Love Doldrums

The Horse Latitudes, the city of Ziklag on fire, and the calm between the storms.

Today, we talk about the love doldrums.

"Remember, you are loved, so go, love better!"

New episodes drop on Tuesdays.

Transcript

            Thirty degrees latitude north and south of the equator lies a section of ocean glimmering with pristine beauty.  The weather is tropical, serene, magnetically blue ocean as far as the eye can see and not a cloud in the sky.  It is one of the most dreaded sections of the ocean.  Ancient mariners referred to it as the calms, but we know it more commonly as the Doldrums.

I’m Scott Beyer and this is the Love Better podcast where we explore the truths and lies about love and more importantly how to turn love into a skill – something we can get better at and hone along the way.

The "doldrums" is a popular nautical term that refers to the belt around the Earth near the equator where sailing ships sometimes get stuck on windless waters.  This belt of calm seas with erratic or non-existent wind goes by many names.  The Spanish referred to it as the Horse Latitudes because Spanish horse traders would have to travel through the doldrums on their way to transport their magnificent stallions to colonies in the West Indies or the Americas.  When a seagoing vessel requires wind to move and you hit a 600 mile swath of windless seas… eventually you start running out of food and when that happens, the horses get heave hoed overboard.

The technical term for the doldrums is the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone or ITCZ, sometimes referred to as “the itch”.  Not a bad nickname for a section of ocean that even modern sailors itch to get out of.  It’s beautiful, but endless.  

Today, we are going to look at what happens when exhaustion encroaches on love because love also has its doldrums.  Love doldrums are those sections of life where the right thing doesn’t feel right, the energy is gone and the wind has been removed from your sails, the love doldrums can also be the times where you find yourself not able to carry the loads you once did – some of the cargo has to be jettisoned, and that can feel a lot like failure – especially if you view yourself as the kind of person that others rely on, a mover and shaker that gets things done, and now you are struggling with listlessness and exhaustion.  What do we do when the doldrums hit and life slows down so much that we itch to make it over the horizon to the next big thing.

Let’s talk practical examples of what the doldrums can look like.  Parents of young children – they aren’t yet sleeping through the night, you haven’t caught a full Bible class in months, and just going through the motions feels like all you’ve got in you.  You remember being vibrant and enthusiastic – the first to volunteer.  A servant that removed the load from others – now you are just trying to get the next load of laundry done.  Will this ever end?

Or employment doldrums - your job was fantastic when you started and there are some great roles in the company that you can see yourself really making an impact in, but those promotions are probably years away.  Right now you are stuck in the doldrums of middle management.  It is somewhere between the leadership position that can make a difference and being in at the ground floor of a new career – the murky middle where the paycheck is good enough, the benefits are necessary for your family, but the fulfillment is lacking.  Everything is calm, but you itch for a change that seems far off on the horizon.

Or maybe you are at the tail end of trauma.  Your health has been the center of everything since the diagnosis and every day seems filled with appointments, tests, and fatigue from the treatments.  Life has been a lot lately and as much as you would love to do the “more” that the preacher keeps talking about on Sunday mornings, “more” feels insurmountably far away right now.

If these examples don’t hit home – there are myriads of others. Being the caretaker for an aging parent, saying the long goodbye to them as dementia takes over.  Having to take a step back due to a family crisis, financial setback, or season of transition as you move to a new part of the country or world.

Our lives are rife with these pockets of doldrums.  The doldrums aren’t the crisis, they are the eye of the storm in between crises or the calm seas before the tailwinds push your toward the next adventure.

And the Bible is full of examples of this – the forty years in the wilderness for the young generation that would eventually take the Promised Land – it wasn’t just the old folks that had to wait, the kids who hadn’t done anything wrong had to, too!  Elijah as he waited by the river with sorrow in his heart – after the victory of Mt. Carmel but before God sent him to anoint kings… the murky middle of his prophetship.  Or Abraham’s wandering, the forty years of Moses life between his Egyptian childhood and his ascension to leader of Israel.

For crying out loud, even Jesus had thirty years before His ministry started.  These are the seasons where it feels like nothing is happening or perhaps the passion is gone.  You feel burnt out,   listless or just plain exhausted.  So what do you do?

In order to find that out, we need to learn from the men of Ziklag and talk about their luggage.  Because the baggage carriers of Ziklag have three important things to tell us about how to handle the doldrums of love.

In 1 Samuel 30, David is not yet king of Israel – he is still technically an outlaw.  King Saul has banished him from the country and so David and his 600 warriors have found refuge in the most unlikely of places – David now lives in the land of the Philistines.  In order to retain the services of David and his mighty men, the Philistine king Achish has given David and his men the city of Ziklag.  So, David and his men go to war, fight their battles, and their wives, their children, their families all stay safely in Ziklag.  Until the Amalekites show up.

            While David and his men are away, the Amalekites raid Ziklag and I’ll read to you the impact it has on David and his men when they return home.

[1Sa 30:1-4 ESV] 1 Now when David and his men came to Ziklag on the third day, the Amalekites had made a raid against the Negeb and against Ziklag. They had overcome Ziklag and burned it with fire 2 and taken captive the women and all who were in it, both small and great. They killed no one, but carried them off and went their way. 3 And when David and his men came to the city, they found it burned with fire, and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive. 4 Then David and the people who were with him raised their voices and wept until they had no more strength to weep.

            Now if you are listening closely, you may be thinking at this point – what on earth does this have to do with the doldrums?  The ambush of Ziklag, the enslavement of the wives and children, the burning of the city – these aren’t dull, calm seas at all.  This is a massive storm in the lives of David and his 600 warriors, but remember what comes after the hurricane?  The eye of the storm.

