I Am Tired In A Way Sleep Does Not Fix

You slept nine hours on Saturday and got up feeling exactly the same.

That is the thing that finally worried you. Not the tiredness, which you have had for about two years and have got used to in the way people get used to things.

It was that nine hours did nothing at all, which means whatever this is, it is not sleep debt, and the one remedy everybody offers has been tested and has failed.

And you have not said that to anybody, because the sentence that comes back is always the same. Are you getting enough sleep. And you say yes, and they look slightly disbelieving, and the conversation ends there.

Here is what nobody says out loud and what you have been sitting with alone.

There is a kind of tiredness that is not about sleep, and there is no vocabulary for it, and because there is no vocabulary the only available explanation is that you are not trying hard enough.

So you have been trying harder. For two years. Which is the exact opposite of what anybody in your condition needs, and you have been doing it because there was nothing else on offer.

I am not going to explain your tiredness. I do not know what it is and neither does anybody who has not examined you.

What I am going to do is get one thing off you, and then give you ten minutes that does not require you to feel better afterward.

Come unto me, all ye that are heavy laden

There is a sentence in Matthew that everybody knows, and the entry requirement in it is the part to look at.

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28, King James Version)

Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Look at who is being called. Not the rested. Not the ones who have sorted themselves out and can arrive in good order.

You have an invitation addressed specifically to the exhausted, and Matthew 11:28 has never once required anybody to explain what has exhausted them. The call is to all who labor and are heavy laden, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings a tired man to the one place where tiredness is the qualification.

You are able to see how unusual that is against everything else in your week.

Every other place you go requires you to be functional. Work requires it. Your family requires a version of it. Even the doctor, in a way, requires you to be able to describe it properly.

This one asks for nothing except that you be tired, and it does not ask why, and it does not ask you to prove it.

And notice the order of the sentence. Come, then I will give you rest. The rest is on the far side of the coming, which means you arrive in the condition you are actually in and the rest is what happens next rather than what you bring.

You are able to arrive at Him in exactly the state you are in, and Matthew 11:28 has never once made the coming conditional on being able to describe the condition. The Spirit of God is the one who meets somebody who cannot explain themselves, and the verse puts the rest after the coming rather than before it.

Stop trying to earn it back

Here is the specific thing to put down, and it is the thing making everything heavier.

You have been treating the tiredness as a debt.

You have been trying to repay something that was never a loan, and Matthew 11:28 has never once asked a tired man to settle up before he comes. It is written come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes an account book out of somebody's hands.

Every attempt for two years has had the same shape. Sleep more, to catch up. Rest on Sunday, to recover. Push through the week, and repay it on Saturday.

That is the language of debt, and it has one consequence that is quietly destroying you: it means every day is spent in arrears. You wake in deficit. You spend the day going further behind. And the whole thing is unpayable because it was never a loan in the first place.

So the ten minutes on this site is not offered to you as a repayment, and this is important, because that is exactly how you will try to use it. If it becomes a thing you do in order to feel better, then on the days it does not work it becomes one more failed payment.

It is offered as something you do while tired, which changes nothing about the tiredness and is worth doing anyway.

You are able to do something without it having to fix anything, and ten minutes that changes nothing has never once been ten minutes wasted. The Spirit of God is the one who gives rest rather than requiring it, and Matthew 11:28 calls the laboring and the heavy laden as they are.

Ten minutes, and do not check afterward

So here is the assignment, and the second half is the whole of it.

Do ten minutes with somebody without trying to earn it back, and stop when it is over whether or not you feel any different.

You are able to do this without measuring what it did, and not checking has never once been the same as not caring whether it helps. It is written and I will give you rest, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present with a man walking a road at an easy pace with nothing riding on it.

Ten minutes at whatever pace is genuinely available. Not brisk, unless brisk is what today has. Slow is fine. Slow is the normal answer for a man in your position and it is not a concession.

Take your wife or one of them, which does two things: it makes the ten minutes about somebody rather than about your condition, and it means you cannot silently turn it into a test.

And here is the discipline. When you come back in, do not check.

No asking whether it felt better. No comparing it to yesterday. Do not run the assessment that has been running after everything for two years, which is: did that help.

You have been asking that question after everything for two years, and putting it down has never once been the same as giving up on getting better. Matthew 11:28 gives the rest rather than asking for it to be earned, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes an assessment out of a man's hands at the door.

You have permission to do a thing that produces nothing measurable, and none of that has never once been the same as it being pointless. Matthew 11:28 puts the rest on the far side of the coming, and the Spirit of God is the one who gives it without being invoiced for it.