Watching Myself Disappear

There was a season when I watched myself disappear. And the worst part was how quietly it happened. Slowly. Piece by piece. Day by day.

And nobody really noticed, because I was still showing up. I was still doing the work. Still holding things together. Still there for everybody who needed me.

Something inside me was gone, and I did not know how to get it back.

The full story of that season is in my memoir. But I want to talk about this here, because I have met so many people living in it and almost none of them have words for what is happening.

This is not a dramatic collapse. That is what makes it so dangerous. A dramatic collapse gets noticed. Somebody intervenes. This is the other thing, where you keep functioning perfectly while quietly ceasing to exist.

And everybody thinks you are fine because all of your external metrics are fine. You are performing. Producing. Present. The house runs. The work gets done. Nobody has any reason to ask.

Elijah called fire out of heaven and outran a chariot, and in the very next chapter he was lying under a tree in a wilderness asking God to take his life. And what did God do? He did not lecture him. He let him sleep. Then He fed him. Then He let him sleep again and fed him again. God's first response to a servant who had emptied himself out was rest and a meal.

And in Exodus 18, Jethro watches Moses judging the people from morning to night and says, the thing that thou doest is not good. Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is with thee: for this thing is too heavy for thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself alone. Thou wilt surely wear away. That is the exact phrase for what disappearing feels like.

And notice the solution. Jethro did not tell him to pray harder. He told him to distribute the load and let other people carry some of it.

Psalm 23 says he restoreth my soul. That word restore is for something that has been depleted. God built restoration into the shepherd's job description, which means He fully expects His sheep to run down.

And here is what I most want to tell you, and it is the tender part. There is probably somebody who sees you disappearing. It may not be the person you wish was noticing. It may be somebody small. Somebody who loves you and simply refuses to let you vanish.

In my worst season, on nights when sleep felt impossible, my dog would rest her head on my chest and be present to me in a way nobody else could. She did not ask me to explain. She did not ask me to be okay. She just lay there. She just stayed.

And that is not sentimental. That is biblical. God fed Elijah by ravens. He sent an angel to a man under a bush with bread. Jesus said not one sparrow falls to the ground without your Father, and that you are of more value than many sparrows. God is not above using small and ordinary things to keep a person alive.

First, say it. To God, and then to one person. I am disappearing. I do not know where I went. You cannot recover something you will not admit is missing.

Second, take back one thing. One hour. One habit. One friendship you let go. One thing that is purely yours and produces nothing. Zechariah 4:10 says who hath despised the day of small things. Recovery works the same way disappearance did, a little at a time, in the opposite direction.

Third, let the load be redistributed. Some of you are disappearing because you are carrying something that was genuinely never meant for one person. Jethro told Moses to delegate, and Moses lasted forty more years because of it.

And fourth, let God restore you. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. Every one of those verbs is His action. Your part is to stop resisting the lying down.