I was sitting with my rooster this morning and watching him struggle to breathe.
This is not a story about chickens (I promise), but hang with me here...
We’ve been battling a respiratory illness with him for the past three weeks, but what emerged wasn’t the battle itself—it was the weight of carrying something that feels unresolved.
And I think we underestimate how much of life is lived in the middle of stories that have not yet revealed their ending.
Not because we don't understand how life works.
Most of us know that nothing is certain. There are no guarantees. Outcomes are rarely within our control.
But what we tend to underestimate is the energy required to remain present while a story is gradually unfolding. The tedious moments of not knowing what the day will hold, be it more of the same or a subtle change.
We often speak about our careers through a lens of resolution.
A clear beginning. Then a shift or turnaround. The big breakthrough. The difficult decision that ultimately paved the way. The risk that paid off. The company that succeeded. The lesson learned after the fact.
The stories are neat and tidy because we tell them backwards, treating them like a post-mortem discussion of a recent project.
We begin with the end in mind and reconstruct the path that led there.
But life rarely feels that way.
Most of the time, we're standing somewhere in the middle and juggling the weight of a world that we seldom talk about in the same circles.
We tell one version of our lives at work. Another version to our friends. Another to our family. And another to the people who depend on us.
Perhaps that's why certain forms of exhaustion are so difficult to explain.
Nobody is carrying the whole picture with us. They see the chapter they're part of. Rarely the entire book.
The parent whose health is declining.
The business that has not yet become what we hoped.
The relationship moving through a difficult season.
The health concern we’ve been carrying silently.
The child approaching a transition we know is coming but aren't fully prepared for.
The financial pressure of sustaining a lifestyle that you carried for years.
The question that keeps resurfacing despite our attempts to answer it.
The piece of work that feels important, though we cannot yet see where it leads.
The future your trying to build.
Yet somehow we're carrying all of them simultaneously.
None of these stories announce their ending in advance. Instead, they ask something far more difficult of us.
They ask us to keep showing up.
Uncertainty carries a unique kind of weight. Not the weight of action or even effort.
The weight of sustained attention.
A finished story can be grieved.
A finished story can be celebrated.
A finished story can be released.
An unfinished story continues asking for something from us.
It remains open. Heavy. Waiting.
From the outside, someone might appear highly capable to those around them.
They're leading teams.
Raising families.
Building businesses.
Caring for aging parents.
Creating meaningful work.
Managing responsibilities that others depend upon.
Nothing appears broken.
Yet beneath the surface they’re carrying a dozen unresolved stories simultaneously.
Not one overwhelming burden, but many unfinished ones.
And I wonder if that changes how we think about authority.
Much of what passes for authority today is built around certainty.
Strong opinions.
Clear answers.
Confidence in the face of complexity.
Yet some of the most trustworthy leaders I've known possessed something different.
They were willing to remain present in situations they could not immediately resolve.
They did not rush to force clarity.
They did not manufacture confidence.
They did not pretend to know what they could not know.
Instead, they developed the capacity to carry a load of responsibility while the future remained uncertain.
Not effortlessly.
Faithfully.
That is a different kind of strength.
A quieter one that is less visible on the outside and far more difficult to measure.
But perhaps more necessary than we realize.
Because most of life does not occur at the moment of breakthrough.
Most of life occurs in the messy middle.
It happens in the long stretches where the answer has not arrived.
Where the outcome remains largely unknown, but the story continues asking for your attention.
Perhaps authority is not found in the moments where everything becomes clear.
Perhaps it is revealed much earlier.
In our willingness to remain faithful in the middle of unfinished stories.
To continue showing up.
To continue caring.
To continue stewarding what has been entrusted to us.
Some responsibilities are not ours to resolve.
Only ours to steward.
Not because we know how the story ends.
But because it is ours to carry for now.
— Jessica