0231: Midweek Debrief - Gentle, Steady, and Given

A Thiarna, i mo thuirse, ná tréig mé. (O Lord, in my weariness, do not forsake me.)

Tuirse is not only the sag of limbs at the end of a long day. It is deeper than that. It is the hush that gathers behind the eyes when hope has gone too far ahead and no longer waits for you. It is the weight in the chest, like a stone settling, when the sea gives no reply to your longing, and the hills echo back only the sound of your name, and nothing more.

Tuirse does not arrive only at nightfall. It can come in the middle of conversation, slipping in silently when your words falter and ache behind the teeth. It lingers in the silence of letters never sent, in the stillness of roads you meant to walk but did not. It waits in the hunger for a face you can no longer name, though your heart still knows the shape of it.

And yet, even in tuirse, there is something more.

There is a stirring, quiet but sure. A breath that does not come from you, but for you. Not sorrow, but grace. Not heaviness, but a settling—gentle, steady, and given.

Pronunciation: TUR-shuh / Uh HEER-nuh, ih muh HUR-shuh, naw trayg may