How to Keep Busyness From Ruining Your Life — Merle Burkholder

We put time on everything. We put it on newspapers, on checks. We even have it, like, on our computer down in the bottom. There's this little time and date Y, but we just—we're paranoid about time. And part of that is just the busyness of our lives. Somebody said that the United States is the only country in the world that has a mountain named Mount Rushmore because we're always—we're always rushing somewhere.

Well, Merle Burkholder, it's a privilege to have you back on the Anabaptist Perspectives podcast. A little about yourself: you've been in ministry for 45 or so years. You've served in church leadership. You've done a fair amount of teaching and traveling around in missions, things like that.

There is a particularly poignant and relevant topic we want to jump in today, and that's the topic of overload and burnout. And I'm guessing you've had quite a bit of experience with this in all those years of ministry and seen it in a lot of different environments. Feels like the more I look, the more I see this in our people—people being overloaded or too busy or, yeah, or burning out completely. So as we think of that topic, let's just jump right into it and start with: what is burnout? Let's get some definitions out there.

Yeah, burnout is kind of a state of, like, emotional and physical exhaustion that just comes from poorly managed stress in life and in the workplace primarily. But, yeah, it gets to the point where you just have no energy and feel totally depleted, and everything becomes a crisis.

Yeah. So a statement I've heard quite a bit—I'm sure we all have—but is this to quote, "It's better to burn out than to rust out." Analyze this: is that a true statement? Well, either way, you're out. So whether you burn out or rust out, the goal is to stay in and to be living life in a way that's sustainable and to recognize, on one hand, this isn't a sprint, it's a marathon, and I need to pace myself so that I can be—so my life is sustainable and what I'm doing is sustainable for the long haul. But on the second—on the other hand, it is a race, and I need to get engaged. I'm not—and I'm not a spectator.

I'm not sitting on the sidelines. So I need to get involved. But I need to be—it needs to be sustainable. Well, so I just wonder then, why do we say statements like that? Because it seems—well, what's the word?—just disingenuous or not well articulated or well thought out to say that, because it feels, "Oh, it's better to burn out than to rust out." That's putting a lot of pressure on people, is it not? Well, it justifies our busyness and the pace of our lives. And so it's an excuse to be overly busy. And part of the problem is that we live in a society where busyness is valued, and there's a lot of social pressure to be busy.

And you think about it: when we meet someone, we'll often say, "So, how are things going? And have things been really busy?" And we're like, "Oh, yeah, it's crazy. You wouldn't believe how busy it is." And I don't know when the last time was that I asked somebody, "So, have you been busy?" And they're like, "No, I'm not. Not really." That is a good point. I don't know if that's ever happened to me, actually. And so there's this pressure to, "Well, I need to at least appear to be busy." And so even if life is manageable, we still feel pressure to say, "Oh, yeah, it's just busy. Yeah, we're really busy." And so that thing of, "Well, I'd rather burn out than rust out," is kind of a justification for that busyness.

And then we accept responsibilities and we accept things because we feel like, "Well, we ought to be busy, and it's the right thing to be really busy. And if I'm not busy, maybe that's not good." And so there's this pressure to be busy. And we live in a fast-paced society where we don't do rest very well.

And we don't even maybe know how to—we maybe don't even know how to rest because we're just—we're so time pressured and so time conscious. And our culture is like everything is time-based, and we're paranoid about being somewhere without—when we don't know what time it is. Everything moves by the clock, and it's—we put time on everything. We put it on newspapers, on checks. We even have it, like, on our computer down in the bottom. There's this little time and date Y. But we just—we're paranoid about time. And part of that is just the busyness of our lives. Somebody said that the United States is the only country in the world that has a mountain named Mount Rushmore because we're always—we're always rushing somewhere.

That's pretty good. I've never heard that one before. I'm going to have to write that down. That's pretty good.

