I Called It Tired For A Year

Tired is a good word because everybody accepts it.

Nobody asks a follow up question. Nobody looks at you differently. You can say it at a school gate and at a family meal and to somebody who rings on a Sunday, and the conversation moves on, which is exactly what you have needed it to do.

And somewhere in the last twelve months you noticed that it is not quite the word.

Not because it is untrue. You are tired. But there is something else in there that tired does not describe, and you have not looked at it directly, and the word has been holding the door shut on it very effectively.

I want to be careful here, and I want to say what this article is and what it is not. It is not going to tell you what that thing is. I am not able to and neither is anybody writing to a stranger. What it is going to do is ask whether it has a truer name, and suggest saying that name to one person.

Why art thou cast down, O my soul

There is a psalm that talks to itself, and the fact that it repeats is the part worth noticing.

Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God. (Psalm 42:11, King James Version)

Why art thou cast down, O my soul.

Notice the man is asking himself a question. Not answering one. He does not know why, and he says so, out loud, in a song that got kept.

And notice that this exact question appears three times in two psalms. It gets asked, and the man speaks hope to himself, and then a while later he is asking it again, which is a description of what this is actually like rather than a description of a cure.

You are not the only one whose account came round again, and it was never a failure to be asking the same question twice. Psalm 42:11 repeats the question rather than resolving it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that read as company rather than as a demonstration of somebody doing it better.

And notice what he does with it. He speaks to his own soul, by name, about the state it is in. He calls it cast down and he calls it disquieted, which are two different words, and the precision matters.

You have permission to be precise about it, and it was never required that a heavy thing be described in the nearest available word. The written word uses two careful words rather than one convenient one, and the Spirit of God is what makes accuracy about your own condition a form of honesty rather than of self indulgence.

What the word tired is doing

Now let me say what I think the word has been for, because I do not think it was avoidance exactly.

Tired is a word that does not require anything of anybody.

If you say the truer word, whatever it turns out to be, somebody will respond. They will ask something, or look worried, or suggest something, and then there is a conversation and it has a shape and you have to be in it.

Tired closes that down completely, and things have needed closing down, because there has not been capacity for one more open thing. Calling it by its name is not the same as being told what it is, and staying in is not a smaller answer than going out.

You are not hiding, and it was never dishonesty that reached for a word which asks nothing of anybody. Psalm 42 has a man name his own state in careful words without anybody diagnosing him, which is exactly why the Spirit of God can ask for a truer word without handing over a label.

And there is a second thing worth saying, and I will say it plainly and once. If what you are carrying is heavy in a way that frightens you, or if there are days it goes somewhere darker than heavy, that is worth taking to a doctor or to somebody who can actually sit with you. Not because anything is wrong with you. Because that is what those people are for, and going is not a defeat.

One person, and one truer word

So the practical part, and it is one sentence to one person.

Find a truer word than tired, and say it out loud to one human being.

You are able to say something more accurate to one person, and it has never once required a full account to have told somebody the truth. The passage names the condition in two careful words without explaining it to anybody, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman saying a more accurate sentence at a gate.

It does not have to be a big word. Flat. Heavy. Blank. Sad. Whatever the word actually is when nobody is going to react to it.

Pick somebody who will not try to fix it. If nobody comes to mind, say it out loud to God, on your own, which is what the psalm is doing and it counts entirely.

Then go and sit outside the front door for ten minutes. Not as a treatment. Because sitting outside after saying a true thing is different from sitting outside after saying nothing.

And on the days there is nothing, do not go, and let that stand with nothing added to it.

You are not condemned on the days you stay in, and it has never once been a scoreboard that any of this was kept on. Psalm 42:11 comes round to the same question again without a word of rebuke, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in a house on the day nobody went out.