What Has Happened to All My Energy?

After decades of being coached and coaching, I recently had an amazing conversation with a woman at a really interesting crossroads.

She's successful. You would love her. She's extremely good at what she does, and part of what she does is super financially rewarding. So where's the problem? Isn't that what we want?

Yes and no. It takes a tremendous amount of her time and energy to stay in that situation. Meanwhile, there are things God has given her to do, things that matter to her and to the kingdom, that she's been talking about doing for a while.

So I finally said, "I hear your dreams, and I hear what's happening. Where is the time for your dreams supposed to come from?"

We don't like that question, do we? We decide we're just going to add something new without asking whether something else needs to go.

I have never been more convicted by that. I've been through seasons where God stripped me clean. There was a time I didn't even have use of a car during the day because my son needed it, and God just wanted me in one place, slowing down. Some days I still think there are 37 or 47 hours in a day. I can look at a completely full week and think, sure, no problem, on a random Tuesday between 4:17 and 4:23 I can absolutely do this. Y'all, I'm guilty.

Her situation was a little different. There actually is something she could let go of. It's profitable. It's familiar. She's good at it. She's also fortunate enough to have other financial options for a short time. Letting it go would require trust in God and in His plan, because even when we trust, there's something reassuring about a certain income.

You may be thinking she should obviously keep the sure thing. But there's a cost for every sure thing we hang on to for too long. It could be a job. It could be a relationship. You name it. For her, it's costing her marriage, her family, her heart, and her true purpose, which may interfere with her relationship with God. She keeps waiting and feeling stuck. As hard as the answer is, it could be right in front of her.

I walked away from that conversation thinking about energy. In health, and especially in perimenopause, we usually talk about how to get more of it. Why am I so tired? Why am I dragging? Do I need sleep? Am I eating? All legitimate questions. But there's another side of energy: where am I spending the energy I already have? And maybe an even harder question: is what I'm spending it on still worth what it's costing me?

Fatigue is not always about having better boundaries. Hopefully you know me better than that. Perimenopause can absolutely affect how energetic you feel. If you're waking up four times a night, your cycle is super heavy, you're not eating enough, or you're struggling with significant fatigue, sometimes there are medical reasons for that. Please don't hear me say you're just tired because you're doing too much. And if you're in a healing phase, you need your energy for that, so you don't want to change too many other things.

Now say you do all of that. Your physiology is supported. You're building muscle. You're doing all the things, and slowly you start to feel better. What are you going to do with that energy? Keep doing the same things you've been doing? You've already changed trajectory and you're moving in a health direction. So what else needs to go?

Filling the schedule back up to stay distracted and busy might be what got us sick in the first place. Busy isn't inherently bad. I love being busy. I do way too many things, and I like getting a lot done. That's part of my personality. This isn't an argument for everybody to quit their jobs, clear their calendars, and sit on the porch with a perfectly calm nervous system. That would last me about 12 minutes. But there's a difference between a full life and a life where every bit of capacity has been spent and you still want more, because it isn't filling your soul. Or you just feel stuck. Both are worth paying attention to.

As I've gotten more mature, I often say, "I do not have the energy for that anymore." Sometimes that means I'm physically tired. A lot of times it means I don't want to spend my energy there anymore. Those are very different things.

That's one of the interesting things about midlife. Things that mattered immensely five or ten years ago, like ego and other people's opinions, just don't matter that much anymore. Other things matter more, like my relationship with my kids and my new husband. My work has changed too. I'm starting the Living F.R.E.S.H. Collective and still seeing clients one-on-one.

Perimenopause gets blamed for a lot of those shifts, and sometimes deservedly so. But I don't want to put all the blame and priorities on estrogen. Maybe you're not suddenly lazy. Maybe you're not losing ambition, even if it feels like you've lost your motivation. Maybe some things simply don't deserve the same amount of your energy anymore.

Energy was never infinite. When we were younger, maybe we were just better at pretending it was.

Some things that take a tremendous amount of effort leave you feeling more alive afterward. Notice those. Not just what drains you, but what fills your cup at the same time. This podcast does that for me. I love giving you information, giving you some emotional things to think about, and talking about the things people aren't talking about. That makes me feel really alive.

So it isn't simply about doing less. It's about becoming aware of what things cost and what they give back. Not everything has to give back. There are responsibilities we have to carry and people who need us. That's life. But if everything is taking and almost nothing is replenishing, eventually the math doesn't work.

