As a spiritual director, there’s a question I hear again and again—from parishioners, students, clergy, and if I’m honest, I ask it myself: Why am I so tired when I’m doing everything right?
I think most of us would agree that leaning into the vocation we’ve been called to with the best of our abilities should be life-giving and energizing. Yet, often we find ourselves depleted.
I’m reminded of a television commercial I used to see when I was a kid for Calgon Bath Soap. The commercial depicts a woman who is overtaken with the stress of life: the traffic is bad, the boss is screaming, the kids are crying, the dog is barking and she yells out in exasperation, “That does it! Calgon, take me away!!!” The next scenes shows her relaxing in a hot bath up to her neck in bubbles with a peaceful smile on her face while a calm and reassuring voice describes how the luxurious bubbles remove the days stress.
What is your version of this: Are you a parent doing everything for the family whose made self-erasure a form of love? Perhaps you’re a clergy person who feels responsible for everyone else’s relationship to God while ignoring your own. It could be that you’re a caregiver who never stops giving and only sees self-worth through being useful. You could even be a neurodivergent person who is masking, spending enormous amounts of energy to appear functional instead of being whole.
It’s exactly this kind of quiet, faithful exhaustion that Jesus encounters in the story of Mary and Martha. The sisters are often read as representing the contemplative and active dimensions of the spiritual life. But there’s another lens worth considering here: concentricity—the question of whether our lives are ordered around a common center.
In the story, Jesus comes to the home of two sisters, Mary and Martha. Martha immediately gets to work, attending to the very real demands of hospitality. Mary, meanwhile, sits at Jesus’ feet and listens to him speak. As the tasks pile up, Martha becomes overwhelmed and frustrated—not only with the work, but with Mary—and finally asks Jesus to intervene.
Jesus’ reply surprises us, probably as much as it surprises Martha. He names her interior state: “You are worried and distracted by many things.” He then affirms Mary, saying that she has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away. The story ends there—unresolved—leaving the listener to sit with the tension between faithful activity and attentive presence in their own life.
But when we view this story through the lens of concentricity, it takes on a different hue.
Martha is doing everything right. She is hospitable, responsible, attentive to others’ needs, and engaged in necessary, good, culturally expected work. Nothing in the story suggests that her motives are flawed; she is simply doing what someone has to do. And so, when she becomes tired, frustrated, and overwhelmed, a question naturally rises to the surface:
Why am I so exhausted when I’m being faithful?
The story of Mary and Martha is not about choosing contemplation over action, but about whether our lives are ordered concentrically around Jesus—or held together anxiously from the outside.
Notice that Jesus doesn’t shame Martha. He doesn’t tell her to stop serving. He simply names something deeper. Martha is tired not because she is unfaithful, but because she is trying to sustain love through effort rather than communion. Mary isn’t doing less because she cares less; she’s doing less because she has chosen to stay close to the source.
For those of us who are neurodivergent—or caregivers to others who require sustained, attentive care—Martha may read as hyper-responsible. She anticipates needs, notices what others overlook, feels resentful when she’s unsupported, and often interprets rest as irresponsibility. We might even recognize a limbic response in her appeal to Jesus. But Jesus doesn’t say, “Try harder.” His response seems to say instead, “Come closer.”
Through this story, the Christian tradition offers something surprisingly gentle: you were not made to carry the full weight of your life on your own. You were made for communion—an ongoing relationship—with God at the center. Sin, in this older wisdom, is not primarily about being bad; it is about being off-center. It is about looking for life where life cannot finally be found.
So let me ask you—not to answer out loud, not to judge yourself, just to notice:Where do you look for life when you’re tired?
You were created for relationship with God—your first calling, your deepest home. And so restlessness is not failure; it is the gentle unrest of a life that remembers where it belongs, longing to be drawn back and gathered again around Jesus at its center.
Let us pray:
Gracious God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts grow restless when they wander from your center. Quiet our anxious striving, gather what is scattered within us, and draw us back into communion with you, that our work may flow from love and our rest be rooted in trust;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.
Try this today: Where do you look for life when you’re tired?
No need to answer out loud, and not to judge yourself, just to notice
