I Have Tried Every Suggestion

He could give you the list and he has never given it to anybody, because saying it out loud sounds like a man asking for sympathy and he would rather be tired than do that.

Earlier nights. He did that for four months and stuck to it properly.

The walk. Every morning for most of a year, and he still does it, and he likes it, and it has not touched this.

The thing about screens after nine. The vitamin the doctor was neutral about. Two weeks off in September, properly off, phone in a drawer, which he had not done since 2019.

He cut two commitments. That one was hard and cost him something and he did it anyway.

And a man he respects told him to be honest with God about it, so he did, out loud, in this car, for about twenty minutes, more honestly than he has said anything to anybody in years.

He has done all of it. Not half-heartedly and not in a rush. Over about two years, one at a time, giving each one long enough to work.

And he is exactly as tired as he was.

And what has been forming in him since roughly March, in the quiet way these things form, is the only conclusion he can see left. If the suggestions work and they have not worked, then the variable is me. There is something wrong with me, or something I am not admitting, or some way in which I am the reason this does not lift.

And that is you with your own list, or you would not still be reading.

The verse that describes God looking at a tired body

Let me give you a sentence about how God regards a person made of matter, and let me point out what it does not contain.

For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.Psalm 103:14

Two verbs, and both of them are His, and both are about knowing rather than requiring.

Knows our frame. Frame is a physical word. It is the structure of a thing, what it is built out of, what it can bear.

Remembers that we are dust. Remembers, in that psalm, is not a memory jogged. It is the word used when God acts toward somebody in the light of what He knows about them. And what He knows here is not their sin and not their history. It is their material.

Now notice what is absent.

There is no suggestion in it. There is no implication that a person who is dust ought to be less dusty by now. There is no instruction anywhere in the sentence.

You are looked at by Somebody who knows what you are built out of, and He has never once required you to be built out of something else. It is written, for He knows our frame, He remembers that we are dust (Psalm 103:14). The Holy Spirit is not administering the list you have been working through.

Now let me deal with the conclusion, because it is the actual injury here and it is worth taking apart properly.

Your reasoning was: the suggestions work, they have not worked, therefore I am the variable.

The first premise is doing all the damage and nobody ever checks it.

Those suggestions come from people who were tired in a way that responded to them. That is why they suggest them. They are describing what fixed their own tiredness, honestly and generously, and every one of them meant well.

That is not the same as a set of things that fix tiredness.

You are not the failed variable in an experiment that was never properly designed. It is written that God knows our frame (Psalm 103:14), and He knows yours specifically rather than a general one. The Holy Spirit did not issue those suggestions and is not disappointed by their results.

And I want to say the harder half, because you would not trust me otherwise.

I do not know why you are tired. Nobody writing anything does. It might be worth another conversation with your doctor, and that is not a spiritual suggestion, it is an ordinary sensible thing and it is not what this page is for.

You are not required to work out the cause for the indwelling to be true tonight. It is written that the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you (Romans 8:11), and there is no diagnostic step in front of that sentence. The Holy Spirit is in a man who has run out of things to try.

And I need to say this plainly, because it matters more than anything else here. If the tiredness has gone somewhere further, if there have been thoughts about not being here at all, please tell somebody this week and tell your doctor. In the United States you can call or text 988 at any hour. Anywhere else, your local crisis line or emergency number, and one person who knows your name and will sit with you. That is wisdom rather than weakness, and a man who has tried everything else is allowed to try a phone call.