Yesterday I started awake with a gasp, <\/strong><\/em>pain searing through my calf, knee, and up my thigh.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0My entire leg cemented into unbending form and I writhed and cried out in agony from the knife-like sensation.\u00a0 My calf was cramping.\u00a0 My muscles were overworked and undernourished. \u00a0These days, I feel as if most of my muscles are overworked and undernourished.<\/p>\n I think they call this burnout.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Realizing I was arriving at this dreaded location a few weeks ago, I put myself back on a regular workout regiment.\u00a0 Running unburdens me.\u00a0 Most of the time, if I\u2019m honest, I feel utterly helpless.<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0 I spend hours upon hours doing work that I\u2019m not sure will make any difference.\u00a0 But on the treadmill, I can find results.\u00a0 On the treadmill, I feel powerful again.\u00a0 When my body says to stop, I can still make it go, just by sheer willpower.\u00a0 When my muscles burn and ache, I can push forward.\u00a0 The treadmill is my safe place.\u00a0 The anger and frustration pent up from years of doing work where I watch people dehumanize and violate one another flows out through the soles of my sneakers.\u00a0 The hurt I can\u2019t feel because I\u2019ve gone numb flows out through the sweat that pours from my face.\u00a0 The grief over friendships I have lost and companions who have betrayed me flows out as victorious miles on the red digital counter as it steadily climbs higher.\u00a0 With every thud, thud, thud, of my running shoes, I chant to myself, \u201cThis is the part where you beat the odds.\u201d<\/p>\n My friends keep telling me to slow down.\u00a0<\/strong> <\/em>And I\u2019ve been listening.\u00a0 But on the treadmill, I can tell myself to speed up.\u00a0 Run harder.\u00a0 Run faster.\u00a0 My body will thank me for it later. If there\u2019s something I can control, it\u2019s that. \u00a0Until I get a leg cramp.<\/p>\n Perhaps my body is cramping much like my spirit.\u00a0 If I am honest, it often feels as if there is so much brokenness that I can never do enough.\u00a0 Sometimes I am really very hard on myself about it all.\u00a0 Every moment I spend doing something else really does feel like time that is slipping quietly away while people suffer, and I can\u2019t help but remind myself of it with regularity. \u00a0My critics reinforce my inadequacies with stunning consistency, reminding me that I am not doing enough, or well enough, or to their liking enough.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 They are right. \u00a0I am not. \u00a0I cannot. \u00a0I don\u2019t think I was ever meant to, actually.<\/p>\n I really can\u2019t tell you all the horrific things I\u2019ve heard.\u00a0 It\u2019s enough to make a person cry inconsolably for days, weeks, months.\u00a0 Frankly, even if I could tell them to you I wouldn\u2019t want to, because I\u2019m tired of hearing them, even from my own lips.\u00a0 I, myself, silence the voice of the sufferers, because I can\u2019t bear the pain of remembering theirs. \u00a0Someone has to make up for this brokenness.\u00a0 I often forget that someone already has, and it isn\u2019t me.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>Sometimes I am told not to take life so seriously.\u00a0 In my own bitterness, I confess, I often think that if others would take it just a little more seriously, perhaps I could scale it back a notch.\u00a0 But for now, while so many seem content to stand idly by or, worse, to contribute to the problems, I often feel I must do twice as much.<\/p>\n The stories of the sufferers remind me how helpless we are.\u00a0<\/strong> <\/em>Sometimes I find myself in surprising situations where strangers are sharing deeply personal struggles with me and I discover, even as I receive their stories with warmth and kindness, that I am completely and utterly incapable of being authentically responsive to their pain.<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0 My vision is blinded by an enormous running tally number I see which sits on their shoulder as they recount traumas and heartache \u2013 parental abandonment, suicide, homelessness, divorce, abuse, AIDS, drug and alcohol addictions, anger at God.\u00a0 \u201cJust another one to add to the list,\u201d I think, as I watch the ticker numbers click into place on their shoulder while mumbling hollow things to comfort them that I\u2019m not even sure I mean or believe.<\/p>\n I wish folks could learn to put up with differences better. \u00a0Truth be told, I wish I could figure that out too.\u00a0 It\u2019s odd to teach others how to be peace-builders when you\u2019re not sure you\u2019ve figured it out.<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0 Actually, the only thing I\u2019m sure of is that I haven\u2019t figured it out yet. \u00a0But I sure do hate the ways I see Yahweh\u2019s name dragged through the mud by the people who pretend to serve him, and truth be told, I hate the ways I see myself do it too.\u00a0 Especially when I pretend to be doing reconciliation work and all I can see are tally numbers adding up on the shoulder of a person who is crying in my presence.<\/p>\n Thank goodness for His mercies.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n I had no idea what I was starting with all of this. \u00a0Most days I feel totally inadequate. I wonder if I am strong enough or smart enough or resilient enough. \u00a0<\/strong><\/em>I suppose I\u2019m not, and that\u2019s probably the point anyway.\u00a0 But even knowing that doesn\u2019t keep me from growing angry at the strangest things.\u00a0 This weekend, the anger hijacked me when someone stood up in a public meeting and made a statement regarding frustrations over how her denomination was delegating their funds. I agreed with her argument, but I was so angry at how badly she made it that I found my jaw clenching.\u00a0 Her words weren\u2019t cohesive, intelligent, compelling, or even very reasonable.\u00a0 She ruined her own good point by expressing it poorly and I watched as everyone in the room ignored her.\u00a0 I wanted to scream at her for failing in that moment, and scream at the Christians for treating her as if she was less worthy because she wasn\u2019t eloquent.\u00a0 But mostly, I wanted to scream at myself, for thinking less of her and not wanting to listen to her simply because she was inarticulate.\u00a0 \u201cWhere is Christ in me, in the church, in my fellow Christians?\u00a0 Why does he feel so far off when we encounter the \u2018other\u2019?\u201d I often wonder.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a very strange experience to hate Christians so much when I am one of them.\u00a0<\/strong> <\/em>It\u2019s a very strange thing to hate churches so much, when I attend one that I love so deeply.\u00a0 It\u2019s a very strange experience even to sometimes hate the LGBT community so much when I count them as some of my closest, dearest friends.<\/p>\n I spend so much energy trying to convince other Christians to stop hating when my own heart is filled with so much anger and hatred.\u00a0 I spend so much energy trying to convince LGBT folks that some Christians really aren\u2019t bigots while I face my own inconsistencies daily and I wonder, sometimes, if maybe even I am one.<\/p>\n Sometimes I feel like a woman without a home.<\/p>\n And so, this heavy-hearted pilgrim, these days, has one prayer: Maranatha. Come Lord Jesus!\u00a0 Take our brokenness to the foot of the cross where you make all things new.<\/p>\n Amen.<\/p>\n ~~~~~~~~~~WHAT ABOUT YOU?~~~~~~~~~~<\/strong><\/p>\n Do you ever get burnt out?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Most days I feel totally inadequate. I wonder if I am strong enough or smart enough or resilient enough. I suppose I’m not, and that’s probably the point anyway. But even knowing that doesn\u2019t keep me from growing angry at the strangest things. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1789,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11,7,16],"class_list":["post-140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lgbt","tag-reconciliation-2","tag-reflections"],"yoast_head":"\n