You’re sitting on a beach chair.

Actual vacation.

Actual rest — the kind you planned for, paid for and told everyone you were taking.

The ocean is right there.

You have nowhere you need to be.

Nobody should be asking anything of you.

And instead of relaxing, you’re sitting there wondering if you’re letting God down.

I mean...

this is a very nice place to have an existential crisis, if you’re going to have one.

But still.

I know this feeling because I’ve had this exact crisis from this exact kind of chair.

There was something I believed I was supposed to be doing. Something that mattered deeply to me.

The problem was, I didn’t feel the way I thought I was supposed to feel about it anymore.

The energy I’d had for it?

Gone.

The motivation that once made the work feel exciting?

Also gone.

And apparently even the ocean wasn’t enough to quiet the question running through my head:

What if I’m failing at the thing God gave me to do?

That was the part I didn’t really want to say out loud.

Because what kind of person believes God has given her something meaningful...

and then gets tired of carrying it?

What does that say about my faith?

My discipline?

My gratitude?

Did I hear Him wrong?

Was I giving up?

Had I somehow taken something that was supposed to matter and ruined it by not being able to sustain the same energy for it?

That’s a lot to bring to the beach.

And I think this is where some of us get ourselves tangled up.

We assume that if something matters, we should always feel motivated to do it.

If God called us to it, we should somehow have endless energy for it.

If we’re struggling, moving slowly, questioning ourselves or needing a break, then maybe we’re doing something wrong.

But I started wondering:

When did difficulty become evidence of disobedience?

Because those aren’t the same thing.

Being tired doesn’t automatically mean you’re supposed to quit.

But it doesn’t automatically mean you’re supposed to push harder either.

Losing motivation doesn’t prove you’re failing.

And needing rest certainly doesn’t mean you care less about what God has asked of you.

Sometimes it means you’re a human being who has been carrying something for a while.

I needed that distinction.

Because I had turned a season of exhaustion into a character assessment.

I wasn’t simply tired.

In my head, tired had become:

Maybe I’m not committed enough.

Moving slowly became:

Maybe I’m wasting what God gave me.

Questioning became:

Maybe my faith isn’t strong enough.

See how fast that happens?

The actual experience is one thing.

Then we attach an entire meaning to it.

And before long, we aren’t even dealing with the exhaustion anymore.

We’re dealing with the shame we built around being exhausted.

That was the part I needed to untangle.

Because maybe the most faithful thing I could do in that moment wasn’t force myself to feel motivated.

Maybe it was get honest about what was actually happening.

Was I tired?

Discouraged?

Trying to carry too much of it alone?

Expecting myself to sustain a pace I was never meant to sustain?

Was the work still mine, but the way I was doing it needed to change?

Or — and this one can be harder to ask — had I become so attached to my idea of the assignment that I wasn’t leaving much room for God to change it?

Those questions feel very different from:

What is wrong with me?

I don’t think faithfulness always looks like charging forward.

Sometimes it probably does.

Sometimes it looks like continuing when the excitement is gone and the work is ordinary.

But sometimes faithfulness looks like resting long enough to hear yourself again.

Asking for help.

Changing the pace.

Changing the plan.

Letting go of how impressive you thought the whole thing was supposed to look.

Maybe even admitting you don’t know exactly what God is doing with it right now.

I didn’t need the beach to give me a five-step plan for getting my motivation back.

I think I needed permission to stop treating my exhaustion like evidence against me.

Because there’s a difference between:

This is hard right now.

and

I am failing.

There’s a difference between:

I need rest.

and

I don’t care anymore.

There’s even a difference between:

This may need to change.

and

I got it wrong.

Maybe you’re sitting in some version of that beach chair right now.

You know something matters to you.

Maybe you still believe God led you toward it.

But you don’t feel the way you used to.

Before you turn that into a verdict about your faith, your discipline or your worth, maybe ask a gentler question:

What is actually hard right now?

Name that first.

Maybe the problem isn’t that you’ve failed the assignment.

Maybe you’re simply trying to understand what faithfulness looks like in this part of it.

Want to keep going with this conversation?
🎧 Listen to Episode 10: When You Feel Like You’re Failing the Assignment God Gave You→