Happy are the hexhausted

I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth, you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world. (John 19:25)

Merriam-Webster defines the term “hangry” as “irritable or angry because of hunger.”

I’d like to suggest the adoption of a new word that I’ve become intimately familiar with: “hexaustion.” “Hexhaustion” can be defined as a “fragile emotional state brought on by hunger and exhaustion.” For example, “Her hexhaustion resulted in several meltdowns after repeated humiliation in the workplace.” 

This past Wednesday was the worst workday I’ve had since August 2016. Back then, I was completing my degree while supporting my former organization’s president through travel in France. I was barely sleeping between work and school responsibilities that had me waking my employer by 7:00 am, planning and escorting her through her day, and staying up until the wee hours of the morning, devising the next day, and completing my course work. 

When a co-worker failed to show up to a 10:00 pm meeting, scheduled to organize additional activities, I couldn’t hold the floodgates back any longer. I hadn’t eaten dinner, was pushing into my fifteenth hour of work, and still had schoolwork yet to come. France or no France, I wanted to walk away and never look back. I made a decision the next day that work would not consume me, ever again. 

Unfortunately, that proclamation didn’t last long as it doesn’t align well with my work ethic. 

This past week, the full weight of my hexhaustion hit me the day after I’d worked for fifteen hours without dinner, yet again. I had stayed late to finalize a fifty-two slide PowerPoint presentation for our annual department award ceremony.

This year’s ceremony was to be conducted virtually due to social distancing protocols. The senior vice president I support wanted the deck to be extra creative. In addition to the award slides, I had unique photos of co-workers – working at home during COVID – their pets, an interactive video of a vendor-presented award, and embedded applause-tracks that would automatically play after award recipient names were revealed. 

While I was already hungry after not eating dinner the night before, I also missed lunch the day of the event, which began at 12:30 pm. Additional changes were needed on the deck after the final run-through, which kept me busy until after the noon hour. There was no opportunity for a final review before moving forward with the show

Still, I knew the slides were great. Everything went well in our dry-run, and I just had to get through it to put it all behind me.

“You can do this,” a co-worker told me. We knew the president of our corporation would be joining us for the first half-hour of the ceremony, and I wanted everything to be perfect. 

Five minutes into the production, things started to unravel.

“Uh, Sara,” remarked our VP, who I also support. “Something’s missing.” I couldn’t imagine what he was referring to.

“The applause tracks aren’t playing,” said the SVP, on camera. 

I could hear the tracks, so I rushed out of my office and over to hers to point to my ears, silently saying the words, “I can hear them.” 

“No one else can,” she mouthed back, from behind her closed door.

Five minutes and several tech-support helpers later, we knew there was nothing we could do to fix the problem. Apparently, I had missed an obscure setting before broadcasting my presentation to over five-hundred people, all my bosses, and the president of the company. The sound effects would not play.  

“Just stick with it,” my boss texted me.

After advising her of my concern that the audio component in our embedded video presentation might also not be heard, she texted me again. “Skip it.” Not a good thing, as weeks had gone into the acquisition of the same. 

Finally, on the most significant award of the day, I bumped the button to reveal the winner’s name before my boss was ready for it. I panicked, tried to recover, and bumped something else on the keyboard that knocked me out of the live presentation and produced thirteen blank slides in the deck. Forgetting that I was on video myself, I put my head in my hands, saying, “Oh, no! Oh, no!”

Fumbling with my mouse, I clicked all around the screen, believing I had lost the whole production. Scrolling backward, I found the slide I had bumped – re-starting the show and pushing forward into the reveal, just as my boss said the winner’s name. The whole thing may have only taken twenty-seconds to recover from, but it felt like an eternity in my mind. 

When the ceremony was over, one of our senior managers came by and said, “Good job, Sara,” – a sentiment that seemed a million miles from reality.  

“Not really,” I replied. 

Her comment was all it took to push me over the edge. When one of our expert videographers came by to sympathize with me, I broke down crying, saying, “I failed.” 

After other co-workers saw me crying in my office, a friend came by to say, “I thought you were going to cry when the slides went blank.” 

“You saw me?” I asked. 

“Oh, yeah,” she replied. 

Great. More humiliation, I thought. I just wanted to crawl under my desk and hide or run from the building and never look back. 

Am I not already humble enough, Lord? I questioned. You know I work hard to be humble, every day. Did I really need another lesson in humility? 

That night, sitting on my screen porch, trying to eat something without it upsetting my fragile stomach, it started to rain. How I longed to stand outside in the storm and let the water wash away the day. 

Instead, I searched for Michael W. Smith’s “Healing Rain” on YouTube and let the words fill my soul. 

God is in control, I thought. There is a purpose in this, somewhere.

I went to bed early and woke at 3:15 am, wide awake. The day began to replay in my mind, one humiliating segment at a time. I can’t do this, I thought. I need to get past it.

Instead of lying there, torturing myself with the day’s mistakes, I turned on my bedside light and reached for my Bible. My day’s reading continued in Job, where I came across the following passage. 

“I know that my Redeemer lives and that in the end, He will stand on the earth.” (Job 19:25)

Thank you, Lord. That’s all I needed, I thought, as I placed the Bible back on the nightstand and turned off the light.

In the darkness, I repeated the verse in my head and basked in its peace. I fell back to sleep and remained sleeping until my alarm went off. 

Instead of hiding my face as I returned to work that next day, I held my head high and shared my story with our dear cleaning lady and a co-worker who emailed me to ask if I was okay. 

I learned a big lesson through my humiliation in front of my peers, bosses, and the corporation’s president. God wins in the end, and nothing else matters. I work for God, and He loves me despite my flaws and failures. I will still give my usual 300% – but not so I can look good or win acclaim. I give extra because I’m serving God and can provide no less. 

As Dr. David Jeremiah said, “There are few things that you can ever develop in your life as a believer without stress and difficulty and persecution.”

To that, I say, “Amen.”

God is always teaching me, and with teachable moments comes stress. He knows what is best as He continues to mold me into the person He wants me to be. In the end, I work for God and His opinion of me is all that I need to worry about. 

I serve the ultimate Overcomer who sees and understands. Happy are the hexhausted, for God will give them rest.