Man, Is It Just Me?

Okay, I have to ask. And I need somebody — anybody — to tell me I am not alone in this.

Some days I wake up and I am genuinely ready. Energy up, mind clear, sense of purpose humming. I feel like I could take on three hard conversations, knock out a week’s worth of work, and still have something left for Leslie by the end of the night. Those days I actually believe the things I say I believe. The calling feels real. The effort feels worth it. I am in it.

And then there are the other days.

Same guy. Same faith. Same life. And I can barely get myself to return a text message. The simplest tasks on my list — things that would take me twenty minutes on a good day — just sit there staring at me while I stare back at them. Not sad, not angry. Just…flat. Heavy in a way I cannot quite put my finger on. Like someone quietly turned the voltage down overnight and forgot to tell me.

And here is the part that really gets me: I cannot always trace it back to anything. I can look at my week and find nothing obviously wrong. Sleep was decent. No major conflict. Nothing blew up. And yet there I am, trudging through the afternoon like I am walking uphill in wet boots, wondering what in the world happened to the guy who was so fired up two days ago.

So what is actually going on? Honestly — I do not know. And I have been at this long enough to be suspicious of anyone who claims they have it fully figured out.

Is it diet? Probably some of it. I notice the correlation between the days I eat like a responsible adult and the days I feel like one. Is it sleep? Almost certainly. The research on this is not subtle. Is it hormones? Almost certainly more than I used to be willing to admit — because nobody told me that getting older would mean my body would start making editorial comments about my mood without asking permission first.

Spiritual warfare? I think so, yes — but I have learned to be careful here. It is easy to slap a spiritual label on something biological, or a biological label on something that is genuinely a battle for the mind. The honest answer is probably: both, and also neither exclusively, and also it depends on the day.

And then there is the thought life. That one I cannot dodge. The Psalmist knew it too.

What I love about that verse is that it is not a sermon. It is a man talking to himself — almost arguing with himself — trying to get his own soul to come back online. He is not explaining the theology of suffering to a congregation. He is just sitting in it, being honest about the downswing, and pointing himself back toward something solid.

That feels like where we are a lot of the time, does it not? Not in crisis. Not in triumph. Just somewhere in the middle, trying to figure out which version of ourselves is going to show up today — and hoping it is not the one who reheats the same cup of coffee four times and still does not drink it.

I do not have a clean answer for this. I am still in the middle of the question myself. But I am increasingly convinced that just naming it out loud — just saying “man, this is hard and I do not fully understand it” — is more useful than pretending the swings are not happening.

We are not machines. We are not supposed to produce at the same rate every day, in every season, under every kind of weather — internal or external. And maybe the most honest, faithful, human thing we can do on the flat days is simply refuse to believe that flat is our permanent address.