You don’t have time for this, comes the anxious whisper, it’s harsh rasp echoing through your mind. It’s nearly 11pm and you still have work tomorrow. Precious little lives depend on you to be alert, to be compassionate, to be patient. The responsibility feels heavy on your shoulders, in your stomach and in your heart.

You’re not complaining, but you can’t help but clench your teeth tightly against the frustration. The frustration of endlessly scrambling to catch up to each role you wear, each responsibility you own, each task you must complete. You are painfully aware that you can never hold so much and hold it well; things always find a way to leak out.

You feel like a string on a violin. Thrown in and out of the elements. Unravelled and ready to break under tension.

Sometimes you feel alone. The on-a-deserted-island brand of being alone. But you’re not. Not really. You’re surrounded by tired faces wearing slightly shadowed smiles. Their weary voices greet you in meeting rooms and over telephones. You begin to exchange sighs instead of sentences. You read each others’ eyes instead of words.

You wonder: why does it have to be like this?

You answer your own question with silence and scrolling. As if ignoring anything ever made it better.

But at least you returned here. To the keyboard. Even when the whisper insists there’s no time. Because you know that it’s here that things start to make sense again. Here, as 26 letters rearrange themselves over and over again, you remember that you are connected to something bigger, something more than yourself.

You are part of the web of humanity. Together, individually, belonging to the One who breathed first life into this world. And though stained by an innate rebelliousness towards Life itself, He gently and persistently calls you back, because He is Love.

And Love reminds you to find who you are and to Whom you belong with the remarkable imprecision of written language. He reminds you to tell others that they, also, belong to Him, even when the doing so makes your stomach twist with the fear of misunderstanding and rejection. So you find what you need to say. What you need to hear. What you hope others might need to hear too:

He sees you. He sees your anxiety. He sees your exhaustion. He sees your fear and frustration. He sees it and is not silent. He sees it and makes a steadfast promise.

Come to me.
Precious child, who is weary.
Precious child, who carries heavy burdens.
I will give you rest.*

11pm has passed. The harsh whisper in your mind has fallen silent.
The coming day still promises the heavy weight of responsibility.
But now it feels a little lighter to bear.

*paraphrase of Matthew 11:28