Why There Is No Time To Grow Weary
There is something so life giving for me about being by the water. The smell of the salt air and the vast stretch of sea just helps me to reset and feel energized. As winter approaches and the days of walking the coast line come to an end I start to realize that tired feeling, that is really never too far behind me these days, is threatening to take over. It’s more than tired really. It goes deeper and feels longer lasting. I think a better word for it is weary.
Weary. It’s a word that I have come to know in a deeper way since becoming a mother than I have at any other point in my life. I have been stretched in ways I never knew possible, especially in those first months of becoming a mom. Although the sleepless nights have past I am amazed how the weariness can trail so close behind me on any given day, some day’s closer than others. It can follow me to the grocery store and to play dates and it especially creeps up when its time to cook dinner or do laundry. Weary has been a close friend of mine since becoming a mom.
Last Monday morning was a wake up call that it’s time for weary and I to break up. Over the past month our nation has been riddled with news of hurricanes, fires and earthquakes but another mass shooting just felt like more than my mommy heart could take. It’s true that these things have always existed but the frequency seems to be increasing every year and I am forced to realize my daughter is growing up in a different climate than I did.
After reading the news I opened my bible with a heavy heart to spend my usual morning time in the Word. I read Galatians 6:9 “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” What a timely verse I thought to myself as I grabbed my Strong’s concordance to look up what the Greek word for “weary” meant. I have always loved looking up what the words in bible verses mean in the original language because often, for me, much is lost in translation. This was one of those times. Weary or ekkakeo meant “to be utterly spiritless”. I moved onto the word for “good” which in Greek is kalos. The definition read “Eminent (which means influential or used to emphasize the presence of a positive quality), excellent in its nature and characteristics and therefore well adapted to it’s ends, praiseworthy.”
Have you ever had those moments in life where something just rises up in you and floods your whole being with passion and a renewed sense of energy? Reading those definition’s left me feeling such a sense of urgency. “I just don’t have the time in my life to let weariness settle into my soul. There is far too much at stake if I am going to raise a strong and brave little girl who can love in the face of fear and speak life into a world where tragedy is increasingly more ‘normal’”.
There is just no room to be utterly spiritless in the good we do on a daily basis, now more than ever. I loved that the word for good actually means eminent. What does it look like to not grow weary of being influential or to not grow weary of emphasizing the presence of a positive quality? What does it look like for my life to be about influencing my daughter and calling out her best quality’s every day and to also do that with the people around me? What if we all did this? What if someone in Stephen Paddocks life had taken the time to truly call out the best qualities in him? Maybe Sunday night would have been different and 59 lives would have been saved.
The second half of the definition of good was equally as powerful to me. “To be excellent in it’s nature and well adapted to its end’s”. How often as mothers do we doubt ourselves? How often do we look at the moms around us and think they are doing a better job at “life” than we are? But what does it mean to not grow weary in being excellent at the things we are called to in our own lives realizing that we are “well adapted to it’s ends?” You are the best mother for your child because God created you for that child and that child for you. You have everything you need. You are perfectly adapted to be the perfectly imperfect parent to that child. Don’t grow weary by comparing yourself to everyone’s highlight reel on Instagram or to the mom down the street who looks perfectly put together. God gave YOU to your children because you are exactly what he wants for them. The good that God has placed before you to do, both in and out of the home, he has also equipped you to do. Comparing breeds weariness and takes our eyes off of our unique callings. When we stop trying to live everyone else’s calling and start living our own, beautiful things will result.
So friends, now more than ever, lets not grow wearing in doing good. It will result in a harvest of righteousness if we don’t give up. I know I want my daughter to be the recipient of that harvest and I want her prepared to experience her own harvest one day as well. I have found in my own life one of two things happen when life gets hard. I grow weary or I grow deeper. Jeremiah 17:8 “They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.” May our roots always grow deeper into knowing the heart of God so we will not grow weary of doing good.
XO,
Kelly