            Without reading it verse by verse, David’s army has no idea whether their families are alive or dead – do we pursue or do we grieve?  David decides to pursue, and with the strength of the Lord they begin a journey across the barren land and treacherous hills and valleys in pursuit of the Amalekite raiding party.  The journey takes days and the days likely stretch into weeks.  The pursuit of the raiding party – that’s the doldrums, and it takes a toll, even on these seasoned warriors.

[1Sa 30:9-10 ESV] 9 So David set out, and the six hundred men who were with him, and they came to the brook Besor, where those who were left behind stayed. 10 But David pursued, he and four hundred men. Two hundred stayed behind, who were too exhausted to cross the brook Besor.

Why are these two hundred men exhausted?  You know why! The doldrums caught up to them.  The weeping over their families, the rigors of the battle they had come from and the lack of sleep from where they were going at double speed.  The hopelessness of not necessarily knowing what they would even find when they got there – if they ever caught the raiding party at all.

So what does David do?  He leaves them behind and has them watch the baggage.

Which brings us to point number one:

#1 Exhaustion is not failure

            At no time does David chastise these men for their fatigue or because they can’t do what others are doing.

            Even Jesus’ oft quoted phrase, “Come to Me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest for your souls.” Implies an understanding of weariness and fatigue.  Instead of condemnation for the weariness, Jesus offers rest.

            The Bible is rife with passages like this.  Jeremiah describes God’s character as the one who “satisfies the weary ones and refreshes everyone who languishes”

            Being tired, feeling listless, hopeless, brokenhearted, or run down are natural human states that God uses to draw us near to Him.  They are not failures, they are opportunities.  In fact, the two hundred soldiers that stayed behind are quite likely the REASON the families were saved.

            Which brings me to point number two.

#2 Staying with the baggage is worthy work

When those two hundred men stayed behind, they stayed behind with the extra baggage.  The other four hundred soldiers were able to lighten their loads because they comrades would safely secure all the extra paraphernalia.  Which meant they could travel faster.  Lighter load, lighter feet, quicker pursuit.  Those baggage carriers made the rest of the army nimble.  Less stuff let them make a lightning strike on the raiders in just a few more days time.

Which means that those men staying with the baggage who maybe thought they had failed or weren’t pulling their weight were actually the difference makers.  Because staying with the baggage is worthy work.  Maybe you aren’t the front-line warrior right now, but the support team still gets a share in the victory.  It isn’t just the quarterback that gets a Super Bowl ring, the linemen and even the backup players that never played a snap get one, too.

This point is so important that I am going to take you back to 1 Samuel 30 to hear David talk about it.

[1Sa 30:21-25 ESV] 21 Then David came to the two hundred men who had been too exhausted to follow David, and who had been left at the brook Besor. And they went out to meet David and to meet the people who were with him. And when David came near to the people he greeted them. 22 Then all the wicked and worthless fellows among the men who had gone with David said, "Because they did not go with us, we will not give them any of the spoil that we have recovered, except that each man may lead away his wife and children, and depart." 23 But David said, "You shall not do so, my brothers, with what the LORD has given us. He has preserved us and given into our hand the band that came against us. 24 Who would listen to you in this matter? For as his share is who goes down into the battle, so shall his share be who stays by the baggage. They shall share alike." 25 And he made it a statute and a rule for Israel from that day forward to this day.

David knew that the baggage men had been part of the solution even if they hadn’t had the flashy job.  Part of the doldrums is forgetting that we are a band of brothers and when you are in a band, sometimes you sing lead vocals and sometimes you are the guy carrying the gear.  Either way, your job matters.

The danger of the doldrums is forgetting that.  Maybe you can’t see how what you are doing is important because it feels like you are running at 20% speed right now, but let me tell you the people who have made the greatest impact in my life have often just been the ones who helped me carry my emotional baggage.  Maybe they didn’t do anything quantifiable for me, but they helped me sort through my baggage and that lightened my load and made all the difference.

            And that leads right into the third rule.

#3 Just because you can’t do everything doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do something.

            What if those two hundred men had done nothing? Or even worse – gone home?  They couldn’t go on, but they could stay with the gear.  They didn’t confuse not being able to do something with failure.  They did what they could.  In the book of Revelation, there is a beautiful recognition of the value of doing something given by Jesus to a church in the ancient city of Philadelphia.  He tells them:

[Rev 3:8 ESV] 8 "'I know your works. Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.

Do you see that? They had a little power – and yet they kept God’s Word.  If you are in the doldrums the wind doesn’t blow much, but when you get a gust – catch it.  Don’t expect the same things you would do in a season of prosperity and vigor.  That’s not now, but don’t make the mistake of giving up because what you can do feels like a paltry amount.  Put one foot in front of another.  Do the laundry.  Read stories to mom in the wheelchair as her health and mind decline.  Show up and be the best middle-management guy you can be and enjoy the lack of major responsibility as an opportunity to be the family man that a more strenuous promotion will make more difficult.  Marriage in the doldrums?  Start with baby steps – buy flowers, say I love you, compliment their attire or their effort.

If you have a little power, use it.  Keep the faith.

            You never know what the doldrums are leading to.  Love better – love through the baggage.

If you've listened this far, hopefully we've done something to help make your life a little bit better.  Would you mind returning the favor and helping us by subscribing to the podcast through your favorite platform?

By sharing with others or leaving a review on Apple Podcast, you help us reach more people. Also, if you want more information about the work I'm doing at Eastland, visit us at eastlandchristians.org or my personal Bible site, Biblegrad.com, where you can sign up for daily Bible devotionals called Biblebites and receive them in your email each morning, take online Bible classes, or find videos that will help you study through the Bible throughout the year.

And until next time, “Remember, you are loved, so go… love better.”