So can we get into a little of that, of just why? Like, this performance, this pressure emphasis, and then how does that intersect with the topic I can, which is overload and burnout? And I'll kind of let you take this where you will. This is a big topic, so it's kind of hard to know where do we even break into this. Well, there is some value in pressure, and a certain amount of pressure can increase performance. And some people are really—I mean, they almost need pressure to function.

So some pressure is good. And our goal isn't to totally remove stress and pressure from our lives, but it's to keep it at a sustainable level. And not everybody has the same tolerance for pressure. And sometimes we look at people that just seem like they get so much done. They're just always doing something, and they're amazing.

But maybe that's not me. And maybe it's okay. I don't have to be living life at the pace of the most energetic person I know. I need to know what's sustainable for me and what I can do and have a pace that is sustainable for me in my life. And one of the things that I've found helpful for me is we often think about the different things, commitments we have in life. Like, we have our commitment to God. We have our family. We have our work, our ministry. And then there's other things in life. And we say, "Well, God is most important." And then second number two is my family. And number three is work.

But then work seems to take up so much more time than maybe some of the other things. And so how does that all work? And I think the way I like to think about it is not so much a list, a one, two, three list, but a pie graph. And my life—I have slices of my life for different things. And I have the slice where I'm working on my relationship with God, and I'm fellowshipping with Him. I have the slice for my family. I have a slice for ministry. And I may have different ministries that I'm involved with. And each one of them has a slice.

And when I'm in that slice, that is my number one priority. And I want to be fully present in that slice. Because one of the things that happens is we have three or four or five things going on in different areas of our life. And we're in this moment, but we're thinking.

We have these wheels turning about three or four other things. And so we're only half of our attention is here. And our energy is being drained by these other things that we know we need to do or that something's going to have to be done about. We can't do anything about it right now. But some of our mental energy and emotional energy is going into those things rather than being fully present in the moment where we are. And there's a great little pamphlet by Charles Hommel called The Tyranny of the Urgent. And he talks about how Jesus—you never get the feeling that Jesus was in a hurry. Like, he doesn't—we don't ever read about him telling the disciples, "Come on, pick up the pace here a little bit.

Like, we got to get to Bethlehem or whatever." Like, it's just—no, they're walking around. And then he'd have these interruptions. And people would—like the blind man's calling to him and saying, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. And he's on his way from Jericho to Jerusalem." And yet he pauses in that moment. And that blind man gets his full attention just for a bit. But he's fully present right there in that moment. And then he goes on to what else he's been doing. And I just think—and at the end of Jesus' life, he said to the Father, "I finished the work that you gave me to do." There were still lots of blind people.

There were still lots of people that didn't believe that he was the Messiah. But somehow he had the confidence that, "I finished the work that you gave me to do." And being able to discern what is it that God wants me to do. Because not every opportunity is a call.

There are things that need to be done, but someone else needs to do it. And to recognize I could do it, but being discerning, is this something that God wants me to do? And that's a challenge. Because today we have so many opportunities, and there's so many things that need to be done.

But just sensing that these are the things that I'm responsible—these are the responsibilities I've accepted. And when I'm in that moment to be fully present there and engage in that, let the other things go for now and just be fully present right here in this moment.

So let's jump into a bit more on the definitions then of overload and burnout. Could you describe maybe a bit of the difference between those two? How do we see this in ourselves if we know, "Oh, okay, I'm getting close here to overloading myself or to burning out"?

Yeah, give us some specifics there. Well, having too many commitments and having said yes to too many things and recognizing I'm not doing well with some of my commitments. I'm not really following through. And I forget things or I disappoint people.

I tend to be an optimistic person. So when somebody says to me, "Could you do this?" I'm like, "Oh, yeah, sure. I'll do that." And then I have so many other things going, I forget about it. And they're expecting me to do that.

And then two weeks later, a month later, I find out that, yeah, I forgot that. And when those things start to happen, like there was a time where I realized that I was doing that too much. And I had to start saying, "I need to stop saying yes. I can't do everything that I think I can. And I need to be—and I need to start keeping track of the commitments I have and things that I told people I'll do that. I need to write those down because otherwise I'm going to forget them. And I'm going to disappoint people. And then I'm going to be frustrated myself because I have these things that I committed to do."

