The Twenty Minutes I Sat in My Driveway Before I Could Walk Inside
I turned the engine off at 6:42 last night and did not move again until almost 7:05. Dinner was probably getting cold on the stove because my wife is kind enough to still make a plate even on the nights I text her that I don't know when I'll be home, and my own front door was twenty feet away and might as well have been twenty miles. I was not hurt. I was not in any kind of trouble a doctor could name. I was just completely, utterly spent, the kind of tired that a nap does not touch because it was never only in my body to begin with.
I know this tiredness by now. I carried a version of it long before I got sober, back when I ran myself down chasing things that were never going to fill me and then ran myself down further trying to numb the fact that they hadn't. I thought getting clean would end that particular exhaustion. Mostly it has. But every so often it still finds me, usually on a week when I have said yes to everything and no to nothing, telling myself rest is something I'll schedule once every obligation is handled, and the list never actually ends. I sat in that driveway doing the math on how much sleep I'd gotten that week and could not make it add up to enough, and underneath the math was a quieter, more honest question. Why can I not seem to give myself permission to just stop.
Scripture does not treat that question as a scheduling problem. Solomon, a man with every resource in the ancient world to simply work harder, wrote something that still corrects me every time I reread it. "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). I had assumed rest was something I earned by finally clearing the list. Solomon says the striving itself is the vain part. Rest was never a reward I built. It was given, and given to someone He already calls His beloved, not to someone who finally proved worthy of it.
Jesus is even more direct about who that invitation is for. He did not wait for the strong to come find Him. "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). I sat in that driveway trying to carry a week's weight by myself before it occurred to me I had never actually been asked to carry it alone. The exhaustion was not a sign I needed to try harder. It was closer to an invitation I kept declining without meaning to.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once been strong enough to get me out of that car on its own. I can tell myself accurately that I only need one good night's sleep, that the week will look different once Thursday's deadline passes, that everyone feels like this sometimes. Every sentence is true, and none of it has ever once actually lifted me up out of a driveway. Exhaustion is not a facts problem a better argument fixes. It is a depletion, and no amount of correct thinking manufactures the strength it is missing. Isaiah names where that strength actually comes from, and it was never self-generated. "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 40:29-31, NKJV). Even the young and strong give out eventually. The ones who do not are not the ones with more willpower. They are the ones who waited on Him instead of their own supply.
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit offers that pure determination never finishes producing. Paul does not tell the Galatians to grit their way to holiness by watching the clock harder. He tells them to stay connected to a life already moving. "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit" (Galatians 5:25, NKJV). Walking, not sprinting, sustained by Someone else's life flowing through mine instead of my own reserves running down to nothing by Thursday. The word given to Zerubbabel when he faced a job too large for his own strength lands on me the same way tonight. "Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit," says the LORD of hosts (Zechariah 4:6, NKJV). Not by might. Not by staying up later or rising earlier or simply wanting it more. By the Spirit, who does not run on the same fuel I do.
I finally walked inside at 7:05, ate a plate my wife had kept warm longer than she should have had to, and slept better than I had all week, not because the list got shorter but because I stopped trying to finish it in my own strength. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly how empty you are sitting in whatever driveway you have not been able to walk out of yet. He has a plan for you that was never going to run on your own reserves, and He has promised a rest that does not wait for you to earn it. He will never leave you stranded out there alone with the engine off.
Scriptures used (NKJV): Psalm 127:2; Matthew 11:28-30; Isaiah 40:29-31; Galatians 5:25; Zechariah 4:6.
I know this tiredness by now. I carried a version of it long before I got sober, back when I ran myself down chasing things that were never going to fill me and then ran myself down further trying to numb the fact that they hadn't. I thought getting clean would end that particular exhaustion. Mostly it has. But every so often it still finds me, usually on a week when I have said yes to everything and no to nothing, telling myself rest is something I'll schedule once every obligation is handled, and the list never actually ends. I sat in that driveway doing the math on how much sleep I'd gotten that week and could not make it add up to enough, and underneath the math was a quieter, more honest question. Why can I not seem to give myself permission to just stop.
Scripture does not treat that question as a scheduling problem. Solomon, a man with every resource in the ancient world to simply work harder, wrote something that still corrects me every time I reread it. "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). I had assumed rest was something I earned by finally clearing the list. Solomon says the striving itself is the vain part. Rest was never a reward I built. It was given, and given to someone He already calls His beloved, not to someone who finally proved worthy of it.
Jesus is even more direct about who that invitation is for. He did not wait for the strong to come find Him. "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). I sat in that driveway trying to carry a week's weight by myself before it occurred to me I had never actually been asked to carry it alone. The exhaustion was not a sign I needed to try harder. It was closer to an invitation I kept declining without meaning to.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once been strong enough to get me out of that car on its own. I can tell myself accurately that I only need one good night's sleep, that the week will look different once Thursday's deadline passes, that everyone feels like this sometimes. Every sentence is true, and none of it has ever once actually lifted me up out of a driveway. Exhaustion is not a facts problem a better argument fixes. It is a depletion, and no amount of correct thinking manufactures the strength it is missing. Isaiah names where that strength actually comes from, and it was never self-generated. "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 40:29-31, NKJV). Even the young and strong give out eventually. The ones who do not are not the ones with more willpower. They are the ones who waited on Him instead of their own supply.
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit offers that pure determination never finishes producing. Paul does not tell the Galatians to grit their way to holiness by watching the clock harder. He tells them to stay connected to a life already moving. "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit" (Galatians 5:25, NKJV). Walking, not sprinting, sustained by Someone else's life flowing through mine instead of my own reserves running down to nothing by Thursday. The word given to Zerubbabel when he faced a job too large for his own strength lands on me the same way tonight. "Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit," says the LORD of hosts (Zechariah 4:6, NKJV). Not by might. Not by staying up later or rising earlier or simply wanting it more. By the Spirit, who does not run on the same fuel I do.
I finally walked inside at 7:05, ate a plate my wife had kept warm longer than she should have had to, and slept better than I had all week, not because the list got shorter but because I stopped trying to finish it in my own strength. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly how empty you are sitting in whatever driveway you have not been able to walk out of yet. He has a plan for you that was never going to run on your own reserves, and He has promised a rest that does not wait for you to earn it. He will never leave you stranded out there alone with the engine off.
Scriptures used (NKJV): Psalm 127:2; Matthew 11:28-30; Isaiah 40:29-31; Galatians 5:25; Zechariah 4:6.
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