With Him, we can once again begin to soar!

Until next time….keep on readin’ and I’ll keep on writin’.