Slow Growth Equals Strong Roots by Mary MarantzSample

At Last Exhausted

You are dust. You are embers. You are walking around so bone-tired and world-wearied, it’s like one big raw nerve ending screaming out every time someone carelessly bumps into you. You are burned out, there is no question. But what you’ve realized is that the burn didn’t make you any harder on the outside like you thought it would.

Instead, you have been reduced to this brittle, fragile, ashes-to-ashes version of yourself. You have run so far for so long, trying to achieve your way into worth, that you are completely spent. Consumed. Exhausted. Finished. You’re doing everything you can to hold it all together, but every day these little pieces of you keep flying away. Pieces you know you can never get back. It’s gotten to where you feel like at the slightest push, the slightest gentle breeze, you might just disappear altogether.

Dust on the wind. Breathless and at last exhausted.

You feel more than hear Jesus’s words: Come to Me. But how can you take any more steps? I will give you rest. Can this promise be true—for you, today? Is it possible no more steps are needed, just a laying down of your head, a sigh?

You have finally had enough. You are ready to trade all this striving, achieving, and performing, caught in an endless pursuit of gold stars and outward success. You are finally starting to realize that maybe there is no amount of more that will ever keep you from feeling less-than.

Are you right in the middle of your own doubled-over-at-the-pain-of-a-lifetime-spent-proving moment? Do you wish for nothing more than to curl up in surrender and rest your face on the cool, hard ground? Have you tired yourself out yet only to end up back where you started? Have you gone hard enough and long enough that you are at last exhausted?

Are you ready to stop all this running from your own story yet?

Good. Now the real work can begin.

God, thank you that you call us not to achieve but to rest, not to prove ourselves but to embrace the identity you have already given us. Help us to have eyes to see ourselves the way that you see us, Lord. Amen.