And so part of it is just recognizing the commitments I have and knowing when I have enough. Because when I say yes to something, I'm saying no to something else. And so recognizing that here's an opportunity. But if I say yes, I'll do that. That means where is that going to come in my whole pie graph of my responsibilities? Do I have room for another slice? And if I put another slice in there, it has to come from one of the existing slices. So where is it going to come from? And what am I going to do less of if I'm going to be able to do this? And what often happens is we respond to the urgent things rather than the important things.

And then the things that are really important are the one—that's where the time for the urgent comes from. So then it's our time with God. It's our time with our family. It's sleep. And then we get our relationships suffer. We're not drawing strength from Christ. And we're lacking sleep. And then things just start to look pretty bleak and pretty dark because our relationships aren't healthy. We're tired.

And I don't know about you, but for me, I need about eight hours of sleep to be a functional person. And if I start operating on about six hours of sleep, I lose my sense of humor. And I'm not a very nice person to be around. And so I just need sleep.

And we have to recognize that. But if I make too many commitments and I start cutting out sleep or I start cutting out my relationship with God, then I run out of energy. And then everything starts to suffer. And I can't do anything well.

So let's say we're in this situation. And too much pressure. Schedule's too full. We've overcommitted. We've said yes too many times. What are some initial steps in dealing with burnout and overload? Well, the first thing is to recognize where I am and that I'm in trouble.

And where I'm at is not sustainable. I'm not going to be able to keep doing this. Something has to change. And what's going to change? And then to begin to do some cleanup and look at, "Okay, there are commitments I made that I'm not going to be able to fulfill." And so looking at, can some of those be passed off to other people? Is there delegation I can do? Are there people that I can ask to pick up some of these responsibilities? Are there people that could help? Are there some things? And just in an orderly way, getting out of some of the commitments that I've made and being able to say to people, "I said I would do this.

I have a commitment to do this. But in all reality, I won't be able to do it long term. And I need something has to change." And so we begin to take steps to either get help or step out of some responsibilities. Or how can I develop myself so that I can do these things? What are things that I—like what resources do I need? What would help me to be able to make this sustainable? How can I do that? Because it's kind of like if you're in financial trouble, if you're spending more money than what you're earning, you have two options. You can cut your spending or you can increase your income. And the same is true with meeting our commitments.

We can either increase our income, our resources, what's coming into our lives so we have more to give, or we can cut out our commitments. And one of the things that I found was that the more responsibility I had in leadership, the more I needed time with God. So as I got more responsibility in leadership, I needed to have a regular extended time of prayer, like a day of prayer, so that I was spending like eight hours with God and just kind of worship and rest and extended going through my prayer list and all of—and one of the things that I would do would be to create a worry list. And you think, "Well, I don't need a worry list."

But the problem is that there's things that—okay, so I'm driving somewhere. I'm taking a shower. And then I think about, "Oh, I need to do this. I need to do that." And all these things. But I can't do anything about it right then because I might not even be able to make a note of it because I'm driving. I'm showering.

But it's there. And it's just taking energy. And so when I would create a worry list, I'd get down all the things that I worry about, all the things that I think about. And then I'd go through the worry list. And I'd think, "Okay, what do I need to—is there something I need to do? Is there something I can do? Is there something I should do about this?" And if it is, then I'd put that on a to-do list. If it was something that I can't do anything about, it would go on a prayer list. And so then I'd come out of that with, "Here's my to-do list. Here's my prayer list."

And the other thing I would do is I'd put my schedule before the Lord and say, "What thoughts do you have on the next month of my life? And are there things that need to be put on my schedule? Are there things that should be taken off?" And that really helped me just to get grounded and to get a sense of direction for—and so maybe it's getting more resources and being more intentional and finding ways of getting more direction from God on what He thinks about my schedule and my commitments. And some of that can help us then to be able to function and make it more sustainable.

