I work for an incredible organization. And this week I had
the privilege to travel
to the field to visit the coworkers and farmers with whom we partner.
On trips like these, the words I crank out from 9 to 5
take on life. Take on faces with wrinkles and smiling grandpa eyes. Take on braids
and crooked smiles and school uniforms.
On Monday morning I joined with hipsters and surfers and
college students from San Diego to plant trees with mothers and fathers,
farmers and pastors and mayors from a tiny, rural town called Zumbador in the
Dominican Republic. In case you missed my thoughts on planting trees at Life Before the Bucket or in Relevant Magazine, planting trees with the rural poor
is something very close to my heart.
Together, we planted orange trees in what will soon be a
thriving agroforestry plot. As Leoncio, a farmer I have written stories about
from my desk in San Diego, placed a small seedling, the very symbol of new
life, cool and damp in the palm of my own hand, the tears sprang hot on my
face. A holy moment of holy
grace.
***
There was a time when I couldn’t read or listen to stories
of Plant With Purpose’s work without crying. Literally. From videos to
newsletter articles to hearing the Executive Director share his stories from
the field, I was a regular waterworks.
The tears were triggered by something beyond me, or perhaps
within me, an unconscious reflex. A sign of God at work.
Before I started praying again after I swore off the church
and God. Before I even knew how my writing skills and experiences with both
rural and urban poverty—and the connection between the two—would line up with
the exact needs and role I would later take on at Plant With Purpose. Before
any of that, I knew that God was moving in those tears, in the passion behind
the tears. I knew that in this passion, this stirring, this calling,
was where I would find God. Where I would be used beyond my wildest dreams.
Where I would be given the gift, the privilege, of sharing the stories of hope
and transformation and restoration that are occurring in rural areas around the
world as a result of Plant With Purpose’s work.
Over the last year, the tears have been plentiful. But these
tears haven't been the tears of a passion so strong my eyes could not stay dry.
Instead they were tears of pain, of grief, of defeat.
Sometime in the last year, I hit
burnout pretty hard. Really hard.
If you’ve never experienced
burnout, I am grateful for you. It is one of the most harrowing trials I’ve
ever gone through as a writer, as an employee, as a person.
An article by Psychology Today describes burnout as “a cunning thief that robs the world of its best and its brightest by feeding on their energy, enthusiasm, and passion, transforming these positive qualities into exhaustion, frustration, and disillusionment.”
I don’t claim to be one of the best or brightest, but I know I once had an energy, enthusiasm, and passion for my job that I could not contain. And I know that after three years of pouring myself into my work, I woke up to exhaustion, frustration, and disillusionment. It seemed overnight the job I once loved, the job I literally lived and slept and breathed, the job that gave me life—that was my life--, became a burden, suddenly unmanageable and simply un-doable.
I tried to push through. I took
time off. I changed my job description. I set better work-life boundaries. I
changed my job description again. I started this blog. I prayed and prayed and
prayed.
I haven’t shared this struggle on this
blog because I’ve been embarrassed. I’ve feared the voices that would tell me
to just try harder. To just suck it up. To just get over it already.
But even without writing it, those
voices were screaming in my head. Telling me it’s a tough economy and I have a
job that helps people and has flexible hours and occasionally sends me to
really cool places around the world and I must try harder to make it work.
The voices told me I was entitled
and greedy for wanting more. For
wanting the passion to be reignited. For wanting rest and revival.
If you follow this blog, perhaps
you can recall my posts on trusting God through the darkness and the storm and
the bad days and all of those metaphors of persevering through
difficult seasons in our lives. My darkness, my storm, my bad days have been burnout.
And through it all I have been
praying, seeking answers, seeking comfort, seeking joy. And God has been
silent, mostly.
But He has been faithful. In the
darkness He has been moving. Passing by. Making a way.
Ann Voskamp in One Thousand Gifts
says, “When we look back, we see God’s back. Wasn’t that too His way with
Moses?
“When my glory passes by, I will
put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed
by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back” (Exodus 33:22-23
NIV).”
She asks, “Is that it? When it
gets dark, it’s only because God has tucked me in a cleft of the rock and
covered me, protected, with His hand? In the pitch, I feel like I am falling,
sense the bridge giving way, God long absent. In the dark, the bridge and my world shakes, cracking dreams. But
maybe this is true reality: It is in the dark that God is passing by. The
bridge and our lives shake not because God has abandoned, but the exact
opposite: God is passing by. God is in the tremors.”
This last year I have felt too
many tremors to count. Spilled too many tears to tally. Clutched too tightly to
the shards of cracking dreams.
But He has been faithful. He has
been moving, protecting, passing by.
He has been calling me out of the job I love to call me in
to something new. And I have waivered, pouted, thrashed, and tried to divine
the answer from the rod of my own casting, instead of trusting His divine
wisdom.
I have failed and flailed and I cannot do it anymore. I am surrendering to His calling out. In
the end of June I will be leaving my job at Plant With Purpose.
Tomorrow I will share where I will be going and what I
believe God is calling me into. Tomorrow I will share how God has made a way
for joy to be restored. I will write of His faithfulness.
But today I sit in joy and pain, together. Relief and
sadness, together.
Today I mourn that I am leaving. I mourn the limits of my
brain and body and my own efforts. I mourn the burnout. I mourn that this last
week was my last trip to the field as a Plant With Purpose employee.
As yet more tears (I didn’t think I had more to shed) slide
down my cheeks, I mourn. I mourn and give thanks together. Give thanks for the
time I’ve had, the role I’ve had. Give thanks for the smiling grandpa eyes and
the girls with braids and crooked smiles and school uniforms.
I give thanks even in the mourning because I trust the One
who will turn my mourning into dancing.
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Me, that is.
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Before Plant With Purpose wiggled its way into my heart, I wanted
to live abroad. I dreamed of Antigua’s cobblestone streets, flowering woven
shirts, bright skirts, distant volcanoes, and a day when I would dream in Spanish. I hoped to call Antigua home. 
I tried to push through. I took
time off. I changed my job description. I set better work-life boundaries. I
changed my job description again. I started this blog. I prayed and prayed and
prayed. 
