My dearest sister,

I’ve been so empty.   It feels like months now.

I don’t have the energy to get up in the morning, and the last thing I want to do is my hair and my make up.  Even food has started losing its appeal. Sure, I eat because I’m hungry, but it’s been a while since I’ve craved cheesecake.

I am so exhausted that I’ve been slipping behind in all my commitments.  I’ve started missing church--my favorite part of the week--just to sleep in.  Social circles are falling through the cracks.  My home feels constantly messy, and it nags me to clean it.

Dare I even mention my times of intimacy with our Father?

Recently, I’ve started exploring my heart, trying to figure what has stolen away the passion and zeal that I am so known for.  It has taken so much journaling, and my Husband has had to endure many tears, but I think I know what it is.

It’s newness.

I have just ended a lifetime of scholarship.  The twelve years of schooling have ended, I have been sent out into the world, and now everything is new.  The friendships I have are new.  My church is in many ways new, despite the fact that I have attended there for two years.  My husband is new!  I have been married a year now, and most familiar thing to me is that it’s foreign.  My job is new, and each day at my job holds things that I have never done before.  I am interacting with an institution full of methods and procedures that I have never seen but that I am asked to be competent in.

I feel so exhausted by the new things around me.  It reminds me of being in another country for a while.  At first, everything is so exciting! Going to a different kind of market is a kind of adventure!  After a while, though, that same market becomes exhausting. You can’t bear to haggle one more time.  The walk from the fruit stand to the bread stand to the meat stand seems entirely inefficient and bothersome.  Then comes the conversation in a language you can’t really speak.  Everything you do is learned, and we simply aren’t meant to be learning so constantly.  Our bodies are exhausted from it.  

When you have to pay close attention to every task that you do, you are exerting more energy than when you are doing something familiar.  A child learning to write takes time to make their letters just the right shape and height.  An adult writes neatly without thought.  Right now, I am back to being a child learning his letters, yet I am expected to be an adult.  

Dearest sister, how do I go on? Oh, how I wish you were closer!  Even to spend an hour in your familiar company would be more restful than anything I can think of.  

I long for the sense of fullness that rest offers.  Now that I see how quickly I am drained, I hope to find more margins of time to rest in.  I am going to fill my time with things that I have done forever and not worry too much now about pushing myself to be more.  I need to be content with slow growth for now.  Someday I may be more in the habit of baking and growing plants, but it’s not yet time to learn that.  Now is the time to find old places, like ruins, mountains, and beaches! and to spend time leaning on my roots.

If you can, sister, come to me.  Let us find each other again in the ruins of some castle with grass growing through the cracks and sunlight shining through what were once windows.  But for now, I remain, as always--

Your devoted sister,

Charity