The Recliner Beside My Mother's Hospital Bed
The Recliner Beside My Mother's Hospital Bed
RedeemedExistence daily devotional — September 24, 2026
I have slept in that recliner for eleven nights now, the kind with a lever that never quite locks and a cushion that has gone flat in exactly the wrong place. My mother is on the mend, the doctors keep telling me, but mending is slow and hospitals do not turn the lights all the way off, and somewhere around three in the morning I stop pretending I am resting and just lie there listening to the machines do their quiet work. I go to my actual job most days on maybe four broken hours, running on coffee and whatever is left of the man who used to think he could push through anything on sheer will alone. I am learning, eleven nights in, that I cannot.
There was a season of my life when I mistook exhaustion for a badge, back when staying up all night meant something very different and far more destructive than sitting beside a hospital bed. I told myself then that I could outrun my need for rest, and I believed it long enough to do real damage to my body and everyone who loved me. Sobriety did not erase that old instinct to grind straight through the wall instead of stopping. It just gave the instinct a nobler reason to keep operating the same way, and eleven nights of a bad recliner have shown me the reason does not matter nearly as much as the wall.
Isaiah wrote to a people who were worn thin in a very different way, exiled and depleted, and God did not open with a pep talk about trying harder. "He gives power to the weak, And to those who have no might He increases strength" (Isaiah 40:29, NKJV). Notice who the power is given to. Not the strong who occasionally stumble, but the weak and the powerless, which was never a category I wanted to admit belonging to until a recliner and eleven sleepless nights made the admission for me. The promise that follows has become the verse I actually whisper in that room at three in the morning. "But those who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint" (Isaiah 40:31, NKJV). Renewed, not manufactured. I have spent years trying to manufacture my own strength out of caffeine and stubbornness, and it has never once produced what this verse is describing.
Jesus said something to a crowd that was tired in every direction a person can be tired, and He did not tell them to find a better system. "Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28, NKJV). I have read that verse my whole life as a nice sentiment for Sunday morning. Sitting in a recliner at a hospital, it reads like the only actual offer on the table. He goes on, and the next part is the part I keep skipping past in my hurry to feel better. "Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light" (Matthew 11:29-30, NKJV). A yoke is not the absence of work. It is a shared weight, and I have been trying to carry my mother's illness and my own job and my own body all by myself, refusing the very yoke that was offered specifically for a load like this one.
I think of Moses on that hillside during the battle with Amalek, how his arms simply gave out from holding them up, and how the solution was never Moses finding more willpower. "But Moses' hands became heavy; so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. And Aaron and Hur supported his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun" (Exodus 17:12, NKJV). Somebody sat him down. Somebody held his arms up for him. I have been so slow to let anyone else take a shift in that room, as if my exhaustion were proof of my love instead of just proof that I still think grace has to be earned through suffering.
The psalmist names the trap plainly, the striving that never actually produces the rest it is chasing. "It is vain for you to rise up early, To sit up late, To eat the bread of sorrows; For so He gives His beloved sleep" (Psalm 127:2, NKJV). Gives. Not something I wring out of a bad recliner through sheer determination, but something handed to the beloved, which is a word I have a hard time believing applies to me most exhausted nights, and applies to me anyway.
Here is where my own reasoning has nothing left to offer. I can calculate exactly how many hours of sleep I am missing and exactly how much coffee it will take to cover the deficit, and none of that math touches the actual weariness underneath, the kind that is as much spiritual as physical. Paul heard something from the Lord in his own thorn-ridden exhaustion that has become the only answer wide enough for mine. "And He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me" (2 Corinthians 12:9, NKJV). Perfected in weakness, not in the version of me that finally gets enough sleep to feel capable again. Paul tells the Galatians the same truth aimed at the long haul of caregiving and every other kind of good, wearying work. "And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart" (Galatians 6:9, NKJV).
None of this arrives because I finally found the right posture in a recliner or the right amount of caffeine. It arrives because the Holy Spirit is not waiting for me to be rested before He meets me, abiding in the exhausted places my own reasoning gave up on hours ago, holding up my arms the way Aaron and Hur held up Moses' until the sun finally went down on that battle. I still do not know how many more nights I will spend in that room. But I closed my eyes tonight and let Him carry what I could not, instead of pretending my body was built to carry it alone. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly how tired you are in whatever room you are sitting in. He has a plan for you that was never going to be finished by your own strength running out, and He will never leave you to hold up your own arms by yourself.
Scriptures used (NKJV): Isaiah 40:29; Isaiah 40:31; Matthew 11:28-30; Exodus 17:12; Psalm 127:2; 2 Corinthians 12:9; Galatians 6:9.
