The Recliner Cushion That's Finally Shaped Like Me
The Recliner Cushion That's Finally Shaped Like Me
My wife had her hip replaced nineteen days ago, and I have slept in the recliner beside her bed every one of those nineteen nights, because the first week the nurse told us she could not be left alone to get up in the dark, and by the second week it had just become what we do now. The cushion has gone soft in the exact shape of my body, a dent where my shoulder goes, a worn patch where my elbow rests. I get her up every two hours to keep the blood moving in that new hip, and somewhere around the fourth or fifth night I stopped counting hours of real sleep and started just counting how many times I had been up since midnight. Last night the number was six. This morning I stood in the shower and could not remember if I had already shampooed my hair or was only now about to.
I am sixteen years sober, and in all those years I built a kind of pride around being the steady one, the man who shows up and does not run the way I used to run from everything with a drink in my hand. What these nineteen nights have taught me is that showing up and having anything left to give are two different things, and a man can keep doing the first long after he has run out of the second. I am not resentful of my wife. I would do every one of these nights again without hesitation. But exhaustion does not ask permission before it sets in, and by day twelve I had stopped praying in full sentences and started just saying her name and mine into the dark, the whole prayer I had strength left to form.
Scripture does not treat this kind of bone-deep tiredness as a spiritual failure to be ashamed of. Isaiah wrote to a people who were worn thin in a different way than I am, and he did not tell them to simply try harder. "Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might He increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, 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 40:28-31, NKJV). I always pictured that passage as a promise for dramatic seasons, battles and callings. This week I am reading it as a promise for a recliner at two in the morning, a smaller stage than Isaiah had in mind but apparently not too small for the same God.
Jesus did not aim His invitation at people who had the energy left to come impressively. "Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 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 11:28-30, NKJV). Heavy laden is the only qualification listed. Not strong enough to carry it well, not disciplined enough to keep showing up. Just tired, and willing to come anyway.
Here is where my own effort has never once refilled what these nineteen nights have drained out of me. I can remind myself accurately that this surgery was necessary, that she is healing well, that nineteen nights is a small price for forty years of marriage. Every sentence is true, and none of it has put one extra hour of sleep back in my body, because exhaustion was never actually a willpower problem waiting on a better attitude. Paul found the same thing true in a weakness he begged God three times to remove. "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). Made perfect in weakness, not despite it. I had always assumed God's strength showed up after mine ran out and simply took over. Paul seems to be saying the running out was the point all along.
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit offers that sixteen years of disciplined showing up could never finish producing by itself. The prophet told Zerubbabel plainly where real strength comes from when the task in front of him looked impossible by his own resources. "Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit," says the Lord of hosts (Zechariah 4:6, NKJV). Not might, not the kind of grit I have leaned on my whole sober life. Paul prayed something specific for the Ephesians that I have started praying for myself at three in the morning instead of just saying her name into the dark. "That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man" (Ephesians 3:16, NKJV). Strengthened in the inner man, precisely the part of me the recliner cannot reach no matter how many hours it holds me.
I got her up again last night at four, and we shuffled to the bathroom and back the way we have nineteen times now, and I did not feel strong doing it. I felt like a man running on nothing, which turns out to be exactly the condition Scripture keeps describing as the starting point, not the problem. Paul told the Galatians something I am leaning on hard this week. "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). I do not know which night this recovery ends. I know God is alive at four in the morning in a dark bedroom same as He is at noon in a sanctuary, and He already knows exactly how thin you are stretched right now, whatever is keeping you up at your own version of two a.m. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on you having enough left in the tank to carry it yourself, and He will never leave you alone in that recliner, however long it takes that cushion to finally let you go.
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Scriptures used (NKJV): Isaiah 40:28-31; Matthew 11:28-30; 2 Corinthians 12:9; Zechariah 4:6; Ephesians 3:16; Galatians 6:9.
My wife had her hip replaced nineteen days ago, and I have slept in the recliner beside her bed every one of those nineteen nights, because the first week the nurse told us she could not be left alone to get up in the dark, and by the second week it had just become what we do now. The cushion has gone soft in the exact shape of my body, a dent where my shoulder goes, a worn patch where my elbow rests. I get her up every two hours to keep the blood moving in that new hip, and somewhere around the fourth or fifth night I stopped counting hours of real sleep and started just counting how many times I had been up since midnight. Last night the number was six. This morning I stood in the shower and could not remember if I had already shampooed my hair or was only now about to.
I am sixteen years sober, and in all those years I built a kind of pride around being the steady one, the man who shows up and does not run the way I used to run from everything with a drink in my hand. What these nineteen nights have taught me is that showing up and having anything left to give are two different things, and a man can keep doing the first long after he has run out of the second. I am not resentful of my wife. I would do every one of these nights again without hesitation. But exhaustion does not ask permission before it sets in, and by day twelve I had stopped praying in full sentences and started just saying her name and mine into the dark, the whole prayer I had strength left to form.
Scripture does not treat this kind of bone-deep tiredness as a spiritual failure to be ashamed of. Isaiah wrote to a people who were worn thin in a different way than I am, and he did not tell them to simply try harder. "Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might He increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, 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 40:28-31, NKJV). I always pictured that passage as a promise for dramatic seasons, battles and callings. This week I am reading it as a promise for a recliner at two in the morning, a smaller stage than Isaiah had in mind but apparently not too small for the same God.
Jesus did not aim His invitation at people who had the energy left to come impressively. "Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 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 11:28-30, NKJV). Heavy laden is the only qualification listed. Not strong enough to carry it well, not disciplined enough to keep showing up. Just tired, and willing to come anyway.
Here is where my own effort has never once refilled what these nineteen nights have drained out of me. I can remind myself accurately that this surgery was necessary, that she is healing well, that nineteen nights is a small price for forty years of marriage. Every sentence is true, and none of it has put one extra hour of sleep back in my body, because exhaustion was never actually a willpower problem waiting on a better attitude. Paul found the same thing true in a weakness he begged God three times to remove. "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). Made perfect in weakness, not despite it. I had always assumed God's strength showed up after mine ran out and simply took over. Paul seems to be saying the running out was the point all along.
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit offers that sixteen years of disciplined showing up could never finish producing by itself. The prophet told Zerubbabel plainly where real strength comes from when the task in front of him looked impossible by his own resources. "Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit," says the Lord of hosts (Zechariah 4:6, NKJV). Not might, not the kind of grit I have leaned on my whole sober life. Paul prayed something specific for the Ephesians that I have started praying for myself at three in the morning instead of just saying her name into the dark. "That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man" (Ephesians 3:16, NKJV). Strengthened in the inner man, precisely the part of me the recliner cannot reach no matter how many hours it holds me.
I got her up again last night at four, and we shuffled to the bathroom and back the way we have nineteen times now, and I did not feel strong doing it. I felt like a man running on nothing, which turns out to be exactly the condition Scripture keeps describing as the starting point, not the problem. Paul told the Galatians something I am leaning on hard this week. "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). I do not know which night this recovery ends. I know God is alive at four in the morning in a dark bedroom same as He is at noon in a sanctuary, and He already knows exactly how thin you are stretched right now, whatever is keeping you up at your own version of two a.m. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on you having enough left in the tank to carry it yourself, and He will never leave you alone in that recliner, however long it takes that cushion to finally let you go.
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Scriptures used (NKJV): Isaiah 40:28-31; Matthew 11:28-30; 2 Corinthians 12:9; Zechariah 4:6; Ephesians 3:16; Galatians 6:9.
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