And one of the things you mentioned there or hinted at that resonates with me is this sense of, "I created this situation." So if I have a lot of overload in my life, acknowledging or taking ownership of that and saying, "I mean, I did say yes to all these things. And this is kind of my fault." It feels like that's a pretty important first step. Because until you acknowledge that, I'm guessing it'd be easy to just say, "Well, this is everybody else's fault. Who's giving me all this stuff to do? And I can't keep up." Is that a reasonable assessment there? It is. Yeah. And recognizing that, yeah, I'm responsible for this. And I accepted those responsibilities.

And especially in an organization, people tend to push—they want to push things up because they don't want to be responsible for the decisions. So they'll tend to get—they can get you to sign off on it. Then it's like, "Well, Reagan said this is what we should do." And to resist that pressure and to say, "Well, you decide." I don't think it matters that much. You make a decision. And so then you don't have to—you can keep things—you can push things down to where decisions are made at as low a level as possible.

That can really help to take the pressure off of someone in leadership. So if we're in this situation, what's the recovery looking like? You've already mentioned a couple of things like growing to be able to—I'm actually trying to remember the terminology you used, but basically expanding the capacity. That's an option. Or this sense of pruning, cutting things back. Give us some more things on either of those or other points on recovery, getting out of this slump of, say, burnout or overload. Well, it's knowing your limits and knowing what you can do and what you can't do. And setting healthy boundaries, being able to say, "No, I'm not going—this is how many trips I'm going to do in a year, in a month," and putting limits on setting some boundaries on commitments that we make.

And I'm not going to take an assignment that takes a week of my time because I just don't have that week to give. And so having some boundaries. And then accountability for our schedules and having other people that know what we're committing to. And maybe having, especially if we're struggling, to have some people that we say, "I'm not going to accept any new commitments unless that person or these people agree that I can do that." Because people that are overloaded, people that are—often people that are overloaded or experience burnout, they tend to be repeat offenders. So you can clean up. And then you just kind of slide back in three years later, five years later, you're back to the same scenario where you're just overcommitted again.

And so having somebody to help to keep that from happening where—and it can be frustrating and relieving to have somebody else sign off on your commitments. Because first of all, when somebody brings a request, you can say, "Well, I have to talk to my spouse. I have to talk to my board. I have to talk to our church leadership team," or whatever. And that takes the pressure off of the moment, making the decision in the moment. Because you can put it off. And maybe after you think about it for a week, it doesn't seem as desirable or as urgent as it did in the moment. And also if the people you have helping you make decisions say, "No," you can go back and say, "Well, no, my team doesn't think I should do that," or whatever.

So it takes the personal part out of it. It can also be frustrating because there are things you really want to do that people think, "No, you shouldn't do that." And you feel restricted because you really would like to do that. But other people recognize, "No, you can't."

And there's also—someone told me one time, there's the principle of the distant elephant. So when an elephant is way across the savanna, it doesn't look very big or very intimidating. But when an elephant gets within a car's length of you, the ground is shaking. And it looks really dangerous. And we can make a commitment to something that's two years down the road and say, "Oh, yeah, I'll do that. And yeah, two years, I can do that," or even next year. But then when it's like next week, all of a sudden, it's like, "Why did I say I would do that? I'm not—I don't have time to do that. I'm not ready." And it becomes really stressful.

And so just sometimes pausing and thinking, "How am I going to feel about this the week before I'm supposed to do it?" can be really helpful. Yeah. Think of it as that elephant's not two years down the road, so to speak. It's pretend it's right away. Yeah. That's really good.

I wrote that down. That's a good one. Distant elephant. Yeah. But having people around us that know us well, understand our schedules, and can be very honest with us and say, "I don't think you should take all this on," or, "Hey, your schedule's looking a little full." Wow, that seems like some real wisdom there. But also, I'm guessing that's going to be really hard for a lot of people to have that level of accountability. Yeah.

