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When Your Soul Is Tired

In so many conversations lately, when I ask friends how they’re really doing, they reply with a single word: exhausted.

Can you relate?

I’m not just talking about the kind of fatigue you have from staying up late, bingeing Netflix, or not having enough caramel macchiatos to jump-start your day. I’m talking about a soul-fatigue you endure in a visceral, all-of-life way. There is a kind of weariness that hits you in your gut: a gnawing, restless ache that tells you something is deeply wrong.

Recent polls reveal how many of us are struggling physically, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally:

• 75 percent are overwhelmed by stress

• 72 percent are exhausted

• 68 percent feel defeated

• 67 percent struggle with loneliness

• 48 percent say they’re hopeless

What we’re seeing and experiencing in this moment is a collective fatigue that goes well beyond whatever’s happening out there; it’s more like something inside us is broken. The spiritual writer Thomas Moore once said the “great malady” of the modern age is “loss of soul.” If true, that’s a more harrowing diagnosis than you may realize. Your soul is everything. If your soul is flourishing, nothing you go through can destroy you. If your soul is crumbling, nothing you go through can heal you. The health of your soul shapes the outcome of your life.

You’ll know when something is wrong with your soul. How? It might manifest as negative thinking, restlessness, abrupt changes in emotion, an underlying sense of anxiety, disconnection from others, indifference, lack of aspiration, or burnout that no amount of sleep or time off can fix. A disordered soul is perpetually weary.

And yet, soul-weariness is often a symptom of desire. When you sift through the debris that’s swirling in your life—past the grief, tears, disappointment, boredom, and frustration; past the confusion and apprehension about what tomorrow may bring—what you’ll find is how fiercely lovesick you are for God. You burn with desire for more of his healing, his shalom, his redemptive nearness.

In Augustine’s masterpiece Confessions he wrote: “My weight is my love. Wherever I am carried, my love is carrying me.” Augustine speaks of love as a force that lures us. So even as gravity pulls us toward itself, the soul incarnates what it loves. If the object of your love is anchored in the world, then you’ll drift unmoored because your soul’s infinite longing can only be satisfied by an infinite God. But when you’re centered in God’s love, his weight becomes your substance, his glory your delight, his essence the source of your flourishing.

You were made to live in radical intimacy with God. And everything within you affirms it. And here’s the astonishing thing: Your lovesickness for God is only a faint echo of his lovesickness for you. The writers of the New Testament often remind us that we are “beloved” (See Romans 1:7, James 2:5, Colossians 3:12). The word beloved means “dearly loved.” In the Old Testament, it’s connected to the word’s breath and longing. God longs for you. His heart beats for you, languishes for you. He loves you with an intensity and unwavering persistence that defies imagination.

This very moment.

Wherever you are, whatever your story looks like, your soul finds its rest and identity in a God of endless love.

Response

Spend some time waiting on God now. You may want to go for a walk. Or find a place where you can put away distractions and be still. Listen to what the Holy Spirit might be saying. What is he stirring inside you? Are there any fears you need to acknowledge? Sins you need to confess? Hopes you need to name?

Remind yourself of who you are: his beloved son or daughter, and that you are fiercely and unconditionally loved by him. Take time to thank and worship him for the love he’s shown to you.