Growing up in a family of five, Sunday mornings were a ritual. Get everyone up, through the showers, dressed, and ready for church. Our go-to Mass at our parish was the 9am Mass - well, my dad’s go-to Mass was the 9am. My mom was agreeable enough, but as kids, it was hard for us to understand why we couldn’t sleep later and go to a later Mass and then brunch afterwards.
I don’t remember any horrible episodes, but I know I wasn’t an easy case to deal with on Sunday mornings. I think one time I even told my dad I was an “empty vessel” that early in the morning. However, on one Sunday of spring each year, my little friends and I would play in a middle school 3v3 basketball tournament. Sometimes, I had to be up as early as 6am1 to get ready and get to the gym in time to play with my friends. You bet I had no trouble getting up for that, yet Sunday Mass could be a chore.
Now as an adult, I’ve realized that there are differences between what I’ll call good tired and bad tired. And it largely has to do not necessarily with what you’re getting up or getting out for, but with your mental and emotional disposition toward what is causing your tiredness.
Take Mass for example. Moving away for my first job, I was independent and just making new friends in a new place, so I chose what Mass to attend personally. I chose the 8am Mass at my parish(!). It was easy to just slide my alarm back an hour from the weekday work routine, get over to Mass, do my grocery shopping at the store just down the street from church, and get home for a short run before the 10am Pacific Time2 kickoff of the NFL games.
What changed? Mass was still Mass, but I had matured and now valued Mass as a free, personal choice. I had taken ownership of the faith and tradition to which I had been exposed as a kid and decided it was important to me.3 So, it was “easy” to get up and out for Mass. I might come out of Mass still yawning and rubbing my eyes, but it’s good tired. I wanted to be there; it was important to me; I didn’t mind working through the lethargy and getting myself going to be at my preferred Mass and start off my Sunday that way.
Most days, I don’t struggle to get up and get ready for work. Even though I might be tired or feel tired, the opportunity to go and earn a living utilizing my greatest gifts and passions helps fuel me through the yawns and sluggishness because it’s good tired.
I think back to the freshmen retreat I revamped into an all-day Saturday event at my last job. I got to school at like 6am to get the setup going. My leaders rolled in around 8 to continue, and we had the whole thing going by 9:30. We had a packed-full day of large-group activities like Knockout, small-group discussions, prayer experiences, including a big gym family Mass, and finally a family potluck dinner with everyone. By time cleanup rolled around at 8pm, my legs were throbbing, head was spinning, voice was hoarse, mind was racing - and I loved it. The day was everything I desired for my students, leaders, and families, and the dynamic vitality of it was something to behold. I was exhausted, but it was good tired. With my leaders and colleagues, we poured ourselves into this beautiful day, so I was feeling affirmed, delighted, and grateful.
Anyone who has ever led or directed a Kairos can similarly attest. With Kairos, it’s four long days in a row, with just a short night’s sleep in a simple bed to keep you going through. And on top of the logistics to coordinate, the emotion of those four days is high. The social time at meals and breaks brings laughter, but the witness talks and sharing carry emotional weight, both in joy for others’ happiness and sadness for their struggles. The physical-emotional one-two punch of a good retreat wears you out real good. Yet, at the end of a Kairos, celebrating the closing ceremony with everyone and seeing the delight of families and leaders, it cinches up the good tired feelings of self-investment that come with facilitating a vulnerable, intimate experience of God’s love for others.
Then there are times at work where tiredness mounts for different reasons. I remember one week where three straight days of after-school meetings kept me at work past 6pm, stacking three twelve-hour days one after another. I remember one day where I was sick as a dog, gutted it out through the school day, and then had to attend an after-school meeting nonetheless. I remember at a previous job walking in the door with a clear picture of my day’s tasks and agenda in my mind, only to find I’d be subbing several periods of the day, constrained to babysitting in loud classrooms rather than freedom to tackle my job. Days like those that wear me out because of frustration or impositions or tedium - this is bad tired. This is the tired that comes on hard and weighs heavily, that is hard to mentally dismiss or overcome. This is the tired that tempts me to stay in bed or be short in the way I treat others. This is the tired that requires prayerful patience and needs plentiful grace.
I have been grappling with the good tired and the bad tired a lot as a new father. I love the poop4 out of my newborn daughter, Lucy, and my wife, Katherine. Having these twelve weeks of paid leave is an amazing blessing to just start learning how to be a great dad. Among the myriad unsolicited advice we received while awaiting Lucy, many people, almost bitingly, told us we’ll never sleep much again. Others, more insightfully, instructed, “Sleep when she sleeps,” which is something we’ve certainly utilized.