And some of that is just a result of being optimistic. And an optimistic person can easily just overcommit to thinking, "Well, I can do sure." And they think—or we think, as optimistic people, we think we can do a lot more than we actually can, or we hope we can. And then we get overcommitted. And just recognizing that, just recognizing that about myself and saying, "I am an optimistic person. I think I can do more than I can." And that's true.

And recognizing that that's true can help me to say, "Yeah, in my mind, I think I can. But actually, I probably shouldn't. Or actually, maybe I can't. And I'm going to disappoint others and actually be disappointed myself." So one of the things you talk about is this Elijah model in part of this process of recovery. Tell us what that is.

Well, you think about Elijah. He had this great victory. And I think that Elijah really thought that, "Okay, the prophets of Baal are all gone. And he has this thing with Ahab. The people decided to follow God. So he's going to be like a counselor to the king. And everything's going to be great." And then the opposite happens. And his life is threatened. And he had this great thing that he did that took a lot of energy and was a very intense experience. And then he runs away. And he winds up sleeping under a tree and wishing he could die. And God sent an angel. And at that point, God didn't ask him, "What are you doing here?"

The angel was like, "Here. The journey's too great for you. Here's something to eat, sleep." Comes back. And then he goes on. And he goes way down in the southern part of Sinai and goes in a cave. And there is an isolation. And sometimes we just need to—we need that withdrawal. And we need to just step back from everything. We just need to sleep and eat and rest. And I find, especially after really intense experiences, and I find, if I do an international trip and I'm in a place where things are really in chaos and it's just really—it's maybe dangerous, but it's just people are in abject poverty. And there's just—I mean, it's just—you can't hardly comprehend what life is like for those people.

And you feel drawn to what's happening there. And then I come home. How do I even process that? And I just need time to think and time to rest and sleep and kind of allow myself to think over what I've experienced and process that.

And so that period of time is important before I engage with my normal life and the issues that I face every day in my normal routine. But that period of resting and reflection is healthy and getting ready. Now I'm ready to go. And I can engage with the things that I normally face when I'm at home. But then God came to Elijah in the cave. And kind of his question then to Elijah is, "What are you doing here?" There's a time to come out of that. And if we stay there, if we just say, "Okay, I'm done. I'm withdrawing." And God doesn't want us to stay there. And he calls Elijah out. And he's saying, "Well, I'm going to give you Elisha as a helper.

And here's some things you should do. And you're not alone. There's still 7,000 people that haven't bowed the knee to Baal. And so no, you're not the only one. What you're thinking isn't really quite right." And God calls us out, "Get reengaged.

Get going." But just that sequence of sleeping and eating and retreating and talking about what the reality is and then getting some help and going on. There's that—it seems to me that taking that recovery phase, because you call it a recovery period, is going to be really hard if our lives are so busy and the schedule's just too full. You won't even have a block in the schedule to take that time. But then there's the, like you're saying, the other side where Elijah does have to eventually leave that cave and go back in. So it's like you have this time of recovery and then a time of returning to the task. Is that a proper way of thinking about it?

Yeah. And I think what happens is, so if I'm on a trip and people are needing things from me, I can say, "Well, I'm getting home Friday evening. Friday night or Saturday morning, I'll take care of that. I'll do that."

Well, then I get home. And now I have this list of things that I promised people I would do that evening or the next morning. And I don't feel like it. I need a—so I can say, "Well, I'm getting home Friday night. Monday morning, I'll do that." People can wait two days.

Most things aren't going to be—I mean, if they can wait till Friday, they can wait till Monday, probably. And so just creating that space, being intentional about creating a day or two where I can go through the whole thing of recovery and getting myself ready to, "Okay, now I'm ready to come out of the cave and engage with life again."

So with that recovery process and getting ourselves back on our feet, as it were, I think you have a list of practical things, some keys that we can utilize and implement into our lives. Do you want to tell us what those are?

