I’m going to level with you: August was rough. It was filled with high-highs and low-lows. And now it’s September, and my body feels stretched like taffy. Still intact, but pulled thin.
To begin the month, I knew I needed to embrace a pause. Instead of trying to keep up like a wobbly-legged Bambi, limbs all askew, my brain and body needs time to sit quietly in the dirt. I need space to sink my fingers into the soil and let the breeze pass gently across my skin. I need to turn down the volume on my life and become reacquainted with the quiet.
Silence can be a gentle friend. And I am in need of some gentleness.
I don’t know why that’s so hard to admit, but it is. Despite my weariness, there’s still a part of me that wants to power through, to prove to myself and to whomever I imagine is watching I am strong enough.
But even if I were “strong enough” (whatever that means), worth is not on the other side of the work, waiting to clap its hands and wrap a medal around my neck. More often than not, striving has hollow ends, doing more to us than for us.
That’s why I’m giving myself permission to pull back in this loud season. To (as a friend recently reminded me) extended compassion to myself like I might a friend. To allow myself to be utterly and fully human—wobbly legs and all.
Maybe you feel weary too.
And if you do, I hope you give yourself that same compassion. I hope you find little or big ways to let yourself just be, even if it’s as simple as deleting Instagram from your phone for a bit (which I did) or allowing yourself to step outside with a cup of coffee for five minutes before you begin the day. You get to choose.
But let’s not believe we have to be anything more than human. Let’s not believe compassion is something we can only give but cannot receive.
Let’s let our finitude be a gift and hold it gently.
grace + peace,
Sarah
PS: If you’ve been around here for a while, you may have noticed I didn’t send out an essay to end the month. That was not a fluke, but rather, one of the tangible ways I decided to be kind to myself in this season. :)
Good Things to Pick Up
Here are a few things I want to pass along to you this week. May they bring some added goodness and God-ness to your life.
A Quote
A friend passed along this passage from Psalm 18 (emphasis mine), and the words met me in a moment of need. I pass them on to you, in hope that whatever you feel as void will become vastness as you remember how deeply loved you are.
He reached down from on high
and took hold of me;
he pulled me out of deep water.
He rescued me from my powerful enemy
and from those who hated me,
for they were too strong for me.
They confronted me in the day of my calamity,
but the Lord was my support.
He brought me out to a spacious place;
he rescued me because he delighted in me.
—Psalm 18:16-19 (CSB)
An Article
“For the One Who Feels on the Outside Looking In” - Last month, (in)courage published this essay I wrote over the summer, for all of us who have felt left out or out of place.
A Episode
“The Great Ache Between Us” - The Rich Roll Show, Ep. #699
This conversation between Rich Roll and Susan Cain (author of Quiet and Bittersweet) is a long one, but oh-so-good. They talk about normalizing the nuance and beauty of melancholy, longing, and holding space for all that is hard, as well as navigating life as an introvert.