Exhaustion. What to do?

I have no advice. I will generally live off vitamins, caffeine, and exercise and hope that tonight I will get the sleep I need. But I hit walls like everyone else. And like everyone else, I realize I can’t take a break because I have to get up and go to work. I have to clean the house, wash the laundry, and go to the store or to my son’s award ceremony at school or his sporting event. I also have an insane paranoia of losing my hobbies in the melee, and so continue to play my accordion, study Spanish, exercise, and write books.

When I go to Mass at St. Peter’s, sometimes I lose track of the liturgy because I’m drawn to the stained glass at the front of the church of Jesus as the Good Shepherd carrying a lamb in his arms. I want to be that lamb; I want to feel cloaked in his arms and to hear his reassuring voice that I am his and that he has a purpose for my life. Have I lost a sense of purpose by being too busy? I don’t know. I like to think that if we’re following him, that the essential person he has made us to be will emerge. The desire to write could not be entirely outside his will. Or could it? Maybe I need to just step back and rest.

Do you have a hard time hearing God’s voice and feeling his presence? I do. I have to say I’ve tended to feel spiritually inferior to people who can hear God’s voice and feel his presence surrounding them. I do feel his presence at Mass, but I’m an intellectual. I don’t carry that outside with me. I can only picture myself in his arms rather than feel those arms around me.

During my son’s triathlon yesterday, we sat in the shade of trees by the small lake in Dexter. Normally, I view nature as being a recuperating force. Instead, the experience was so sapping of energy that when I arrived home again, I passed out on the couch. Anyway, that is all I have for this week. I have to push through the exhaustion at some point and return to normal brain activity. Maybe tomorrow the vitamins and exercise will work again, and my favorite music will enliven rather than enervate with emotions I can’t really put a finger on.

So, what does one do for utter exhaustion? I don’t have a clue. What do you do for exhaustion?