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Say No To Burnout
by Elizabeth Ruth Skoglund
I n my undergraduate years I simultaneously worked toward a university degree along with a year's worth of study at a theological seminary. I held part-time jobs, taught Sunday school, dated my steady boyfriend several times a week and ran the local chapter of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. I went to church every time the doors opened and drove elderly ladies there on Sunday mornings. I also managed to graduate a semester early. Although I would not have subscribed to Edna St. Vincent Millay's overall philosophy of life, one stanza of poetry she wrote suited me well and somehow urged me on:
"My candle burns at both ends,
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes,
And oh, my friends,
It gives a lovely light!"1
With all my youthful idealism, however, I think I honestly did feel that my candle would last the night. After all, if I was burning out, wasn't I burning out for God?
Gradually my body began to deny my assumption that I could somehow walk on water. I started to experience profound fatigue, mixed at times with feelings of anxiety or gloom. It was more than just your everyday variety of tiredness. It became a form of pain. The magical cure of a single night's sleep stopped working.
In my panic that this feeling would never go away, I just pushed harder, trying by some illogical means to prove that I was still okay. Since I felt that God was calling me to perform all these activities, I felt my failure to keep up must indicate weakness on my part, or at least a lack of faith in appropriating God's strength. I was experiencing what health care workers now call burnout—a physical and emotional exhaustion.
What Is Burnout?
Burnout is the current buzzword that simply reiterates a condition that has always been a problem for those who have too much to do and too little time in which to do it.
At times the word burnout has become so overused that its meaning has become blurred. It has come to mean everything from overwork to laziness and boredom. I have had people consult me after two days on a job complaining of burnout. Now, it is possible to feel that you have the wrong job after two days of work, but it is not possible to be truly burned out!
 My candle burns at both ends,
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes,
And oh, my friends,
It gives a lovely light!
Chronic high-wire living, constantly pushing yourself to the limit, and trying to do it all, are more apt descriptions to me of what is commonly called burnout. Whatever we call it, however, none of us is equipped to cope with perpetually living in the fast lane. None of us can do it all. We must make tough decisions. We must choose priorities.
Do Many Great People Experience Burnout?
Certainly I had good company in my commitment to burn out for God. I met people like Gladys Aylward, who because of her tiny stature was labeled the small woman, and who, when she was rejected by all the existing mission boards, took her own limited savings and traveled to China the long and cheap way -the Trans Siberian Rail-road. At great personal cost, she then did a remarkable work in saving children under war conditions in north China. Her utter abandonment to God was a formative factor in my life. I read, too, biographies of men and women who served God with Herculean strength, and I drew solace from their dedication.
One of those I read about was senate chaplain and noted preacher, Peter Marshall. He pushed himself night and day, suffered a major heart attack ,and then resumed the same pace until a second heart attack killed him before he was fifty. Yet no one would dispute the impact of his life's work. He accomplished more before he was fifty than most people achieve in a much longer lifetime.
The same is true for J. B. Phillips. In The Wounded Healer, a book about the late Bible translator, we read a poignant account of how he burned out for God. The symptoms of burnout permeate a letter he wrote: "I can with difficulty endure the days, but I frankly dread the nights. The second part of almost every night of my life is shot through with such mental pain, fear and horror that I frequently have to wake myself up in order to restore some sort of balance."
The cause of his burnout is as clear as the burnout itself and is explained in The Wounded Healer:
When J. B. Phillips first went to Swanage, he accepted a programme for himself which measured up to his fantasy of a terrific person. At first every invitation was accepted as a challenge, as a call from the Lord. But when invitations reached three hundred a year, that theory became ridiculous. Even under control, his was a massive programme of writing, speaking, conferences, broadcasts, visits to cities and towns in America and throughout Great Britain. From 1955 to 1961 he maintained this killing programme and at last, when he was fifty-five, he cracked. As one doctor put it, he was scooped out. He felt all his creative powers slipping away.
Even Dr. Phillips himself recognized the symptoms of burnout. In a letter he wrote: "Most of my life I have worked hard, possibly too hard, so that I am now quite unable to relax." And as a solution: "I have an invincible feeling that if I could rest even for a few days, nature would very quickly restore me to my normal health and spirits."
 Continued on Page Two
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