What Am I Doing Here?

What are you doing here?

That is the question I have been sitting with this morning.

You know I planned all eighteen days of this journey before we started. The Camino history, the Scripture, the questions I wanted us to wrestle with. If you have been walking with me, you also know the plan has changed a few times along the way.

Today is one of those days.

This one is longer than usual. Stay with me. I think there is something in Elijah's story, in the Camino, and maybe in your own life that will meet you before the end.

I thought I was going to write to you about silence.

And I am.

Yesterday I wrote to you about retreating. This morning I sat with 1 Kings 19, and God moved my heart in a different direction.

I realized I have walked through a season that, in some ways, felt a lot like Elijah's. I have been exhausted. I have been overwhelmed. I have looked around at relationships that once felt close and wondered where everyone went. I have felt like I was the only one.

Midlife has a way of bringing questions to the surface. The life we worked so hard to build can suddenly feel heavy. Relationships shift. People we once felt connected to begin to feel distant. The way we show up changes. The things we used to have capacity for become too much.

And somewhere in all of that, we can find ourselves asking the same question God asked Elijah.

What are you doing here?

How did I get here?

I know what it feels like to build a life you prayed for and then become overwhelmed by the life you built.

I worked hard. I built a successful business. I became very good at producing, solving, carrying, planning, showing up, and saying yes. From the outside, much of my life looked like success.

And then life started adding things I did not plan.

Estrangement. Friendships ending. Relationships changing. Shifts in dynamics I could not control. Questions without answers. Grief I could not solve by working harder.

At the same time I was still doing what I had always done. Finish the project. Start the next one. Say yes. Figure it out. Keep going.

Eventually emotional overwhelm became physical exhaustion. Physical exhaustion made everything feel heavier. And when I did not have enough space to process what was happening, my brain did what exhausted brains often do.

It filled in the blanks.

Why did she pull away? It must be me. Why did this relationship change? I must have done something. Why am I so tired? Maybe I am failing. Why am I overwhelmed by things I once wanted? Maybe I made the wrong choices.

I spent a lot of time sitting alone in my content room, replaying conversations and trying to solve things I did not have enough information to solve.

Elijah had a cave.
I had a content room.
And I think a lot of us have one.

Maybe yours is your bedroom with the door shut. Your car in the driveway before you go inside. Your bathroom, because it is the only room where nobody asks anything from you.

Sometimes the cave is not even a place. Sometimes it is pulling away. Going quiet. Scrolling instead of feeling. Telling everyone you are fine because explaining how tired you are feels like one more thing you do not have the energy to do.

Elijah was not hiding after failure

Before you keep reading, go read 1 Kings 19. The whole chapter.

Elijah's cave makes much more sense when you remember what happened immediately before it.

In 1 Kings 18 he experiences an extraordinary public victory on Mount Carmel. He stands against the prophets of Baal. God answers with fire. The people see it. The moment Elijah has been working toward arrives in spectacular fashion.

Then Jezebel threatens his life.

And Elijah runs.

That detail has stayed with me, because Elijah is not hiding after failure.

He is hiding after victory.

That may be one of the most human parts of this entire story.

We tend to imagine that when the thing we prayed for finally arrives, we will feel ready for it. Confident. Grateful. Excited. Certain.

Sometimes the answered prayer scares us.

I understand that differently right now.

My book comes out in October. I wanted this. I prayed for this. I wrote the words. I did the work. I have talked for years about finding my voice.

And over the past few weeks, knowing the launch is getting closer, I have gotten quieter on social media.

The woman who wrote Silent to Spoken has found herself wanting to hide a little when it is almost time for the world to hear what she wrote.

That is uncomfortable to admit.

But maybe you understand it.

Maybe you have spent decades building a career and suddenly find yourself asking who you are working so hard for. Your children are grown, relationships have changed, the responsibilities you once carried without thinking feel heavier now. Maybe you prayed for this life, and now that you are standing inside it, part of you is terrified.

What are you doing here?

