I am tired. I wake up tired. I go to bed tired. I feel like a new parent struggling with insufficient sleep while undertaking a task that is both hugely important and somewhat mundane. Life is full of setting up the house, setting up the ministry, hosting visitors, coordinating play dates, supporting Jeff’s service learning ministry L.A.S.T., hanging at the hospital, and getting lost in Portland. My life has changed radically. I live in a new city in a new style of house (so many steps!) and am doing a new job in a new ministry while supporting my family with a new diagnosis. This is exhilarating on paper and exhausting in practice.
Weariness is my normal setting these days. I know this is not sustainable, so I am on the lookout for what one friend called watering stations. What I need is an oasis, a place of cool green and blue in the midst of seemingly endless hot sand. My favorite singer, Kathleen Edwards, has a song that goes: “I’m looking for a soft place to land/ the forest floor/ the palm of your hand” This has become my prayer. I love the idea of taking a nap on God’s giant hand, mostly because I love napping and it seems like a safe and protected space.
Now don’t worry too much because I’m finding these spaces of refreshment.  Each day brings oases and soft places, in a coloring book of art deco birds, while my cousin David works out Friday I’m In Love With You on the piano, in the refreshing breeze coming through our open window, in a breakfast out alone, in new sandals with more cushion. 
I know that this is just a season of change and chaos and that before too long we will be settled in and these feelings will be dim memories. Yet I am thankful for this season as it is a time where I am once again convinced of the need for faith communities, for authentic connections, for real friends, for soulful accountability. I can see that the longer we go between soft places, the less time we spend soaking in the peace of the oasis the more the exhaustion, tension, and disconnectedness build.  We need spaces to remember, to rest, to be renewed.  We need people to show up for us and remind us to breathe, to rest, to cry, to sleep.  And we need to be called again and again to the undergirding of God’s presence in all the seasons of our life.
I think that being able to be thankful for this moment and the lessons of this season is yet another oasis.  May the journey be filled with many such watering holes for us all.
-E