I recall it as vividly as yesterday, December 15, 2019, and yes of course it was before Covid, so I had no idea how good life really was back then, even if I was approaching a stretch of burnout, which felt stark compared with even previous experiences of such exhaustion.
It was a Sunday, and my son and I were at an international cricket game where he was due to make an appearance with a hundred other kids during the lunch break. It was so hot, over 40°C, the third day of a heat wave, my brain was fried, and my body was listless. I certainly wasn’t in good parent mode, and indeed there was nothing left in me really, other than a little energy left to hold an internal pity party. Those who know me know I love my cricket, but I couldn’t stand to be at the cricket that day, and indeed I couldn’t have been happy anywhere. I truly wanted to escape life, because I really had nothing left, and yet the needs and demands of me felt exorbitant. I was trying to do everything.
The reality was — and this was what I couldn’t handle — I still had at least seven days of task after task to complete before I could clock off. I remember by that stage I pined for the sanctuary of a national park for some precious quiet time, and yet by the start of this season, a mini Sabbath, I had this thumping headache that persisted for over a week, these sore feet that just ached whenever I was awake, and an existential crisis where my body just didn’t want to cooperate any more. All this had seemingly descended overnight. I just didn’t see it coming... or perhaps I just wasn’t listening.
Burnout for me is the odious reality that I have nothing left in the tank, much to the degree that my mind literally stops working; I can see people talking, I can see I’ve got emails, and I can see there are demands of me, but I simply cannot do a single thing.
Long ago I realised it was God saying, “I’m pulling the plug here!” Long ago I realised that if I didn’t pull the plug, and institute boundaries, that God would. In this, I know that God is reinforcing an age-old truth for any of us who would listen — we are not human doings, we are human beings!
The day my mind stopped, and my body said no, was not the end of life as I knew it, but it heralded an important beginning. At the end of my strength was the beginning of God’s. God will often bring something to an end that we have previously fought tooth and nail to keep going. Only when God is desperate enough to get our attention will God pull the plug.
Initially, because the searing headaches wouldn’t abate, and the soreness wouldn’t disappear, even though I was resting, I began to panic. I truly wondered if there was something permanently wrong with me. This is just another way God was getting my attention.
The long and the short of it, of course, is that I got away into the bush, journalled, and read a crucial book, called Invitation to Retreat by Ruth Haley Barton. I re-learned some golden truths that I otherwise have known for years yet had either forgotten or had stopped applying. These are the truths that preserve our health.
Slowly but surely as I rested, my mind started to free up again, and my body began to respond, all because I was feeding on the hope in God’s Word, all connected to Barton’s principle of Sabbath and being secluded in the bush for a few morning’s rest.
None of us are beyond burnout. It sneaks up real quick — especially when we betray the sensible rules of work-health balance. We are all tempted to be human doings rather than human beings. What if the world could survive without us? Let it. Try it. It is freeing.
Image: my view in the National Park on Sabbath retreat.
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