Something Feels Off. You Don’t Have to Know Why Yet.

Sometimes “I don’t know” really does mean I don’t know.

You don’t know what the right decision is. You don’t have enough information yet. You need more time, more prayer, another conversation, or someone you trust to help you see what you can’t see from where you’re standing.

But sometimes... while you don’t know what to do, you actually do know quite a bit about what’s going on in your own head.

For instance, you know you’re tired of dreading Sunday night because Monday starts the whole whirlwind you just recovered from all over again.

You know you keep getting irritated when someone — anyone — asks just one more thing of you, even though, yes, you can technically do it.

You also know you haven’t looked forward to something with the kind of excitement you used to feel in a really long time.

You know you say “I don’t care” all the time even though you actually do care.

You know there’s a stupid conversation you want to completely forget about but, for some reason, you can’t stop replaying it in your head.

There’s a lot more going on up there than you give yourself credit for.

You know you want to say your life is genuinely really good. Because technically, it is, right? I mean, you love the people in it. You’re grateful for what you’ve built.

And still, there’s this thing you can’t quite put your finger on... but something feels off.

You just don’t quite feel like yourself anymore.

And if somebody asks you what that might be, I’m pretty sure most of us would jump back with—

“Ew. I don’t know!”

Because technically... that’s true, isn’t it?

You still have absolutely no idea.

It’s all still very fuzzy. You just know you’ve finally slowed down enough to notice that you don’t feel like yourself anymore.

And I think we underestimate just how much clarity — how much “knowing” — is already contained in that.

We tend to think clarity should arrive as this perfect little package, complete with answers from beginning to end. If only I knew what I really wanted, surely I’d know what job to take, what boundary to set, what needs to change in my marriage, how to rearrange my life, what God is asking me to do and, of course, exactly how all of this turns out six months from now.

Kabam! Yes, God. I see it. I feel it. I know it.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

Umm, yes please.

But, of course, we usually get something way less impressive at first...

I can’t keep doing this at this pace.

I miss this part of myself.

I don’t want to say yes this time.

I thought this would feel different by now.

I keep telling everyone I’m fine, but I’m not sure I am.

It’s definitely not a five-year plan, but it is information.

And I wonder how often we dismiss all this information simply because it doesn’t come with a tidy little set of instructions.

We keep looking for clarity as though clarity means knowing the entire way forward, when sometimes clarity is just being honest about what we already know to be true.

I think we can agree there’s a pretty big difference between I don’t know what comes next and I don’t know anything.

They can feel almost identical when you’re right in the middle of it. If you don’t know what to change, how to change it, or where any of this is leading, it’s really easy to throw your hands up and call the whole thing confusion.

But you’re not starting with nothing.

You can love the people in your life and still notice how ridiculously relieved you feel when plans get canceled because suddenly there’s one hour where nobody needs anything from you.

You can know the pace you’re keeping technically works and still recognize that it’s probably not a great long-term plan because by Thursday you’re impatient, exhausted and silently hoping nobody asks you for one more freaking thing because if they do, you just might bite their head off.

You can open your closet and realize you own plenty of clothes but somehow none of them feel like you. You can finally get an afternoon to yourself and have absolutely no idea what you want to do with it. You can hear yourself say, “I’m fine,” and even as you’re saying it, know fine isn’t really what you mean.

You can know nothing is dramatically wrong and still wonder when you became someone who moves from one responsibility to the next without really looking forward to much of anything anymore.

And you can love the life you have — genuinely love it — while still feeling this strange little distance between you and the woman living it.

The tricky part is that every single one of those things has a perfectly reasonable explanation.

You’re tired. Well, everyone’s tired.

You’re busy. This season is busy.

You’re irritated. People get irritated.

Your clothes feel weird. Buy new jeans.

You don’t know what to do with a free afternoon because you haven’t had one in six months. Of course your brain short-circuited.

On its own, none of it seems important enough to mean much of anything.

Which makes it really easy to brush off.

Except then it happens again.

Another day where you’re weirdly irritated. Another thing you agree to and immediately wish you hadn’t. Another canceled plan that brings way more relief than it probably should. Another moment where somebody asks what you want and you realize you genuinely don’t know.

Eventually all those little things stop feeling quite so random.

They start forming this vague little question in the background of your life.

Why am I so irritated all the time?

Why am I relieved every time something gets canceled?

Why don’t I know what I want anymore?

Why does everything look fine and still feel... off?

Why don’t I feel like myself?

And now you want to understand it.

So you start looking for answers.