Yeah. First of all, we need sleep. And like we talked about already, we need to know how much sleep we need to be functional and for life to be sustainable. So we do need sleep. And we can't cut out too much sleep. Secondly, we need Sabbath rest.

We can't go seven days a week for—you just can't be on duties 24/7. It just doesn't work. And so we need those days of rest. I knew a contractor that he was an excavator. And one time, we had ordered a load of gravel. And he brought a load of gravel on Sunday morning. And I was like—I said to him the next week, I said, "I wasn't expecting you to bring that gravel on Sunday. What about your weekend and your day of rest?" He said, "Oh, in the summertime, I don't." He said, "It's one day in seven. But I save them up. I work seven days a week over summer. And then I take a week off after it starts snowing.

And then those are my Sabbaths." But it doesn't work that way. That's not sustainable. It really is—we need regular, consistent, "This is a day when I'm off duty. And I really am at rest." And that can be hard for a person who is working and then as a church leader. And so Sunday is a day when you're engaging with people at church. And you're speaking. Or you have responsibilities.

So to find where is that day of rest and where is the day that I can really disconnect from my responsibilities and have that time of rest. And so that's important. And then we need friends. We need people that we just enjoy being with socially. And there's no work responsibilities. They're not depending on us for anything. It's just we enjoy being with them. And it's really just a social relationship and people that are with us. And then we need inward renewal. We need to—like my days of prayer that I had, a time when I could just really get in touch with what's really going on in my heart and get with God and just be renewed spiritually.

I read an account of a person that was experiencing burnout. And they went to their mentor and said, "I got nothing. I'm dry. I'm empty. And the well's dry. I'm not getting anything out of the well." And their mentor told them, "No, the problem isn't the well's dry. The problem is your pipe's too short. And you need to be digging deeper. Where you're at in life now, what met your needs five years ago isn't enough now. You need to go deeper now because you have more responsibility. You're at a different stage of life. And you need to draw from some deeper resources." And so having that inward renewal where we're really tapping into what we need for the responsibilities and the place that we are in life.

And then I think to be aware of celebrity. There are people that think we're really great. And they kind of put us up on a pedestal. And we need to resist putting ourselves up there and feeling like we really are somebody special because we're not as great as our fans think we are.

But neither are we as bad as our critics think we are. And the problem is if we believe the praise of our fans, then we also have to believe the criticism of our critics. And then we go from in wild ups and downs because somebody compliments us. And we're like, "Oh, yeah." And then somebody criticizes us. And we're like, "Oh, I'm a failure." And we go from 0 to 100 and then back down to 0. And the truth is actually somewhere in between. We don't do everything wrong. But we don't do everything right either. And that celebrity status is something that I think we just need to recognize. That's not really accurate. That's not really true.

And so, yeah, maybe the way I live my life, I've met a lot of people. But that doesn't make me a special person. I just met a lot of people. And so it's like there was a man that was the—he was the president of Moody Bible Institute. And he said that one time his daughter asked him, "Dad, are we famous?" And he said, "No, we're not famous." She said, "Well, we would be if more people knew us."

So fame is just a matter of a lot of people know us. It doesn't say anything about our character. Or it doesn't make us a special person. And then we need to remember that what we're doing, the sacrifices we're making, and the energy we're expending, it's worth it. It makes a difference. If it makes a difference for eternity, it's worth what we're doing. And so now it may seem like it's taking a lot of energy. But someday we're going to be grateful for the way we spent our lives and the things that we invested in. And so part of it is about perspective and having one eye on eternity and saying, "Someday I'm going to be glad that this was done."

And I don't know that there's any way to avoid it. But I would hate to get into that great multitude before the throne from every tribe and language and nation and say, "Well, if I knew it was like this, I would have done things differently. I would have lived my life differently." And probably we'll all have some of, "Well, we didn't know it was like this." But still, keeping one eye on eternity and saying, "It's worth the effort.

