Controlled Burnout

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

Always working, never resting—mile after mile after unending mile. Churning striving blind circles no progress back to square one EMPTY. Shins bones and ankle bones splinter delicately and vibrate their jagged way wider with every stressful step and gasping breath. All mental and emotional faculty poured out, again and again, into one class—one project—one person—over and over only to gaze on—glare at—the result with unholy dissatisfaction. And I would shy away from locking eyes with the utter, desolate depth of my disappointment.

“Night and day, whether [the sower] sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.” (Mark 4:27)

So much effort wasted and no understanding gained; once again, I had failed to find my Savior even when I did win another person’s approval—a spiraling cycle I reworked downward and repeated by devoting my life to pursuing completeness by achievement and wholeness by intimacy. I never ended up with what I so desperately sought. Repeat. Never reaping good fruit of  my ever-anxious labor. Repeat.

“So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor.” (1 Corinthians 3:7-8)

My mid-week crisis after the second full day of teaching was due in part to physical exhaustion, lack of sleep, lack of quiet times and emotional overload—and in part, a silent tantrum at God. My will—connecting with the children—was directly interfering with His purpose for me that week—to contribute to His overall plan by sparing the kids from internally combusting, which mandated getting their little bodies to run as much as possible and, thus, my teaching Phys. Ed.

“In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.” (Proverbs 16:9)

Source: World Harvest Mission

I was again confronted by a God of an infinitely stronger will and was again rebelling. I was again grasping for control of outcomes and asserting my puny demands as I have all my life, only to reap the reward of a familiar turmoil seething in my soul—something neither He nor I wanted. I was again faced by that awful realization—both humbling and, upon acceptance, soothing—that I am sinful and limited, that I am not God, but that He is good, sovereign and in control. I was again made to surrender to Him, to submit to the path He had laid out.

“Now the body is not made up of one part but of many… But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be... The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ And the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’ On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.” (1 Corinthians 12:14, 18, 21-22, emphasis added)

I didn’t want to play a supporting role—which was news to me, since I’ve never loved the limelight. With the wisdom of hindsight and what the Spirit has directly imparted to me, however, I’ve since realized that I’m quite happy with a supporting role, that I probably would have been even more totally overwhelmed seeking connections than I already was, that I merely wanted control, and that God knows me much better than I know myself. What a silly little creature I am.

“I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.” (Ecclesiastes 3:14)