It is not only a question for people who have lost their way.
Sometimes it is the question we ask when we finally arrive.

Food and sleep. Twice.

Elijah runs into the wilderness, sits under a broom tree, and tells God he has had enough.

And I love what God does first.

No lecture. No shame. No demand that Elijah get himself together.

An angel gives him food and water. Elijah eats and goes back to sleep.

Then the angel comes again.

Food and sleep. Twice.

The reason is beautifully practical. The journey is too much for him.

Yesterday we talked about rest. Today I think I understand another reason it matters.

Rest is not only about having enough energy to keep going.
Rest helps us see clearly.

When we take on too much without processing what is happening, and without adequate rest, we start filling in blanks. We turn what if into what is. We turn fear into fact. We assume instead of asking, researching, listening, or waiting, because we are already too exhausted to tolerate one more unanswered question.

That does not mean every concern we have when we are tired is wrong. Sometimes the job needs to change. Sometimes a boundary needs to be set. Sometimes midlife really is asking us to reevaluate how we have been living.

But maybe we should not make permanent conclusions from an exhausted place.

Before you burn down a life because you are burned out,
rest long enough to find out what is actually true.

The cave

After Elijah eats and sleeps, he travels to Horeb and enters a cave.

God asks him, what are you doing here, Elijah?

Elijah answers by telling God what has happened. He has been zealous. Israel has rejected the covenant. The prophets have been killed. And then he gives the conclusion that has become true in his mind.

I alone am left.

Then God tells Elijah to stand on the mountain.

A powerful wind comes. God is not in the wind. An earthquake comes. God is not in the earthquake. Fire comes. God is not in the fire.

Then comes the low whisper.

Elijah covers his face and steps to the mouth of the cave.

And God asks him again.

What are you doing here, Elijah?

Elijah gives almost the exact same answer.

I find that enormously comforting.

He heard the whisper and his answer did not immediately change. The encounter did not fix him on the spot, and God did not require it to.

Sometimes we hear something true and still need time for our nervous system, our heart, and our habits to catch up.

He corrects the math

What God does next may be my favorite part of the chapter.

He does not correct Elijah's grief.

He corrects the math.

Elijah believes he is the only one left.

God tells him there are seven thousand who have not bowed to Baal.

The loneliest man in the story did not have all the information about his own situation.

His loneliness was real. His exhaustion was real. His fear was real.

His conclusion was not the whole story.

That is where this chapter found me.

For a long time, when people pulled away or relationships changed, I filled in the blanks. I assumed their silence was a verdict on me. I wondered what I had done, what I should say, whether I needed to explain myself one more time.

I was trying to solve my life while exhausted.

We can build an entire case from a feeling.

So now I am learning to ask three questions before I decide what something means.

• What do I know?
• What do I feel?
• What am I assuming?

Those questions do not dismiss feelings. Feelings tell us something important is happening. They just keep us from asking a feeling to do the job of a fact.

There is a line from my book that feels different to me today.

When the room gets quiet, truth gets louder.Silent to Spoken: A Woman's Journey Through the Pause

I used to think that line was mostly about having the courage to hear uncomfortable truths about myself.

Today I think truth can also be kinder than the story exhaustion has been telling me.

Rest, retreat, and hiding

This is where yesterday's letter and today's letter meet.

Yesterday I told you to retreat.

Today I am telling you that I have also used retreat to hide.

Both can look like closing the door.

Healthy retreat says, I am stepping away so I can return.

Hiding says, I cannot deal with any of this, so I am disappearing from my own life.

I am learning the difference.

I want to rest before I need to escape. I want to process what is happening before exhaustion fills in every blank for me. I want to be able to step away from the noise without stepping away from the life I worked so hard to build.

And I want to remember that God did not shame Elijah out of the cave.

He fed him. He let him sleep. He listened to him. He asked the question twice. He corrected what Elijah could not see. Then He gave him a next assignment and a person, Elisha, to walk with him.

God prepared him to leave.

Sometimes the cave is a road

I do not want Elijah's cave to make us forget where we are walking together.

