This is long. Grab a coffee.
In my mind’s eye, I had an image of a watering can being poured out on cracked, dry land: the water beads and runs away without nourishing the soil.
It can be really easy – I know it is for me – to feel that we – that I – pour ourselves out for the sake of others, only to have it make no real impact on the landscape. I recognise that this image is an incomplete metaphor in that it does not reflect the complete reality: people and circumstances change or grow in a myriad of unseen ways.
Nevertheless, the complexity of feeling poured out – exhausted, ineffective – remains.