Episode 5: You Can Always Rebuild

There has to be more than hope after a dream, ministry, or project falls apart. First comes a change in mindset, and consequently a change in actions. In this episode, I unpack my story of burnout, and how a simple phrase that came from playing blocks with my son would change my life.

BONUS EPISODE COMING SOON:
Madison Tsubota returns to the BotaCast to discuss:
- Our journey through burnout
- What are you rebuilding?
- When moving on means moving away

LINKS:
Article - You Can Always Rebuild

Transcript

Hey a big big thank you to everyone who has followed the BotaCast. I am blown away by the response: the downloads have been ten times what I set as my initial goal, so thank you thank you thank you for listening and sharing the podcast with your team and your friends. Over the next few months we’ll have some really practical episodes about what it means to produce a service, as well as dialing in a good monitor mix. We’ll also be going high level talking about the skill of restraint, and even a minor theological dive into pre-service prayer. Madison Tsubota will be back for more discussion, as well as additional guests that I know you will learn a ton from, I know I certainly have.

But today’s episode is less practical and much more personal. This content comes from my own journey in these last couple years, and I hope it can help YOU. For some context: in 2021, I started crashing. After pushing entirely too hard during 2020 I started entering a season of overwhelming disappointment and discouragement. Despite working harder than ever, the amount of personal and professional gut-punches finally took their toll on me. By January of 2022, the fumes I had been running on were gone and I was burnt out.

In this episode, I want to share four aspects that branch from one simple phrase that encapsulates my journey from depressed funk to getting my mojo back.

My hope is that this phrase can also help you overcome disappointment and discouragement that is holding you back from your future. And when I say overcome, I don’t mean you’ll be able to make that pain go away: when you’ve endured trauma, you’re going to walk with a limp. For me, overcoming is getting up off the ground and taking your next steps even if that means limping to the next level. Maybe you’re in a funk right now like I was: please let me encourage you that no matter what has happened, you can rebuild, and you can still be the you that God has called you to be, the you that your family needs you to be, and we’re gonna start getting you to a condition to serve your team and your church in a more healthy way.

Let’s dive into the content: 

My rambunctious son loves to build towers out of blocks. I think the story of the Tower of Babel really left an impression on him. Together, we’ll build them even taller than he is. He loves it. Now, it’s a very different story when those same towers inevitably come crashing down. His initial shock and terror is followed by the deepest lament that can be expressed by someone so small. What moments before had stood as his greatest accomplishment now lay scattered in ruin across the living room floor.

No words are needed: his tear-drenched eyes say it all, “It’s over.”

To help calm his toddler heart, I have been telling him a phrase since before he could even speak: “It’s okay: you can always rebuild.”

YOU CAN ALWAYS REBUILD

In this post-pandemic season, there’s a lot to rebuild. Talk about an understatement.

I don’t mean this phrase to sound flippant or trite. It’s so simple it comes off like a platitude, but behind these four words is a truth that has the power to change your entire life.

It’s one thing to say and cognitively process these words. It’s an entirely different experience when you let them sink so deep that you actually believe them and let that belief change your mindset.

The good news? You don’t have to just hope that one day they sink in. You can actively start choosing to believe them. That choice will change your mindset, and that change will lead to your next step: taking action.

If you don’t believe you can rebuild, you’ll never have the internal drive to step into your future. You might be thinking: Thanks for the discouraging word, Daniel! Okay… so perhaps more hopefully put: once you believe it’s possible to rebuild, you won’t be intimidated to pick up the pieces that have collapsed.

Compared to the pile of fallen blocks, the old tower has a way of seeming so perfect. Probably way better than it actually was. We also long for the heights the tower could have reached if it hadn’t collapsed. “Oh, what could have been,” we think. Present depression has a way of idealizing the past or building up the imaginary future that could have been.

Maybe you react how my son reacts, angrily smashing apart whatever blocks might happen to still be standing. You take out your disappointment on what might still remain. Or the people that still remain...

But once my son’s initial wave of anger is over, he’s able to hear his father’s voice speak that simple phrase: you can always rebuild.

You can too.

If you’re burnt out and feel like you can’t get your mojo or passion for ministry back, you can always rebuild. If things have not bounced back even close to what you expected since covid, you can always rebuild. If you got really out of shape, you can always rebuild. If you feel like you’ve emotionally had your teeth kicked in, you can still always rebuild.

Here’s 4 aspects of rebuilding that branch from this simple phrase:

1. You Can Always Rebuild: but it will look different

When we say “rebuild,” we are not saying “replicate.” You may not have the kind of platform you had before. And that’s okay. Rebuilding may require a big change for you. You might have to quit your job, move across the country, and take the time you need to build something new — believe me, I had to. You can always rebuild, but it will look different. In fact, it HAS to look different. If my son and I built that fallen tower back up again exactly the same, guess where things would end up? That’s right: Crashed on the floor again.

