I'm tired.
Annie told me last night that she is just tired, tired, tired. She feels like she finishes something and ten more things pile up.
I wait in the hallway in the morning, sitting on my stool and say, "Hi, how are you?" Each kid wearily walks by under the weight of their backpack and says, "Hi... I'm tired."
When I wake up in the morning I'm tempted to hit the snooze button and snuggle back under my quilts.
I attach a tall mug of coffee to my hand for the 12 ounces of caffeine. I'm tired. It's easy to get stuck in a rut of being tired.
In the summer I'm exhausted. It feels like there is barely time to sleep between the days and I fall asleep as soon as I lay down during rest hour.
But at camp I don't care that I'm tired because I'm too excited about living. I soak in the way the light glitters between the leaves in the Green Cathedral. I sit in circles on wooden porches under the big dipper talking about the honest, vulnerable truth. We hike up the lake hill in the middle of August sweating beneath our backpacks and talk in Southern accents.
We hold hands with eight-year-olds and make a family with our cabin and rope swing into the cold lake and eat sweet ice-cream cookie sandwiches and trade friendship bracelets and play four-square and cartwheel in main field and write love tanks and paint masks and take bunnies on walks and cheer on stage at campfire and climb wooden mountains and sleep on tennis courts. We live life and don't think about being tired.
I need that right now.
Today I want to live life. I can spend my days and weeks living in wait to sleep in on Saturday or I can choose to live today well. I want to smile at each kid in the hall and write moon poems with my students and teach the peacock bracelet a dozen times and sing along in FBC and climb a snow mountain with Nat and call friends that I miss and listen to songs on repeat with Sar and laugh with kids at Wyld Life and run inside a refrigerator box and listen to a HS kid share their story and go to sleep knowing that today I lived well.
I want to be so excited about living that I don't have time to be tired.
SARAH. I literally woke up today thinking about how tired I am and how I cannot wait for today to be over so I can sleep. Thank you for this because it is a fabulous reminder of what I am - we are all - called to do. I'm officially getting excited about being awake RIGHT NOW.
ReplyDeleteSarah M & I are in our Jesus class and just read this together. Love it.
Sar bear- Annie and I must have identical lives right now. I sent a FB message to my YL leader Summer last night after she asked me how life is, and all i talked about was how busy I am and how I can't ever feel like I have time to stop and even take a breath. And I am so tired because I always have something else to do. Thanks for being awesome and having phenomenal insights like this. You're great :) child.
this totes spoke to me.
ReplyDeletei need that camp 'tired-less' thinking in my day to day life. i need to try a lot harder to find it. i'm just tired tired tired all the time-- it's so funny that camp is where i'm the most active and least tired at the same time!