To quote my mother-in-law when she had little kids at home, “I’m so tired I could die.” She has always had the gift of exact expression: saying what I feel but can’t quite succinctly say.

 

Currently, I have a baby who looks like a pre-teen with a patchy blonde mustache (which is actually dried boogers,) a 4-year old who is bound and determined to transition to our new life like a cat about to be dunked in a tub, a husband with a moderate case of the “overseas unsolicited laxative effect,” and a 6 year-old whose face is so swollen with bug bites that she couldn’t see out of one eye yesterday (but whose heart is quite light.) Plus work, of course, and setting up the house, which has kept us out of the house for days on end and meant that supper was at 10:30 last night.

 

So, I read chapter 12 in my continuation of what is now a slow walk through Mark, and I think you can almost hear Jesus sigh, he is so tired. I am just imagining the monumental effort it must have taken to continue his journey from this point on, being God, but spending his days with the ignorance of humanity as it were, longing to reach Golgotha and have it accomplished and finished, and yet passing his time teaching about the greatest commandment, and the widow who gave her last two coins.

 

 

It’s not just the cross that moves me now that I am a so-fatigued-it-hurts-to-blink mother of three. It is the sacrifice of the journey that he made to get to the cross that impacts me too.

 

 

And so, today I am grateful for the times that God installs into my sometimes very long days moments of soul rest. Like when a sick baby shoots both chubby arms up into the air and yells with a happy voice “Yay!”, for times when my angry four year-old comes up and kisses my cheek and tells me he loves me after I feel I am losing the battle and that no amount of hugging, talking, and reassurance is going to get us through this stage of transition, for when my daughter smiles with true delight when we let her borrow our digital camera to take to her field trip to the museum, for when my husband grabs me and holds me for a moment in the busiest, hardest part of my day, and a Savior who knows what it is like to be so weary you feel like you could die.

 

My greatest consolation is Jesus. In him my soul finds the rest that is the impetus to carry on.