Overnight, my wife has to get up to feed her a few times, but Katherine also pumps a bottle of milk so that I can handle one of those feeds and give her a break. This means around 3-4am, I know that Lucy’s cry is my invitation to interrupt my sleep, throw on a hoodie and glasses, grab my iPad in case I want to stream a show, and set up shop with my Boppy pillow and burp rag while I warm the refrigerated bottle of milk to feed my daughter.
Now, I am a careful sleeper. I like to have a strict bedtime; I like to set an alarm and not snooze it; I like my predictable eight hours. So, this is a definite change of pace. Sometimes, Lucy is stubborn and screeches while she waits; sometimes, she won’t latch to the bottle and spits up or hiccups or struggles as she drinks; sometimes, she chugs it down easily like a champ. Either way, that hour of sleep I lose so that I can be up with her and feed her is fun. Spending an hour feeding, burping, changing, and holding her is pretty awesome. With no one else around, it’s like the world got quiet and empty to give the two of us space to just hang together.
It might mean I will not sleep straight through the night for a while, that I’ll lose sleep each night, that I’ll be a bit more tired. But this is definitely good tired. I can feel the fatigue in my body when I’ve only been asleep for a couple hours and Lucy summons me from bed, but I mentally and emotionally find it very doable to peel myself out of bed and get moving to do what Lucy needs. I want to do it, and I love to do it. And taking the time to care for her, even before she’s conscious of what she’s doing, gives her the chance to love me back, too, in her own funny little baby way.
There are definitely times in fatherhood that are bad tired. When we get Lucy down for sleep, and I decide I’m making a late-night McDonald’s run to get us milkshakes and french fries, and I find that our car has a flat tire that I have to change on the spot, that makes me bad tired.5 When I wonder excessively about my job and Katherine’s job and how many hours a week I should work when I go back and whether or not to stay home or work part-time or if we might have to put Lucy in daycare, that makes me bad tired. When life’s complications or frustrations that are beyond my control bubble up or compound or preoccupy me, it wears me out in a most undesirable way, and that is bad tired.
God’s gift to me is my steady, sturdy disposition; when I practice my faith and embrace the support of my community and close friendships, my keel stays even. When I’m bad tired, it’s just hard and not necessarily fixable. However, it doesn’t set in so often or so heavily. Most of the time, the blessings of my call to ministry and to marriage and family life engage me with labors of love that might be tiring, but are good tired.
When I try to engage faithfully with it all and relish the joys and challenges in tiredness, I think of my old friend, Scott, who when seeing a friend excel in friendship or love or ministry, would simply bequeath the loving blessing of God, “Well done, good and faithful servant!”
Take Mass for example. Moving away for my first job, I was independent and just making new friends in a new place, so I chose what Mass to attend personally. I chose the 8am Mass at my parish(!). It was easy to just slide my alarm back an hour from the weekday work routine, get over to Mass, do my grocery shopping at the store just down the street from church, and get home for a short run before the 10am Pacific Time2 kickoff of the NFL games.
What changed? Mass was still Mass, but I had matured and now valued Mass as a free, personal choice. I had taken ownership of the faith and tradition to which I had been exposed as a kid and decided it was important to me.3 So, it was “easy” to get up and out for Mass. I might come out of Mass still yawning and rubbing my eyes, but it’s good tired. I wanted to be there; it was important to me; I didn’t mind working through the lethargy and getting myself going to be at my preferred Mass and start off my Sunday that way.
Most days, I don’t struggle to get up and get ready for work. Even though I might be tired or feel tired, the opportunity to go and earn a living utilizing my greatest gifts and passions helps fuel me through the yawns and sluggishness because it’s good tired.
I think back to the freshmen retreat I revamped into an all-day Saturday event at my last job. I got to school at like 6am to get the setup going. My leaders rolled in around 8 to continue, and we had the whole thing going by 9:30. We had a packed-full day of large-group activities like Knockout, small-group discussions, prayer experiences, including a big gym family Mass, and finally a family potluck dinner with everyone. By time cleanup rolled around at 8pm, my legs were throbbing, head was spinning, voice was hoarse, mind was racing - and I loved it. The day was everything I desired for my students, leaders, and families, and the dynamic vitality of it was something to behold. I was exhausted, but it was good tired. With my leaders and colleagues, we poured ourselves into this beautiful day, so I was feeling affirmed, delighted, and grateful.
Anyone who has ever led or directed a Kairos can similarly attest. With Kairos, it’s four long days in a row, with just a short night’s sleep in a simple bed to keep you going through. And on top of the logistics to coordinate, the emotion of those four days is high. The social time at meals and breaks brings laughter, but the witness talks and sharing carry emotional weight, both in joy for others’ happiness and sadness for their struggles. The physical-emotional one-two punch of a good retreat wears you out real good. Yet, at the end of a Kairos, celebrating the closing ceremony with everyone and seeing the delight of families and leaders, it cinches up the good tired feelings of self-investment that come with facilitating a vulnerable, intimate experience of God’s love for others.
