Idle and Blessed

Today at the yoga studio someone asked me what I did besides this. A moment or two of blank staring later, I replied with considerable stammering: "Uh, besides yoga? Besides working here? I, uh, well, I just graduated. I have my Masters. Just, kinda, doing this for now. You know." *Inner mental face palm* "Oh, wow! What'd you study?" "Divinity. I have a Masters of Divinity. Um, it's a theology degree." "You can study divinity?? I imagine it's kinda hard to make that lucrative, unless you want to be a holy person?" "...right. Yeah. Basically...or like work in a church." At this point I give myself a mental high five for being the dumbest MDiv ever to graduate and have this conversation. It occurs to me I could have said something about being an admin in the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer, but my mouth was still slightly agape at the holy person suggestion, and I haven't started the aforementioned job ...

I've been tired for so long. Grad school is over. The wedding is over. Moving is over. This month is the liminal space between the hurry of the Spring and the settled routine of the Fall, and yet it doesn't feel restful; it feels like the same old exhausting. It feels like tired. There are no ultra marathons, no big events to plan, no challenging projects, no hard jobs. There's just time with my husband, a few hours of work, cooking and baking, cleaning, resting. Running, not too far. Reading, mostly poetry. Doing yoga. But I'm tired. I don't understand the cycles of my energy. I don't know why some summers I feel like going to Russia again and others feel like this. I don't understand the delicate balance between work and rest, people and solitude, noise and quiet, or how sometimes past seasons, when not intentionally processed and prayed through, can drain me like a low-grade fever underneath the surface. But my energy is precious to me, because I ...