Growing Weary in Well Doing: Acknowledging and Recovering From Burnout and Compassion Fatigue

Realistically, you can grow tired of doing well. You can get sick of showing up when no one else appears to be willing to do so and you can feel stopped up from all of the complaints that you hold in. Your own silence can become to loud and you can feel lonely because of a lack of available avenues to authentically express your emotions about everything that appears to be going well for you in the eye sight of others.

It’s easy to feel alone in a wilderness that is filled with flowers because you have not carved out the space that you need to enjoy them. I understand this place. I am in it with you, and I want to encourage you as I encourage myself.

“So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up”.

(Galatians 6:9 NLT).

It is important for me to acknowledge the feeling of desiring to isolate myself because of weariness, compassion fatigue, and burnout as a Christian because it’s so easy to feel obligated to ignore those emotions for the sake of the healing of others or to make sure that things get done.

My prayer is that you will extend the same grace to yourself that you extend to others and patch up the holes in your own cup so that you will have an overflow to pour into the cup of others when it’s time to do so.

It’s amazing to be a helper and to be available, but it’s also okay to allow others to “man the ship” while you take care of you. It’s okay to not be available and to repair your emotions from the day, week, month or year for that matter. It’s okay to pray for yourself and to be completely honest with the Lord about how you feel;He already knows anyway.

You must know that you are not alone and that you were not created to hold the world on your shoulders. Give those things, those people, those situations, worries, fears, thoughts, and desires to the Lord because He cares for you. Yes you! With all the mess that you may consider yourself to be, you are loved by the One who specializes in making all things new.

“The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me: thy mercy, O Lord, endureth for ever: forsake not the works of thine own hands”.

(Psalm 138:8 KJV)

Lord in this moment, I position myself under the waterfall of your love and I ask that you flow over me. God drench my head with the reassurance of your presence. Open my eyes and give me the grace to see as you see. Fill my nostrils to revive me of any tiredness and fill my mouth with your words. Cover my body, especially my heart, and wash away all the weights that I should have given to you long ago. Cover my feet Lord. Make them new and give me the strength to continue to stand in you.

Lord, I receive the refreshing that you have for me today, and I leave yesterday at your feet. In Jesus name, Amen.

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Janina B.

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