A Letter on When the Good Things Are Still Too Much
My Dearest Friend,
A few nights ago, I logged into the first meeting for a program I have been looking forward to for months.
It was only a meet-and-greet, the sort of beginning where everyone introduces themselves and gets a glimpse of the people they will be learning alongside before the real work begins. My first actual class is still ahead of me, and I am genuinely excited for it.
It is, objectively, a wonderful opportunity. The program is offered through a prestigious university, designed specifically for military spouses, and limited to only fifty participants each year. I applied months ago, during the chaos of our PCS, and then spent the entire summer waiting to find out whether I had been accepted. I only learned that I was in about three weeks ago.
When the answer was yes, I was ecstatic. After that first meeting, I might be even more so.
I am also exhausted.
There is homework coming. There will be reading and assignments and expectations, and now that I have met the people I will be learning alongside, the whole thing feels wonderfully, intimidatingly real. None of that diminishes how grateful I am to have been given the opportunity. It is simply that the woman who applied for this program several months ago did not quite account for the fact that the woman beginning it would still be living among half-unpacked boxes, trying to establish a new family routine, spending several evenings a week at soccer, fitting gymnastics into the daytime hours, volunteering with our new unit, serving on a club board, and discovering that apparently the best time for her to finally go to bed is somewhere around two o'clock in the morning.
I have joked more than once lately that the primary thing preventing me from having a complete breakdown is that I cannot find anywhere convenient to fit one into the schedule.
It is funny because, unfortunately, it is also a little bit true.
Lately, I have found myself avoiding my inboxes. There are several of them now, which should probably have been my first warning. I do not want to open them because I am afraid of discovering another message that requires something I do not currently have the energy to give. There is a newsletter I haven't finished, work for the club that needs my attention, boxes that remain stubbornly unpacked, and any number of ordinary family responsibilities that have not had the courtesy to disappear simply because I decided to become very busy.
The strangest part is that I do not particularly want to give any of it up.
I joined the club board because some of my dearest friendships in this military life have begun in rooms just like those. I volunteer with military families because being someone others can turn to gives me a sense of purpose I have deeply missed during seasons when military life has made traditional employment difficult. I signed up for the class because I want to learn. I take my children to soccer and gymnastics because these are the pieces of their lives we are building here, too.
I know what it feels like to arrive somewhere and remain uninvolved, and for me, that has always been harder than being a little too involved. These things give me community and purpose. They introduce me to people I might otherwise never know and allow me to offer something of myself beyond the roles I already carry within my family. I know, because I have lived it before, how much richer my life can become because I said yes.
I just seem to have said all of my yeses at once.
Perhaps six months from now, none of this will feel particularly remarkable. The house will be settled enough. Soccer will simply be what we do three nights a week. I will understand the rhythms of the board and will have finished my class, and I will no longer need to think quite so hard about every ordinary piece of our days.
But I am not six months from now.
I am here.
And here is a little too much.
What has surprised me is how difficult it is to admit that without immediately turning it into an indictment of every choice I have made. If I am overwhelmed, surely I should have said no. If I said yes, surely I have forfeited the right to complain about being overwhelmed. If I ask for help, perhaps I was never capable of doing these things in the first place. If I step away from something, perhaps people will decide I was never as dependable as I claimed to be.
It becomes an exhausting little circle in which every possible choice is somehow evidence that I am doing this wrong.
The irony, of course, is that I would never speak this way to another military spouse.
I would tell them that their value is not measured by how useful they can make themselves to everyone around them. I would tell them to rest, to ask for help, to put on their own proverbial oxygen mask and, though I loathe the cliché, remind them that they cannot pour from an empty cup.
Apparently, I am exceptionally qualified to give advice I have no intention of following myself.
Recently, I admitted to a couple of people that I was overwhelmed. One offered the familiar kindness of telling me she was there if I needed anything. Another immediately began asking what she could take from me. Did I need a ride? Did I need something from the store? What could she actually do?
It reminded me of something a friend once taught me about caring for people who are overwhelmed: sometimes "let me know what you need" is simply another task you have handed them.
Do not ask the exhausted new parents whether they would like dinner. Tell them you are bringing dinner at 5pm unless 5pm does not work. Do not wait for someone drowning to develop a detailed delegation strategy before you are willing to reach into the water.
I have always understood how to be that person for someone else.
Perhaps this season is asking me to learn how to let someone be that person for me.
The Lesson
A good thing can still ask too much of a person for a while. An opportunity can be everything someone hoped it would be and still leave them exhausted. Gratitude does not erase the need for help, and being thankful for a yes does not mean that carrying it will always feel manageable. None of that necessarily means the choice was wrong. Sometimes the answer is to set something down, but sometimes the answer is rest, lowered expectations, a slower pace, or the willingness to let someone else help carry what has become too heavy.
What I know is that telling myself I should be grateful does not make me more grateful. It only makes me ashamed of being tired. It turns an honest acknowledgment of my limits into a moral failure and makes it harder to recognize what I actually need. Gratitude is not strengthened by pretending that a good thing has no difficult edges. It becomes more honest when it has room to exist alongside exhaustion, frustration, uncertainty, and the occasional wish that no one needed anything from me for just one day.
Perhaps there is room to tell the whole truth instead: this is good, and this is hard. I wanted this, and this is too much right now. I am grateful for the opportunity, and I need help carrying it. I may continue choosing it, and I may still need to change how I am participating in it. All of those things can be true at the same time.
To the Spouse Whose Good Things Have Become Too Much
You are allowed to struggle beneath the weight of something you would still choose.
You do not have to diminish your gratitude to acknowledge your exhaustion, and you do not have to give up a good thing simply because it is hard. Ask for help, accept it when it comes, and let something be imperfect for a while.
Sometimes gratitude and overwhelm are both true.