This is still the Camino.

Pilgrims have been stepping onto these roads for centuries carrying different reasons. Faith. Grief. Gratitude. Curiosity. Loss. A promise. A question. Sometimes we know exactly why we are going. Sometimes we only know that something in us needs to move.

Maybe that is part of the pull of pilgrimage. Ordinary life is loud. Work, family, relationships, responsibilities, opinions, notifications, expectations. The road removes some of that noise and gives us enough distance to notice what we have been carrying.

And sometimes, if I am being truthful, the walk can begin as a cave of its own.

A way to get away. A place to breathe. A reason to step outside a life that has become too loud to understand from the inside.

I have thought about that more than once while planning this trip.

But a cave does not have to remain a hiding place.

What are you doing here?

Many pilgrims describe beginning long walking days with headphones. Some eventually take them out. Silence on a long walk is not always peaceful at first. It can be loud.

Old conversations return. Unanswered questions show up. Memories you thought you had packed away start walking beside you. The things we could outrun with schedules, work, scrolling, and noise suddenly have miles of open road in which to catch up.

And if we stay with it, something can begin to shift. We may not solve everything. We may simply become quiet enough to separate what is true from what exhaustion, fear, or uncertainty has been filling in for us.

That is what happened to me this year, and it happened in an order I did not expect.

His voice came back first.
Mine came second.
I do not think that order was an accident.

And finding my voice has not meant becoming louder.

It has looked different in different seasons. Speaking when I have something to say. Setting a boundary without explaining it to death. Admitting when I am scared, even when I am standing inside the very thing I prayed for.

And sometimes it means sitting in the cave long enough to hear the question, but not so long that I decide the cave is where I belong.

Have you ever said enough?

Have you ever said it to yourself?

Enough. I cannot.

Elijah did.

He reached the end of what he could carry and finally told God the truth about where he was.

And maybe that is part of where we find God in our own stories.

Not when we finally prove how strong we are. Sometimes it is when we stop pretending we have more strength left.

You do not have to be stronger right now. Eat. Sleep. Tell God the truth. Let Him meet you there. Then find out what the next step is.

Because I cannot does not necessarily mean the story is over. Sometimes it simply means we have reached the end of what we know how to do on our own.

Maybe that is another way to hear the question, what are you doing here?

At first it can sound like, how did I get here?

Then, what have I been believing here?

And eventually, God, what are You asking me to do from here?

I do not have to know the whole answer today.
I just need the next step.

The Camino slows life down to one step, then another. You cannot answer every question about your marriage, career, family, purpose, faith, future, and identity before lunch. You walk the piece of road in front of you.

Maybe that is exactly what some of us need in midlife. Not another five year plan. Enough space to ask what is true.

Burnout tells us we have to solve the whole road at once. The Camino keeps reminding us that we do not.

One step. One prayer. One honest question. One night's sleep. One fact instead of ten assumptions.

Then the next step.

One more thing

Have you ever listened to Nobody by Casting Crowns?

It has become one of the songs I reach for when I feel overwhelmed. I paused while writing this letter and listened to it again. It reminded me that purpose does not require us to feel impressive, perfectly prepared, or endlessly strong. God has always worked through ordinary people who were willing to take the next step.

And there is one thing midlife has taught me that I wish I had learned much earlier.

If someone is committed to misunderstanding you,
that is not your burden to carry.

You do not have to exhaust yourself trying to make every person understand your heart, your choices, your boundaries, or your story.

If you are burned out or overwhelmed, it is okay to take a rest day. Give yourself permission. We live in a world filled with likes, opinions, work, family, social media, expectations, and more information than our minds were ever meant to carry before nine in the morning.

Rest is not quitting. Sometimes slowing down is how we stop filling in the blanks long enough to see what is actually there.

You do not have to wait for midlife, burnout, a breakdown, or a pilgrimage across Spain to begin.

Slowing down can happen today, right where you are standing.

When you ask yourself what am I doing here, what comes up? Write me back below. I read every one.