It does make a difference." And I want to live my life in such a way that when my life is over, there are people who will be in that multitude before the throne. And there are people whose lives are better because of the way I chose to live my life. So it will be worth it. So when we look at those keys, we've talked about the definition of these things, how we get to these points of burnout and overload, and then some of the practical ways of recovery, these several practical keys you've just given us. Let's back it out a bit and say if we see someone else who's dealing with burnout or overload or, yeah, is just overwhelmed, how can we help them?

What are ways that we can pass this on to someone else? Well, we look for the signs of people that we may have responsibility for, people that report to us in an organization or people in our church that have too many commitments, that are complaining about being exhausted, that maybe aren't accomplishing their responsibilities, that too many things are falling through the cracks. And they're not really getting the things done that they're committed to doing. And then we just help people to recognize where they're at. And before they get to the point where they become unable to function, we help them to pass off some responsibilities, find people who can help them, and help them to deal with the situation that they find themselves in.

And we can also be involved in their level of commitments and guard them from people asking them to do things. And if you're talking about who's going to do things and there's a new responsibility, somebody needs to do something, and you know that a person is close to overload, and people suggest that, "Well, maybe we should ask them." You can say, "No, let's not ask them. I think they have enough already." And so we can redirect requests so that they're not faced with a request to do things. And we can help to so we can shield them from those requests. And sometimes we can be the person who says no for them. And we can be that person that they use as the accountability person to process their requests and help them to discern if it's something they really should do or not.

So you've given us a lot to think about here. And as we bring this episode to a close, what's one thing you'd like to leave with our audience? Well, I think as I spent time in leadership in a nonprofit organization, I think one of the things that we did too much in the past is we would bring people in for a two-year term of service. And we would kind of burn them out, use them up, send them back. We'd bring in another person. We'd use them up and send them back. And I really think that in charitable organizations, I think we're doing better. But I think we need to be thinking more about, "If this person comes and gives two years of their life in our organization, how can we help them to leave a better person and be strengthened and go out ready to serve in some other capacity or in some other place rather than having them go back just kind of burned out and exhausted?"

And so making the experience one of strengthening, of building up, and equipping for future service. Even if a person is only going to be with us for two years, how can we nurture them and help them to be the person that God wants them to be going forward? And I just think that practice of bringing people in, burning them out, and sending them home, I think we need to rethink that and do it differently.

And then for ourselves, I think just really being intentional about having a sustainable lifestyle and thinking about our commitments and being careful that we're not overcommitted, being honest with ourselves about what we can do and what we can't do, and having God help us to discern what calls are yeah, what opportunities are really a call from Him for things that we should do. And one of my basic premises in life is that our default answer to God's call is, "Yes, we're going to get to do some pretty amazing things."

But on the other side of that is I can't say yes to everything that comes to me is not a call from God. And so I can't say yes to everything. But God does use people who are willing and who say yes.

That goes back to some of the early things you were saying in the episode where if you've maxed the schedule out completely and there's no room and you filled it with all these other things, and then God comes and gives a call to you, maybe you miss it because you're too busy. You don't even see it. Right. Yeah. And we also have to realize that when I say yes to one thing, I'm saying no to something else. So it goes back to that whole pie graph of where's that slice going to come from. And so I'm saying no to something and is what I'm saying yes to really what God wants me to do rather than what I'm going to say no to.

I think that's an excellent point to end on, just really evaluating everybody that's listening to this. What are we saying yes to? What are the things we're saying no to? And when we say yes to something, we say no to something else. That's a really powerful point. Well, thank you for coming on and sharing today.

Thanks for listening to this episode with Merle Burkholder. If you'd like to learn more about the topic of burnout and overload, we did several episodes with Joel Yoder a number of years ago. And you can find those in the description down below. As always, you can find all our content on our website at anabaptistperspectives.org. And you can also sign up for our email newsletter there. Thanks again for listening. And we'll catch you in the next episode.