When You're Sick and Tired
It’s the time of year when sickness starts to ramp up and cycle through our homes. One person has a runny nose (I’m looking at you, preschooler), and it’s like dominoes going down left and right. When you’re a parent, it’s almost a guarantee of poor sleep piled on top of it all.
We’ve been there, and I know you’ve been there too. Life becomes especially challenging when we are feeling unwell and stretched thin. Parenting becomes especially challenging.
And for many of you, ongoing struggles like chronic illness or a colicky baby can make daily life hard to endure for really long stretches of time.
My encouragement to you this week is simple: It’s okay to be sick and tired. God knows we are human, living in human bodies. Our sniffles, fevers, and fatigue bring us to our knees, and yet they provide opportunities to point our kids to God.
Pray
When our family is sick, we cry out to God together. We pray for God to heal our kids. We ask our kids to pray for us. And we thank God when we’re well again. It’s nothing fancy, but we’ve done it for years now.
I remember a specific time when our youngest was a baby and really struggling with a prolonged illness, and her 6-year-old brother told us we should pray for her. And then he prayed for God to heal and help his baby sister - without our prompting.
Let’s invite our kids into our moments of sickness and weariness so they can witness us call on God and participate in praying for us! This regular turning to the Father builds a habit so our kids learn to reflexively turn to the One who made our bodies - runny noses and all.
Sickness has a way of building gratitude for the times when we feel healthy. Thanking God in prayer for our health is another side of the same coin, and a great way to direct our kids’ hearts to feel gratitude for God’s blessing of health.
Rest
We live in a hustle culture, and it can be really hard to give ourselves the grace to rest. Being unproductive can feel like failure, or at the least make us angsty and frustrated. But we don’t see that posture from God about our need for rest.
Jesus knows our suffering intimately. He wrapped himself in flesh, living in a body just like ours (John 1:14). Throughout scripture, we see Jesus needing and taking rest, as well as encouraging it for his disciples.
We read throughout the gospels that Jesus often retreated to be in solitude with the Father - certainly an important soul rest. But the scripture that stood out to me as I was researching this topic was Jesus’ journey through Samaria, before he has his conversation with the Samaritan woman. John records Jesus’ weary body needing physical rest:
“So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well.” (John 4:5-6a)
As Jesus models this rest, he also encourages it in his followers. While visiting Mary and Martha’s home, Mary “sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said.” Sounds like resting to me…especially when most days I feel a lot like Martha! But when Martha complains, Jesus commends Mary’s less “productive” choice: resting at the feet of Jesus (Luke 10:38-42).
Jesus leads his disciples into rest after a long day of ministry as well, saying to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest (Mark 6:32).”
God does not look down on us for resting or needing a break. Jesus models it for us himself, and he instructs it - for his disciples good and for our own. And it follows that just as Jesus led those in his care to rest, we also lead the children in our care by modeling our own rest and encouraging it for them when they need it.
Encouragement
When sickness inevitably hits our homes this cold and flu season, let us cry out to the One who hears us and loves us, with our children by our sides. And let us truly rest when we need it, modeling our trust in God to our kids as we give up productivity for something eternally better: our weakness pointing to His strength.