The steel has been sticking up out of the roof for seven years now. When you started, the plan was simple: finish the ground floor, move in, save for the upstairs. Then school fees came, and your mother’s illness, and the year the car died, and a hurricane that meant spending the upstairs money on a new roof for the ground floor. Every time you walk up the drive, those rusting rods remind you of what is not done.
Some mornings you wake up already tired. Not just in your body, though that too, but somewhere deeper. Tired of saving and never having enough. Tired of the list of things that need fixing. Tired of being the one who holds the whole household together. The thought comes quietly: maybe I should just give up.
Digging a little further
There is an old story, told in many versions, of travellers in a desert who ran out of water and began digging for it. They dug a foot or two in several places, found nothing, and gave up. Years later, the story goes, water was found only a short way beneath where they had stopped. Whether or not it happened exactly so, the story endures because it names something true about weariness: we often stop just before the thing we need.
Paul put it more simply: “And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart” (Galatians 6:9, NKJV).
He was writing about the long, ordinary work of doing good: carrying one another’s burdens, supporting those who teach, living by the Spirit rather than by selfishness. It is the kind of work that rarely brings quick rewards. Paul knew people would get tired. He does not scold them for it. He simply reminds them that the harvest comes “in due season”, not before.
The work that wears us out
Keeping a home is, for many of us, exactly that kind of work. Building a house slowly, block by block, as money allows. Maintaining an old family property that everyone uses but nobody else pays for. Caring for an elderly parent under your roof. Raising children in a small space. Paying a mortgage for twenty-five years. None of this is glamorous, and very little of it is thanked.
And when you are tired, everything looks heavier. The unfinished upstairs becomes a symbol of failure rather than a work in progress. The leaking tap feels like the last straw. You compare yourself with others whose houses seem to have gone up in a year.
Rest is not giving up
It is worth saying clearly: not losing heart is not the same as never resting. Even God rested on the seventh day. Elijah, exhausted and wanting to die under a broom tree, was not lectured by an angel. He was given food and allowed to sleep, twice, before anything else happened (1 Kings 19:5-8).
Sometimes the most faithful thing a weary builder can do is to stop for a season. Put the upstairs on hold without guilt. Take a weekend without a to-do list. Let someone else cook. Accept help from a sibling or a friend. Talk honestly with your spouse about how tired you are. Rest is not the opposite of perseverance. It is often what makes perseverance possible.
Small steps count
When the next stage finally comes, it may help to think smaller. Not “finish the upstairs” but “protect the steel from rust this dry season”. Not “fix everything” but “repair the one thing that is causing the most trouble”. Every small act of care is part of the harvest Paul describes. The house is being built even on the days it does not look like it.
In due season
Due season is God’s timing, not ours. It may come sooner than you think or later than you would like. The upstairs may one day be finished and full of grandchildren. Or you may discover that the harvest was never really the building, but the family that grew up around it, the faithfulness you learned while waiting, the people you sheltered on the ground floor all along.
For reflection
- What in my home or family life is wearing me down most right now?
- Do I need to keep digging, or do I need, first, to rest and let others help?
A short prayer: Lord, I am tired. You know it better than I do. Give me rest where I need rest, strength where I need to keep going, and the eyes to see that you are building something here, even when the walls are unfinished. Help me not to lose heart. Amen.
If tiredness has turned into a lasting sense of hopelessness, or you have thoughts of harming yourself, please speak to your doctor, a qualified counsellor or someone you trust as soon as you can, and contact your local emergency services if you are in immediate danger. You do not have to carry it alone.
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