RedeemedExistence daily devotional — September 24, 2026
I have slept in that recliner for eleven nights now, the kind with a lever that never quite locks and a cushion that has gone flat in exactly the wrong place. My mother is on the mend, the doctors keep telling me, but mending is slow and hospitals do not turn the lights all the way off, and somewhere around three in the morning I stop pretending I am resting and just lie there listening to the machines do their quiet work. I go to my actual job most days on maybe four broken hours, running on coffee and whatever is left of the man who used to think he could push through anything on sheer will alone. I am learning, eleven nights in, that I cannot.
There was a season of my life when I mistook exhaustion for a badge, back when staying up all night meant something very different and far more destructive than sitting beside a hospital bed. I told myself then that I could outrun my need for rest, and I believed it long enough to do real damage to my body and everyone who loved me. Sobriety did not erase that old instinct to grind straight through the wall instead of stopping. It just gave the instinct a nobler reason to keep operating the same way, and eleven nights of a bad recliner have shown me the reason does not matter nearly as much as the wall.
Isaiah wrote to a people who were worn thin in a very different way, exiled and depleted, and God did not open with a pep talk about trying harder. "He gives power to the weak, And to those who have no might He increases strength" (Isaiah 40:29, NKJV). Notice who the power is given to. Not the strong who occasionally stumble, but the weak and the powerless, which was never a category I wanted to admit belonging to until a recliner and eleven sleepless nights made the admission for me. The promise that follows has become the verse I actually whisper in that room at three in the morning. "But those who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint" (Isaiah 40:31, NKJV). Renewed, not manufactured. I have spent years trying to manufacture my own strength out of caffeine and stubbornness, and it has never once produced what this verse is describing.
Jesus said something to a crowd that was tired in every direction a person can be tired, and He did not tell them to find a better system. "Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28, NKJV). I have read that verse my whole life as a nice sentiment for Sunday morning. Sitting in a recliner at a hospital, it reads like the only actual offer on the table. He goes on, and the next part is the part I keep skipping past in my hurry to feel better. "Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light" (Matthew 11:29-30, NKJV). A yoke is not the absence of work. It is a shared weight, and I have been trying to carry my mother's illness and my own job and my own body all by myself, refusing the very yoke that was offered specifically for a load like this one.
I think of Moses on that hillside during the battle with Amalek, how his arms simply gave out from holding them up, and how the solution was never Moses finding more willpower. "But Moses' hands became heavy; so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. And Aaron and Hur supported his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun" (Exodus 17:12, NKJV). Somebody sat him down. Somebody held his arms up for him. I have been so slow to let anyone else take a shift in that room, as if my exhaustion were proof of my love instead of just proof that I still think grace has to be earned through suffering.
The psalmist names the trap plainly, the striving that never actually produces the rest it is chasing. "It is vain for you to rise up early, To sit up late, To eat the bread of sorrows; For so He gives His beloved sleep" (Psalm 127:2, NKJV). Gives. Not something I wring out of a bad recliner through sheer determination, but something handed to the beloved, which is a word I have a hard time believing applies to me most exhausted nights, and applies to me anyway.
Here is where my own reasoning has nothing left to offer. I can calculate exactly how many hours of sleep I am missing and exactly how much coffee it will take to cover the deficit, and none of that math touches the actual weariness underneath, the kind that is as much spiritual as physical. Paul heard something from the Lord in his own thorn-ridden exhaustion that has become the only answer wide enough for mine. "And He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me" (2 Corinthians 12:9, NKJV). Perfected in weakness, not in the version of me that finally gets enough sleep to feel capable again. Paul tells the Galatians the same truth aimed at the long haul of caregiving and every other kind of good, wearying work. "And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart" (Galatians 6:9, NKJV).
None of this arrives because I finally found the right posture in a recliner or the right amount of caffeine. It arrives because the Holy Spirit is not waiting for me to be rested before He meets me, abiding in the exhausted places my own reasoning gave up on hours ago, holding up my arms the way Aaron and Hur held up Moses' until the sun finally went down on that battle. I still do not know how many more nights I will spend in that room. But I closed my eyes tonight and let Him carry what I could not, instead of pretending my body was built to carry it alone. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly how tired you are in whatever room you are sitting in. He has a plan for you that was never going to be finished by your own strength running out, and He will never leave you to hold up your own arms by yourself.
Scriptures used (NKJV): Isaiah 40:29; Isaiah 40:31; Matthew 11:28-30; Exodus 17:12; Psalm 127:2; 2 Corinthians 12:9; Galatians 6:9.
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