To the ones coming home,
There’s a crash that nobody talks about.
It happens after the enormous thing or series of things — the milestone you’ve been running toward for years, holding your breath for years toward the finish line you weren’t sure you’d reach, the moment your youngest child crosses the stage to receive her diploma and something in you finally exhales. You did it. You stayed. You walked with her every single day. You made it.
And then your body sends you a bill.
Not burnout. Not sadness. Something quieter and harder to name — an emptiness that shows up exactly when you thought you’d finally feel full. You can’t go to the birthday party. You can’t answer the text. You sit in someone else’s house watching someone else’s dogs and you think: what is wrong with me because you can’t move.
Nothing is wrong with you. You just ran out. The tank hit empty the moment the race ended, the moment the last guest left the graduation celebration open house because that’s when you finally let it.
The crash is not the opposite of strength. It’s the receipt for it.
And here’s the part that made it harder: the world didn’t wait. The next thing was already in the pile before you could catch your breath from the last one. Because that’s how it goes — and everyone has a phrase for it.
When it rains, it pours.
They mean it as a warning. A knowing nod. Things pile up, they come in waves, they don’t wait for you to finish dealing with the last one before the next one arrives, it is a monsoon of to do items, of fix its, of handling something for yourself or someone else.
They’re not wrong.
But then someone will follow it up with, “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle” — and that phrase makes me cringe in my bones.
Because it is absolute and utter bullshit.
And here’s what makes it worse: it’s not even in the Bible.
The phrase gets pulled from 1 Corinthians 10:13, which actually says God won’t let you be tempted beyond what you can bear — and it’s specifically about temptation, not suffering, not loss, not the pile that keeps growing while you’re trying to catch your breath. Somewhere along the way, someone blurred “temptation” into “everything hard in life” and it became a platitude that makes exhausted people feel like failures.
That’s not theology. That’s just pressure with a fake Bible verse stapled to it.
Here’s what I actually believe: God doesn’t cap the rain. He uses the pour to bring you to your knees — not as punishment, but as invitation. The flood isn’t evidence that you’re failing. It’s the thing that finally makes you stop white-knuckling it alone and turn toward something bigger than your own capacity.
You were never supposed to handle it.
You were supposed to let it lead you back.
If your pile is high right now — if you’re in a season where the waves aren’t waiting and the list keeps growing and you’re running out of ways to hold it all together — you’re not alone. And you’re not failing.
You’re just human. In the pour. Right where the invitation is.
Big hugs and love, rooting for you, Stacy
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