Lay Down Sally 🎶
You Don’t Have to Be the Strong One
There is a kind of tired that doesn’t look tired at all. It looks responsible. It looks faithful. It looks like someone who has it together. Some of us learned early how to look like we had it all together.
The one who organizes the prayer chain at church, the one who shows up when someone else’s world is shaking, the one who steadies the room.
People call that strength.
Maybe it is, and maybe it’s not!
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28
When my dad had his heart attack years ago, I remember waking up the next morning, making my coffee, and suddenly sobbing in the kitchen. It caught me off guard. The fear, the weight, the what-if of it all, and then almost as quickly as the tears came, I told myself, crying is not going to help anyone. I need to pray.
So I hopped online, and I asked for prayer. I shifted into action.
That’s not wrong, prayer is powerful and action matters, but over time I have quietly wondered, was that strength or was that survival?
Jesus does not say, come to me once you have it all together, or once you have made sure everyone else is okay. He says, come to me when you are weary. Weary means tired from carrying. Burdened means heavy from holding.
You can be faithful and still be tired. You can lead and still need comfort. You can believe and still feel the weight of the world.
And then, almost like a soundtrack in the background of my life, I hear a little Eric Clapton.
Lay down, Sally, and rest here in my arms
Don't you think you want someone to talk to?
Being the strong one doesn’t mean you do not need to be comforted.
Here is the part I don’t like to say out loud. Sometimes I’m strong because I don’t know how to stop and I don’t know what would happen if I did. I don’t know who I would be if I were not the one trying to hold everything together.
And this is where I have to be honest…
