When God feels far away
Nobody warns you that a season of exhaustion can also be a season of spiritual quiet.
Nobody warned me that the fourth trimester could also be a spiritually flat one. I had assumed something that significant would arrive with a sense of the sacred attached.
Mostly it arrived with broken sleep, and a quiet that I read as absence.
Exhaustion is not evidence
A body running on fragmented sleep does not produce many spiritual feelings. That's physiology, and mistaking it for a verdict on your faith is a heavy thing to carry on top of everything else.
Feeling far is not the same as being far.
What helped, eventually
- Shorter everything — three verses instead of three chapters
- Letting other people's prayers count on the days mine were absent
- Saying it out loud to one trusted friend rather than performing fine
- Not waiting to feel like it before showing up
And if it's more than a dry season
If the flatness is everywhere — not just faith, but food, people, the things you used to love — that may be depression rather than a spiritual season, and it responds to help.
Talking to a provider is not a lack of faith. It's stewardship.
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
Psalm 34:18These are personal reflections. Please weigh them against scripture and your own church community and leadership rather than treating them as doctrine.