Then there are times at work where tiredness mounts for different reasons. I remember one week where three straight days of after-school meetings kept me at work past 6pm, stacking three twelve-hour days one after another. I remember one day where I was sick as a dog, gutted it out through the school day, and then had to attend an after-school meeting nonetheless. I remember at a previous job walking in the door with a clear picture of my day’s tasks and agenda in my mind, only to find I’d be subbing several periods of the day, constrained to babysitting in loud classrooms rather than freedom to tackle my job. Days like those that wear me out because of frustration or impositions or tedium - this is bad tired. This is the tired that comes on hard and weighs heavily, that is hard to mentally dismiss or overcome. This is the tired that tempts me to stay in bed or be short in the way I treat others. This is the tired that requires prayerful patience and needs plentiful grace.
I have been grappling with the good tired and the bad tired a lot as a new father. I love the poop4 out of my newborn daughter, Lucy, and my wife, Katherine. Having these twelve weeks of paid leave is an amazing blessing to just start learning how to be a great dad. Among the myriad unsolicited advice we received while awaiting Lucy, many people, almost bitingly, told us we’ll never sleep much again. Others, more insightfully, instructed, “Sleep when she sleeps,” which is something we’ve certainly utilized.
Overnight, my wife has to get up to feed her a few times, but Katherine also pumps a bottle of milk so that I can handle one of those feeds and give her a break. This means around 3-4am, I know that Lucy’s cry is my invitation to interrupt my sleep, throw on a hoodie and glasses, grab my iPad in case I want to stream a show, and set up shop with my Boppy pillow and burp rag while I warm the refrigerated bottle of milk to feed my daughter.
Now, I am a careful sleeper. I like to have a strict bedtime; I like to set an alarm and not snooze it; I like my predictable eight hours. So, this is a definite change of pace. Sometimes, Lucy is stubborn and screeches while she waits; sometimes, she won’t latch to the bottle and spits up or hiccups or struggles as she drinks; sometimes, she chugs it down easily like a champ. Either way, that hour of sleep I lose so that I can be up with her and feed her is fun. Spending an hour feeding, burping, changing, and holding her is pretty awesome. With no one else around, it’s like the world got quiet and empty to give the two of us space to just hang together.
It might mean I will not sleep straight through the night for a while, that I’ll lose sleep each night, that I’ll be a bit more tired. But this is definitely good tired. I can feel the fatigue in my body when I’ve only been asleep for a couple hours and Lucy summons me from bed, but I mentally and emotionally find it very doable to peel myself out of bed and get moving to do what Lucy needs. I want to do it, and I love to do it. And taking the time to care for her, even before she’s conscious of what she’s doing, gives her the chance to love me back, too, in her own funny little baby way.
There are definitely times in fatherhood that are bad tired. When we get Lucy down for sleep, and I decide I’m making a late-night McDonald’s run to get us milkshakes and french fries, and I find that our car has a flat tire that I have to change on the spot, that makes me bad tired.5 When I wonder excessively about my job and Katherine’s job and how many hours a week I should work when I go back and whether or not to stay home or work part-time or if we might have to put Lucy in daycare, that makes me bad tired. When life’s complications or frustrations that are beyond my control bubble up or compound or preoccupy me, it wears me out in a most undesirable way, and that is bad tired.
God’s gift to me is my steady, sturdy disposition; when I practice my faith and embrace the support of my community and close friendships, my keel stays even. When I’m bad tired, it’s just hard and not necessarily fixable. However, it doesn’t set in so often or so heavily. Most of the time, the blessings of my call to ministry and to marriage and family life engage me with labors of love that might be tiring, but are good tired.
When I try to engage faithfully with it all and relish the joys and challenges in tiredness, I think of my old friend, Scott, who when seeing a friend excel in friendship or love or ministry, would simply bequeath the loving blessing of God, “Well done, good and faithful servant!”
1 Remember when getting up at 6am was unfathomably early? Now it’s just the time my alarm is set to go off. Those were the days.↩
2 With a frozen pizza in the oven to eat at halftime. The only thing I really liked about living on the west coast was the early starts and finishes of sporting events, especially those 8pm Eastern Time starts that would be done well advance of a comfortable bedtime.↩
3 Fr. John Westerhoff describes the growth of faith in four stages: experienced, affiliative, searching, and owned. To read a bit more about each, click here and/or check out his book.↩
4 Never one to shy away from talking about poop, I mean this figuratively and literally. I love her a lot. She also poops frequently, even when in my arms. She also likes to fart while I’m wiping her butt or applying topical cream.↩
5 Then, after taking the time to locate the accoutrements for the first tire change on our newish car, I then nonetheless still go to McDonald’s.↩
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