When the pieces are scattered on the ground, it’s easy to romanticize how great the old tower was. But once you start building a new future, a better future, you might start to realize that what is being rebuilt with the broken pieces of you is so much better than what fell apart.

That’s not to say the old dream wasn’t good or wasn’t real. It just means that if it’s a new season—whether the dream needs to be rebuilt or completely reimagined—you will be able to finally visualize the future when you stop fantasizing about the past.

2. You Can Always Rebuild: even if someone else knocked it down

For my son, there is one way his toppled tower can be even more disheartening. A deeper sadness ensues if the crash was caused by his baby sister. Accidental structural collapses have a way of stinging less than a sibling’s delighted push or even an inadvertent run-in with the tower.

Isn’t this also how pain works in our own lives? Personal apathy and burnout seem to pail in emotional weight compared to suffering that can be caused by someone else’s actions.

Hear me clearly: abuse is wrong. Rejection, neglect, abandonment, or severed relationships are some of the deepest wounds. Spiritual abuse and manipulation can get you so twisted that you probably should speak to a licensed professional counselor (side note: someone with earned letters after their name, not the made up title “pastor” before it).

When someone has wronged you, the damage can feel irreparable. You don’t, however, need your abuser’s permission to rebuild. You don’t need restitution, retribution, or any other vindication before choosing to move forward. It’s more than just dreaming again, it’s choosing to take the next step. Not ignoring the lessons learned, but definitely silencing the voices of doubt and fear that have made their home in your fallen tower.

3. You Can Always Rebuild: but it will take time

I remember in the lowest point of my burnout, the dynamo type A part of my personality would mentally beat me up. As I lay discouraged, unmotivated, and depressed, I would hear my inner critic rage, “why can’t you just suck it up and move on?” “One day or day one, you decide!” “You’re just lazy, get up and go!” But it ended up taking months of waiting, and then several huge shifts in my life—all of which took a lot of time—before it even felt like I had one block placed on another in my rebuilding.

Rebuilding is not instantaneous. And you will probably still feel the sting of the collapse even as you start placing your first blocks. Not only is this okay, it’s normal and probably a good sign. It doesn’t mean that you’re not ready to pioneer again. It probably means you have a heart: that you cared about what fell apart: that it meant something to you even if it didn’t work out.

An important clarification: if time is required to for you to do the work to repair something like your marriage or your business’s legal or financial management, you need to rebuild those things before you start rebuilding your ministry or leadership.

You always rebuild: but it will take time. How long will it take? We don’t get to know. The bad news is that if you never take action, if you never start picking up your blocks, rebuilding is probably not automatically going to happen. Fortunately, if you do start taking action—no matter how seemingly small—you are on your way regardless of how long your journey may be. It’s never too late to start, this could be the day. You can always rebuild.

However, in order to take external action, you need internal resolve… this leads us to aspect #4

4. You Can Always Rebuild: if you believe you can.

Not too long ago, I was catching up with an old friend who was processing his own burnout. As he shared his journey of having shifted to a “non-ministry” career, I asked if he could ever see himself serving on a worship team again: even without a title. He didn’t think so. In his mind, the energy he had once put into worship leading as a vocation was now being used in his new corporate job.

He said “Now it’s been so long, I feel like I don’t even remember how to lead worship. I’ve lost my skills: those muscles are all gone.”

That’s when I hit him with those simple words, I said “Oh, you can rebuild that. Believe me: you can always rebuild.”

His head shifted back as his eyebrows offered a silent glimpse into what his mind was processing.

For him, leading worship again seemed in his mind like a 5 foot tall boulder that he would never be able to move. I could tell his mind echoed the words he had just heard, “you can always rebuild.” And then, it clicked for him. His face changed again as if I had just told him that the huge boulder was actually just paper machete, hollow, and weighed less than a pound. 

The circumstances hadn’t changed, but his mindset shift was all he needed to take his first step toward leading again. The distance between gone forever and possible redemption was only four words.

So… allow me to maybe be the first person who tells you this truth: you can always rebuild. The good news is that in addition to me, you only need one more person to tell you, and that person is you. So today, when you think about something that has fallen apart, tell yourself, “you can always rebuild.”

That first word matters: YOU can always rebuild. Because it’s not mere self help positivity that would say, “I can always rebuild.” Nah, say it in the second person: you can always rebuild. You are actually repeating the words of your father over your life. He is saying, “you can always rebuild.”

What’s even better, you’re not alone rebuilding. Maybe you’ve been angry for a long time, maybe your cheeks are still tear-stained. But once you can wipe away those tears, you’ll be able to see that your father is ready to help you rebuild. The complete truth is that if you have the Holy Spirit living on the inside of you, he is saying: “We can always rebuild.” And just like my son, your loving father is sitting there ready to hand you the first block.ready to help pick up the fallen pieces and build something new with you again.