The World's Not-So-Secret Weapon against Women: Exhaustion (Ps. 1)

Recently I had a chance to sit down with some very dear women that I love for a meal. In the course of our conversation, I asked how their daily reading from Scripture was going and found that the discouragement of exhaustion had overpowered their strong desire to spend time daily with Him. I know that their desire to spend time in the Word daily is real, and I have seen the same women energized by it in the past. Their current discouragement felt very familiar to me as I have had the same struggle with time and energy and where to use the little bit I had when I was also working full time and raising children and trying desperately to somehow manage my home, too, while being the wife my husband deserved and needed. 

Every time I would think that if I just got up earlier I could make it work, the kids would get up earlier too, taking away the time I had set aside. When I would think I could just stay up later, I would either get distracted by my house that also needed my attention or fall asleep because my exhaustion caught up with me as soon as I became still. My option left was at my desk at work during my planning time for a few minutes, but that never seemed enough and was often interrupted by the pressing need of students looking for help, making up work, or even just standing in line for the restroom and grabbing a quick snack to make it through the rest of the day. The end result was usually guilt that I wasn't doing what I knew needed to be done. I really do get it; spending time in the Word is hard for today’s women but it is so vital! The busyness of the world is a tool of Satan in the lives of women.

The familiar first Psalm contrasts the upright (righteous) and the wicked. The blessed one chooses not to walk in the way of the world (following its advice or counsel or example) and does put herself in the path of sinners nor sit down to rest with the ones who ridicule. Instead, she chooses to delight in the law of the Lord and on His teachings habitually, meditating day and night. The result of the investment is huge: roots that run deep into the life-giving water of the Word, fruit that results as a by-product of her being tapped into the source at all times, leaves that don’t droop with exhaustion because they are constantly quenched and kept fresh by the living water, and the blessings of maturity in the decisions and actions that follow choosing God over anything this world has to offer.

Don’t get me wrong! I am not judging (remember, I’ve already said I totally relate and suffered this soul-defeating exhaustion as I tried to do it all), but I am saying that I often made it seem so complicated when in reality I am not so sure that it was now that I have a little perspective and can look back. The last five years or so that I worked as a teacher, I began intently trying to memorize Scripture to meditate on when I didn’t have the time or access to the Word due to my schedule. Having the oasis available when I was in the desert began to change me. I grabbed small moments whenever I could—meditating on those verses and repeating them in my mind and just chewing on them wherever I was. Sometimes that was sitting in my car; other times that was standing in the shower; often it was a moment in the hallway or the bathroom or at my desk while students worked quietly for a few minutes; occasionally it was a discussion; always, it was a song running through my head that echoed what I was thinking on.

Tuning out the world and thinking on and delighting in His Word, His Way, His provisions helped me not just survive the world I was walking through but begin to thrive in it. Now I have time that is much more abundant to meditate and study and read in the Word and about it, but I am not sure I would want to had I not began before I had it. I discovered (and continue to discover) that the more time I spend in the Word, the more I want to. It is delightful to spend time learning about God, discovering His character, seeing His compassion, seeking His mercy, renewing my mind with the truth, quenching my thirst in the Word, learning better how to walk the path I am on that is hard in different ways.

We all have paths that our feet are set upon, but those paths in this world are all different, and ultimately they are directed by Him (Proverbs 16:9). At different points of life, the paths change, take turns, plunge downhill startlingly fast, and turn upwards in very steep gradients. The challenge is to learn to navigate them, to adapt to them without losing our momentum with Christ, without everything grinding to a stop while we figure out how to continue. Figuring out the how is often hard, but it is so worth the battle! 

Look at the other side of the Psalmist’s contrast: the wicked. The wicked are those who live in disobedience to God’s law, to His requirements for our lives. Jesus said the chief commandment is to love God with everything we are (Mark 12:30). If we never spend time with Him here and now, are we truly doing that? 

The wicked are like chaff that blows away in the wind, worthless, without any substance anchoring them). As a result, they will not be able to stand before God in the judgment or even in the assembly of the righteous (whom, by the way, God knows and fully approves) but instead they will perish.

There really isn’t even a choice to make in how we spend our time here on earth--none of us want to be the chaff. My desire now is to spend my life for Him (as much as I miserably fail at it, His grace is sustaining me, growing me up into Him). My old folly was thinking the time with Him would just happen back in the day—like, maybe my schedule would miraculously clear tomorrow and things would be different. I failed to see my busyness as an attack on my spiritual walk by a world that wanted to consume all of my time. I lived in reaction to the world I was in instead of being proactive about how I lived in it—instead of living in it in a way that would please my Maker, my Saviour, my Redeemer, the God I claimed to love and serve and energize me for the next day.

Y’all! Life is too short here to not spend it with Him at the focus. My prayer is that I will never be consumed by the world in which I live, and my prayer for my friends is that they will never be consumed by it either. My prayer is that the small moments we spend in the Word will add up and accumulate daily, that what is input with intent and love and desire will be given back in dividends larger than we can even begin to imagine—that renewal of our minds daily that is so vital to our walk through this world in preparation for the next!