Toast Happens

I came home from a trip last week exhausted, burnt-to-a-crisp: Sleepy, achy, coffee-sodden, absolutely beat. I was toast. ??
A string of work-related travel, started at the beginning of October, had finally taken its toll. ?
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“Thank heaven for frozen pizza and West Wing reruns,” I said to myself, as I curled up on the couch with my husband on Friday evening. “I’ll relax tonight, do some restorative yoga tomorrow, take a good walk with the baby, cook a nice dinner, and be back in the groove by Sunday morning.”??

Not.
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Too exhausted. Tried to push my way through it. Couldn’t. Too exhausted. Tried to talk myself out of it. Couldn’t. Tried to walk my way out of it. Could barely put one foot in front of the other.
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Chopping vegetables helped. A little. ?
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Finally, as Sunday afternoon rolled around, I took my woes to tea with a dear, and very wise, friend. ??

“I’m embarrassed,” I moaned to my friend. “I’m a Coach! I should be able to manage my energy better than this. There are things I planned to get done this weekend! I need to recover!!!”??

Don’t recover, uncover.
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Countering my moan with a move I hadn’t expected, my friend told a story of her son who, at age 18, was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and given three to six months to live. Miraculously, however, the tumor receded, disappeared, and her son began to regain his health. ?
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Naturally, my friend was impatient. She was eager for the total return of her hale, hearty, and sometimes quite fool-hardy teenager. Longing to see him up to his old tricks, she must have been pushing to get him out in the world again. ?
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But her son knew better than she what he needed. “Mom,” he said, “you are expecting me to recover. But I’m not going to recover. I will never be my old self again. I will not recover. The tumor has made it possible for me to uncover the person I’ve always been.”
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Patiently uncover yourself. ??

Like acupressure at just the right point, that story relaxed me. It let me feel how tired I was. It allowed me to almost enjoy it.
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I remembered that slogan from Outward Bound: “If you can’t get out of, get into it!” ?
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The story got me thinking about “uncovering” the truth beneath my exhaustion.
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Over the course of these last few days, I’ve realized that I can’t drag myself back to being the person I was last September, before all of this travel started.
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More importantly, I’ve uncovered a true understanding that I can’t bring back the person I was before Luke was born a year and a half ago. My routines, my priorities, my approach to life will never be the same. I feel some grief connected to that understanding. ?
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I will not recover. But if I relax and get into it, I can gently uncover the person I really am.
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Toast happens.
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Toast happens. We deplete our energy in the pursuit of excellence, experience, challenges, joy, money, whatever! We exhaust ourselves in the quest for a good and meaningful life. Toast happens to even the most vigilant among us. ??

When toast happens to you, use it. Get curious about it. Get into it.
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Uncover yourself.