Preacher sisters, how are your schedules looking these days? Are they full to the brim or are they fluid, with ease and chunks of white space? Some of us have paper calendars and some are digital—some of us are plan-to-the-minute schedulers and some of us go with the flow. Some days are chock full and some days have ease. Whatever kind of schedule you have, do you schedule time for yourself in there or is your personal time, time that gets penciled in, which may or may not get swallowed up by something else?
Burnout is a real thing that can disable you from doing the things you love as well as the things you don't love so much but are necessary things that you do. In the time and culture we live in, we are cheered on if we work harder, longer, and are more productive than others. It seems to be a badge of honour if we are night owls and early risers, achieving and accomplishing more than others think is humanly possible.
Stop for a moment and consider yourself asking and honestly answering the following list of questions.
- Why do you do the things you do?
- Are you judging your worth on how much you accomplish?
- Do you consider your worth to be linked to how many people you meet with, how many meetings you schedule or attend—either on zoom or in person, how many services you preach, how many Bible studies you lead, how many volunteer positions you hold…I could go on and on.
You Are Enough!
If this is where your value comes from, STOP!!! Stop right now and go look at yourself in a mirror, if possible and say, “I am enough!” If the mirror isn’t possible, say it anyway—I AM ENOUGH!
Say it again—say it louder and say it until you mean it.
So, how much rest is adequate? Science says: 42%...That’s the percentage of time your body and brain need you to spend resting. It’s about ten hours out of every twenty-four. It doesn’t have to be every day; it can average out over a week or month or more. But yeah. That much. ‘That’s ridiculous! I don’t have that kind of time!’ you might protest—and we remind you that we predicted you might feel that way, back at the start of the chapter. We’re not saying you should take 42 percent of your time to rest; we’re saying if you don’t take the 42 percent, the 42 percent will take you. It will grab you by the face, shove you to the ground, put its foot on your chest, and declare itself the victor.*
Well, if you feel a bit overwhelmed, that’s okay because the rate of burnout and close to burnout for clergy is high in this day and age. Woman pastor, will you stop and take a deep breath—breathe in the life giving power of the Holy Spirit and breathe out the toxicity you are faced with:
your own expectations, others expectations, the pivoting and shifting of the ministry you have been called to that have been because of the pandemic and so many other things that are outside of your control.
What You Can Do
Take a few moments and just allow your breathing to become normal—breathing out the old: the pain, the hurts, the frustrations, and breathing in the healing of the One who has called you and knows you and your limitations. You, dear one, are not God and He has not asked you to be. Let go. Think of this as a small percentage of that 42 percent of rest you need.
If I could venture a guess, you may have been striving for far too long: maybe to make a name for yourself, or to prove you are worthy to walk in the calling you have been called to, or to prove that you’ve earned and deserve the credentials you have, or to show that you have worked tirelessly and maybe you’ve felt (either justly or unjustly) that you’ve had to work harder than any of your male counterparts.
Take a moment and let this Scripture breathe fresh life into your soul. Psalm 46:10 says - “Cease striving and know that I am God.” (NASB)
We are not to be in an uphill battle in this life of called ministry. Women clergy, women leaders, women teachers, stop it. You have been called, period! So hold your head high and walk in your calling, but do not throw everything else out: your rest, your mental health, your physical health, your husband, your children, your family, or anything else to chase hard after something that you haven’t been called to chase after.
Let’s journey to the Gospel of Mark together and see what God has to say (or not say) about what we do -
At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased,” (1:9-11 NIV).
There are a lot of things we can learn from this passage, but as I’ve been reading and studying Mark this time, a whole new message revealed itself. I began to consider where this is in the chronology of Jesus’ ministry and what the significance of it is.
What had Jesus done up to this point? Gone to forty zoom meetings in the past month, taken a plane across the ocean to speak at a mega-conference to 25,000 people, had He preached and converted 1,000 people, did He feed 5000 on a hillside and heal anyone? NO!! Not one of the above: Jesus had not done any of this.
Jesus was His Father’s—plain and simple. What we see is that He surrendered to the will and way of the Father and submitted to baptism. Jesus made the decision to follow the Father and be obedient to Him. That’s it. In Jesus’s obedience and submission, God said He was well pleased with Him even before He did any of the work that had been assigned to Him.
Rest In Who You Are
How many of us with overflowing schedules are wearing ourselves out thinking that our far too long to-do list is what we need to do to gain approval, or we may be thinking—”This is just what pastors do,” or even that we will be in better standing with the Father if we work harder and keep moving ever forward without rest or time to restore?
Trust me, I’m not wagging my finger, I’ve found myself guilty of these things. As a recovering perfectionist and having been brought up in a home where performance mattered, I have found myself caught in the trap of thinking I had to earn God’s love. As a woman pastor, I have felt (and still do at times) the need to prove myself time and again to be even considered to be “good enough”.
When we search Scripture, we see something completely different though—the above Scripture gives us a beautiful picture of the Father’s love and acceptance of Jesus BEFORE He did anything. He hadn’t yet chosen one of His disciples, He hadn’t yet performed any miracles or even preached His first message. Jesus was. That’s it.
Imagine it: being accepted, loved, and good enough without doing anything. Maybe this sounds foreign to you, but do you realize that this is how the Father sees and accepts us—because of what Jesus has done we are His: beloved, accepted, and joint heirs with Jesus. We cannot earn more love or acceptance by anything we do or don’t do.
Take a few moments and honestly answer these questions -
- Are you operating on the assumption that you must perform well to be accepted?
- Do you think that because you are a woman pastor or woman leader that you must perform at a higher level than any of the men around you just to be on par with them?
Schedule Time for You
Stop for a moment and consider your schedule—if you have a planner, grab it and look over the past month. Did you allow time for yourself or was it consistently back to back meetings and trading in your personal time to meet someone else’s “urgent” need? We must learn to set firm boundaries around our time to be the most effective for Kingdom work.
When you consider the 42% rule of rest, how are you really doing? Are you taking time daily to sleep, have fun, connect with life-giving people, and build those relationships by having conversations that reduce rather than increase your stress levels? Are you taking time for physical exercise that you enjoy and gives you energy? All of these things are considered rest. You don’t have to lay down and sleep to be effectively resting.
Now, take some time to look at your schedule for the next two months: do you have fun things, life-giving times and days scheduled in? If not, do it. Clear some things away and make space so you can. Mark them in pen rather than pencil and do not give them up. If you have a true emergency come up, be sure to reschedule your time so you are not jipping yourself and creating a deficit of rest.
If you know that you are in deficit already, begin now to dig yourself out of it. Jesus did not come so we could work ourselves into a frenzy and fall into bed exhausted and worn out, never to recover, He came “that [we] may have life, and have it to the full,” (John 10:10 NIV).
*Emily Nagoski, PhD & Amelia Nagoski Peterson, DMA, Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle (New York: Ballantine Books, 2020) p. 168
