Dear friend,
I am weary with my groaning. Every night I flood my bed. I drench my couch with my tears. My eye wastes away because of grief. It grows old because of all my adversaries.
I keep thinking about a Christmas years ago when my brother-in-law showed up late, wrong, and everyone at the table pretended not to notice the smell on him. I noticed. I passed the potatoes and hated myself a little for how smooth my face stayed. That is its own kind of tired, the performing.
Today I had Psalm 6 open. David is not composed in it. There is a line about his eyes wasting away because of grief, weak with all his foes, and it does not read like a man managing anything well. It reads like someone who has been up too many nights watching a situation he cannot fix by wanting it fixed hard enough. I do not think God needed David to sound steady before He would listen. I think the whole psalm is proof He didn't.
The thing with a family member's addiction is you learn to read a room before you even sit down in it. Tone of voice. Which door they came through. I still do that math without meaning to.
What does your face have to do in that house that your heart isn't actually doing?
A prayer
God, You see the weight she carries walking into rooms she has to read before she can breathe in them. Meet her exhaustion honestly. Let her stop performing calm she does not have, at least with You. Amen.