That's what made my friend's situation so difficult. The thing consuming so much of her life isn't a bad thing. It's valuable, productive, and profitable, all the things the world calls good, and she's really good at it. It still may be costing too much. If it were terrible, it would be a no-brainer. Hopefully by this point in life we're pretty good at recognizing obviously destructive things. But what about the good thing that no longer serves you? What about something that worked beautifully for a long season but, if you're super honest with yourself, is taking energy away from something that matters more in this season?

As Christians, there may be a few more layers. We attach an awful lot of meaning to what we do. Even though we know where our identity is supposed to come from, we still get caught up in the satisfaction of accomplishment. I like being needed. Who doesn't? I enjoy being successful. I find tremendous purpose in caring for people. There's nothing inherently wrong with any of that. But none of it gets to establish my identity. When it does, and ego takes over, and other people's opinions start to matter more than what God thinks of us, we have to stop and ask what we're doing.

My identity as a Christian isn't something I have to keep fueling with enough accomplishment to keep it alive. God doesn't look for my accomplishment. It was a gift freely given through His Son. I belong to Christ before I accomplish one thing today. And I'll still belong to Christ if something I've been super successful at is no longer what I'm supposed to be doing. I can even be closer to Christ in those moments.

God has given each of us things to do, people to love, gifts to use, and work to participate in. Purpose gives tremendous direction to our energy. But it doesn't get to determine our worth.

If I don't need this job to tell me I'm successful, if I don't need anybody to need me so I know I'm valuable, if I don't need a packed calendar to prove I'm important, and if I don't need my body to look a certain way to prove I'm disciplined, then I can actually ask: is this still where I want to spend what I've been given?

That's not selfish. That's stewardship.

Energy is a gift, just like our body, our money, and our time. It has to be stewarded. We still need protein, carbohydrates, fats, micronutrients, metabolic health, and sleep. All of that matters. But I don't want you to create more physical energy just so you can become more efficient at running yourself into the ground and getting even more stuck. That's not health.

I want you to have capacity for your life and for the dream and purpose God has put on it. Part of having capacity is recognizing that you get to make choices about where some of it goes. Maybe not all of it. There are responsibilities we don't choose and seasons we don't get to curate. Y'all know I took care of my mom for a long time. Sometimes life hands you something enormously difficult and says, "Here, carry this for a while." Even then, you can pay attention to what else you're carrying. Do I still need this? Does it still belong? Am I doing this because it matters or because I've always done it?

I got stuck in exactly that while I was taking care of my mom. I kept trying to build the same business and kept holding on to it. It took me two years after her death to realize, wait a minute, why am I holding on to this when I want something different now? I want to help more people through the Living F.R.E.S.H. Collective instead of only one-on-one. (I love my one-on-ones, and they're still available.) Was I holding on because I was afraid of what would happen if I let go?

Sometimes the question is, do I trust God enough to release something good when holding on to it is keeping me from something else?

I wish there were a formula for answering that. And I don't think every uncomfortable or exhausting thing is God telling us to quit. I'm all about grit. Sometimes what we're called to do is incredibly hard, and sometimes faithfulness is costly.

Think about the priests in Joshua. They had to walk into the floodwaters of the Jordan first, carrying the incredibly heavy ark of the covenant, into raging floodwaters. We're told never to do that. Stay home if it's flooding! They walked into the waters, and God showed up.

So the question isn't whether something requires energy. Of course it does. The question is whether the cost is aligned with what matters in this season.

That's a much more personal conversation, and it's one of the reasons I created Living F.R.E.S.H. I don't want it to be another rigid health program. I can teach you how your body works, help you understand your changing hormones, and teach you how to fuel yourself, recover, and build strength. But underneath all of that, I want us to ask: when you get there, what are you going to do with your big new life? Is that part of what's scaring you away from getting healthy? If you get healthy, does an excuse go away?

That's a touchy subject, isn't it? But eventually you have to learn how to live in your own life. That's the whole point.

So sit with this question this week: where is my energy going? Not with judgment. We're not making a list of everything you're doing wrong. Just notice. Maybe you're genuinely depleted and something physiological is demanding attention. Maybe you're carrying a season that's really hard. Or maybe there's something in your life that's still there because it's always been there. It's good. You're good at it. It pays well. And you're beginning to realize, I just don't know if it's worth it anymore.

Your identity is secure in Christ. Knowing that gives us a little more freedom to decide what deserves the energy we've been given.

That's stewardship. That's energy. And that's part of how to live F.R.E.S.H.

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