You ask your husband what he thinks. Your friend. Your sister. The person who always seems to know what to say. You pray for clarity. You listen to another podcast, save another post, read another book, Google a strangely specific question at 11:42 at night.

Of course you do.

When something feels off and you can’t explain why, you want to figure it out. You want someone to hand you the sentence that makes all these random little things suddenly make sense.

Ohhh. THAT’S what’s going on.

Preferably followed by exactly what to do about it.

And sometimes another person really can see something you can’t. Sometimes you need information. Sometimes a conversation, a book, a counselor, a friend or something you hear in a podcast gives language to something you’ve been feeling for months.

Sometimes God uses other people to show us what we couldn’t see by ourselves.

I think we need that.

But I also wonder if, in our rush to figure out what everything means, we can move right past the fact that we noticed it in the first place.

Because I think we have this tendency to believe the explanation is what makes the feeling legitimate.

If I can figure out why I’m so irritated, then I’m allowed to take the irritation seriously. If I can identify exactly what’s missing, then maybe I’m allowed to admit that I miss something. If I can point to the part of my life that needs to change, then this weird feeling that I don’t quite feel like myself finally makes sense.

Until then, it’s really easy to dismiss it as tired, busy, hormonal, dramatic, ungrateful... whatever explanation gets us back to everything is fine the fastest.

But before you have an explanation, you already have an experience.

Something is happening to you, in you, around you that you keep noticing.

You’re tired in a way that sleep doesn’t seem to fix. You keep feeling resentful and you don’t completely understand why. You miss something, although you couldn’t tell me exactly what. You’re grateful for your life and somehow still feel a little absent from it.

You finally have two hours to yourself and realize you don’t even know what sounds good anymore.

Those things may not tell you what’s wrong exactly. And they definitely don’t tell you how to fix it.

But they happened.

And I think that matters more than we sometimes let it.

Because when our life looks good from the outside, it’s surprisingly easy to start arguing with our own experience.

Why am I feeling this way? I have so much to be grateful for.

Nothing is actually wrong.

Other people have way more going on than I do.

I’m probably just tired.

And listen, maybe you are tired.

Maybe this really is a demanding season.

Maybe the answer to the clothes is, in fact, new jeans.

Not every bad mood means something bigger is happening, and we do not need to turn every annoying Tuesday into an identity crisis.

But there’s also a difference between refusing to overreact and refusing to pay attention.

If something keeps showing up, you’re allowed to notice.

If you keep hearing yourself say something you don’t quite mean, notice.

If you feel relief every time something disappears from your calendar, notice.

If you can tell me exactly what everyone around you needs but have absolutely no idea what you need, notice.

If there’s this quiet little I don’t feel like myself sitting in the back of your mind, you don’t have to immediately talk yourself out of it just because you can’t explain it yet.

I think that may be the part we need to get better at.

Not immediately fixing it. Not diagnosing it.

Just noticing without dismissing it.

Because you may not know who you’re becoming yet. You may not know exactly what needs to change or what the next year, month or even conversation is supposed to look like.

You may not even know whether anything dramatic needs to change at all.

Right now, you’re just paying attention.

And maybe for the first time in a while, you’re letting your own experience be part of the conversation.

That doesn’t mean every feeling gets to make the decisions. We still need wisdom. We still need people who love us enough to tell us when we’re not seeing something clearly. We still need God, especially when what we feel and what is true aren’t immediately easy to sort out.

But asking for wisdom doesn’t require pretending we haven’t been noticing anything.

You can hold both:

I don’t know what this means yet.

and

I know I keep feeling it.

That may be enough for now.

Because finding your way back to yourself probably doesn’t begin with a perfect answer. It feels much more subtle than that.

Things like the irritation, the longing, the weird relief, the things you miss or the moments where you don’t quite recognize yourself aren’t necessarily problems you need to solve yet. They’re just things worth paying attention to.

I think we trust ourselves more easily when we can explain what we’re feeling. Give me a reason and suddenly it feels legitimate. Without one, it’s really easy to decide I’m probably overthinking it and move on.

So if something has felt a little off lately, you don’t have to figure out what it means before you’re allowed to take it seriously.

You don’t have to know what you’re going to change.

You don’t even have to know whether you’re going to change anything yet.

Maybe the question is simply: What am I noticing?

And instead of immediately explaining it away, let yourself sit with the answer for a minute.

Ok.
I feel it.
And I’m paying attention.

🎧 Listen to Ep. 67: You Don’t Need a Crisis to Take Your Feelings Seriously →