On Saturday night I hit a wall. I was very exhausted. Not the kind of tired a coffee fixes. The kind where your body is telling you something.
So I gave myself permission not to go to church in the morning.
That might sound like nothing. For me it's not. My faith was formed in me so young that I don't know how to live without God being part of my thinking. Church matters to me. Skipping it isn't something I do lightly.
But I've lived with bipolar type 1 for more than twenty years, and I've learned to listen.
Most mornings, as soon as I'm awake, I'm registering how I feel. Am I low? Am I high? Am I confused? How did I sleep? Were my dreams elevated? I'm an emotional detective from the moment I open my eyes. The question underneath all of it is, am I okay?
Usually I wake up and play my morning briefings from my TenXed team on the Desk. I like to get going. I like to know what the day holds.
On Sunday I didn't. I slept a long time. And when I woke up, the first thing I noticed was that I felt like I had permission. Nobody needed me anywhere. I didn't have to perform.
And I felt particularly good.
Just knowing I'm not in the car today, driving, is such a comfort. A lot of my week is on the road between shifts. Knowing the car could stay in the driveway was its own kind of rest.
Here's why I'm writing about something as ordinary as a sleep-in.
For me, sleep is the edge. When my sleep goes, things can go downhill fast, and there's not much shallow water before the drop. So a long, deep sleep isn't laziness. It's one of the best clues an emotional detective can find. It tells me the system is settling, not revving up.
Saturday's exhaustion was a clue too. Years ago I might have pushed through it. I might have had another coffee, gone to church, said yes to lunch, and kept going. Back then I didn't treat tiredness as information. I treated it as an obstacle.
Now I try to read it.
I think a lot of people, especially in church, feel guilty about resting. We're good at showing up. We're not always good at stopping. But I don't think God is standing at the door of the church on a Sunday morning, ticking names off. I think he was just as present in my bedroom with the curtains closed.
Sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is look after the body you've been given.
Not every morning reads this clearly. Some mornings I wake up sad for no reason at all. I feel blue and slow and stuck in my head, and it can go on for hours. Then, boom, it lifts, and I still can't tell you why.
What it's like living with that, and what I've learned to do with it, is in the book.
If you're struggling right now, call Lifeline on 13 11 14. In an emergency call 000.
