Burnout

She posted about burnout, and how she got it. I clearing my Reader, thinking I’d skip over her post, but she said, “I worked myself out of being myself…” and I know how she feels. I read her heart and I cried.

I am taking a week off. We are going to drive and drive and drive and talk – and breathe in Virginia air that helps us think.

I need to reset and refocus the direction I am going, let some things go so that I can let other, more important things in. I need to connect again with my heart, to take Virginia photos and let God into the thing I am doing again, because I think I’ve forgotten to acknowledge Him and I have been overwhelmed and moving aimlessly without direction.

Some of it is the tired; some of it is the busy. Some of it is the spiritual exhaustion that comes on the other side of doubt. It is hard to begin moving again after being immobilized by fear. I don’t even know if I’m supposed to move.

My dilemma is one that I think I shouldn’t face, but I do, because I was raised in a culture that said all desire was bad, that believed the heart was evil (instead of renewed in Christ Jesus), and that looked askance at art. Ministry was the highest calling there, and I fight the urge to slap spiritualisms on my photography just to prove that I’m really doing it for God.

I necessarily focus on the things of the world when I do what I do, but didn’t He make them? I’m slowly learning story again, slowly beginning to remember that it is okay that He uses it to speak to me, just as He used parables when He was here. He, more than anyone, knows that I am a point-of-reference person.

He also knows how easy it is for me to slip from my “point-of-referencing” into self-centeredness. At least it feels that way. I learn new things by filtering them through the lens of the old that I know. This is why I learn by doing, because I try and retry. I learn by writing, because I see, and read and re-read, and I learn about myself by the words that fall from my fingers.

I am tired of the branding, of the having-to-know-who-I-am-before-I-make-a-move. I think of life as a discovery, a discovery of myself and of everyone and everything else, and I don’t know why my eyes weren’t open for so long. But they are open now, and I see, and I can’t help seeing.

So I come back here, where I journal about God and my walk with Him, and I don’t feel as close to Him as I have at points past, mostly because I measure my closeness through what I have already known. Yet I have a sense that He wants me to live, that it is okay if I do, and that He is glorified by it, even if I’m not pious and overtly spiritual when I am talking about pictures and color and clients and design.

The brand is what it is – it is a visual of me that I get to share with the world. It is always going to morph and change as I grow – that is just part of my journey. But my identity in Him, that doesn’t change, and whether I’m up or down, He’s not changing either. I’m still His, and He’s promised never to leave me nor forsake me. The guilt I walk around with because I’m not doing enough, being enough, broken enough, glorifying enough – that’s not Him. I know that.

It is just hard to move forward with all that riding on my shoulders sometimes. I have this voice of caution that says “you are not really free” and it stops me in my tracks and makes me question God and His goodness – and His veracity.

I’m burned out right now. I’ve been dealing in depression and walking a very thin line between sanity and madness. A little bit of madness is good – it helps me say yes. But a lot of madness? I am rethinking a lot of things.

I have to be a person from the ground up with this business, and it may mean I don’t get the accolades and the attention that I want. But I will have my family, and my peace, and the ability to go to bed at night and rest without worrying about what is going to hit me next.

Sometimes, God feels like the over arching madness, the Guy who demands everything and all from me – when I’m poured out already. “Come to me, you who are weary and heavy laden,” He says, “and I will give you rest.” But I wasn’t trained to rest in God. I was trained to work for Him, to devote all of myself to doing God-things and pouring my life out for Him alone.

“There is no room in all that for me to do anything I want,” I think, feeling cheated because when I was little, I could be anything when I grew up.

I like Him better now, with what I’ve learned about how Jesus did the human things when He was here, how He ate and drank and walked and talked and breathed and had the hiccups even. I’ve learned that my praise is being who He created me to be, and letting Jesus’ Cross-work take care of the sin, shame, and separation issues I incurred under Adam.

“Be still,” He says, and know that “I am God.” “Cease striving…”

I think there’s really not a lot of room for burnout with Him.