Are you tired? I don’t mean the “I stayed up too late scrolling” kind of tired. I mean bone-deep, soul-heavy tired. The kind of exhaustion where it feels as if all the sleep in the world won’t catch you up.
Lately, I’ve been running on empty. Not just my body, though my body aches too, but my heart.
My direction. My drive. Everyone else seems to be excelling, moving forward, ticking boxes, hitting milestones. And me? I feel stuck. Hard-pressed on every side. Not depressed, I won’t claim that word over my life, but pressed. Pressured. Pinned down by the weight of waiting.
And sometimes I whisper to God: Is this it? How much longer, Lord? How much longer must I sit in this place of no movement, no clarity, no “go” signal? Do you feel like this? Paul said it like this: “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair” (2 Cor 4:8). That verse doesn’t say we’re skipping through life with sunshine and daisies. It says we’re pressed. Just like grapes in a winepress. And that’s exactly how I feel, pressed, squeezed, drained.
But here’s the revelation: pressing is never pointless. Grapes don’t turn into wine without the crushing. Olives don’t produce oil without the pressing. Maybe, just maybe, God is letting this pressing refine something deeper in me.
I don’t have a neat bow to tie this with today. I won’t pretend to have the answers. But I know this: Jesus understands tired. He got weary on His journey and sat down by a well (John 4:6).
He fell asleep in the middle of a storm because His body was drained (Mark 4:38).
He knows what it is to be pressed in Gethsemane until His sweat was like drops of blood (Luke 22:44).
So if you’re tired, know this: tired isn’t a sin. Tired isn’t failure. Sometimes tired is holy. Because in that place of empty, God whispers, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9).
I’m tired. And maybe you are too. Let’s not pretend otherwise. But I refuse to let tiredness define the end of my story. If God has me here, in this pressed place, then He must be producing something new. Wine. Oil. Strength.
So I’ll wait. I’ll cry if I must. I’ll whisper, “I’m tired, Lord,” and trust He hears. And when the time is right, He will fill me again. Running on empty doesn’t mean you’re done.
It means you’re in the press. And the press is where God makes oil, wine, and new beginnings. (VICKY LUDICK)
Running on Empty
