Perfectionism, Pressure, and the 110% Problem

Some of the hardest stuff we carry, we carry quietly. We show up on Sunday, we smile, we serve, and nobody knows the candle is burning at both ends until it finally goes out.

This week I sat down with Pastor Jim Westheim, who has spent 40 years in ministry, and he got honest about something a lot of us are scared to say out loud. Burnout. Depression. Anxiety. The kind of compassion fatigue where you give and give and give until one day there is just nothing left in the tank.

Jim told me about the flight home from a missions trip in Honduras, the moment he realized he wasn’t okay. The same work that used to light him up was suddenly draining him dry, and he couldn’t pray it away. We talked about the perfectionism he used to wear like a badge, the “110%” lie so many of us believe God is asking for, and the slow, holy work of learning that God just wants your best, not your everything-all-the-time.

He also walked us through the real tools that brought him back. Watching your self-talk. Managing anger instead of letting it manage you. Protecting yourself from people who only pour negativity into your life. Refueling emotionally with the things that actually fill you back up. Staying alert to your own warning signs before the crash comes.

And then we went where the church doesn’t always go. MEDICATION. Jim shared his own story of finally holding that first pill in his hand and not wanting to take it, and the friend who told him, “this is going to be okay, and you may not have to be on this forever.” If a chemical imbalance needs balancing, that is not a failure of faith. We don’t think twice when someone takes thyroid medicine or eye drops. Mental health gets to be on that list too.

This one took me to church, friends. We wove in Philippians 4:6-8, Isaiah 26:3, and John 14:27, that gift of peace the world cannot give and cannot take. Perfect peace doesn’t mean everything around you is perfect. It just means you’re getting back to a healthy place on the inside, and God can absolutely meet you there.

If you’ve been running on empty and wondering if that makes you a bad Christian, oh friend, I think this episode will meet you right where you’re at. You don’t have to have it all together to show up here. 💛

Mentioned in this episode: Unshakable You by John Opeluski (formerly Pastor Disaster), available on Amazon Philippians 4:6-8, Isaiah 26:3, John 14:27

Head over to Substack for the companion devotional, and check out the link tree for the mug, the t-shirt, the bookmarks, all of it. I’m so glad you’re here.

You are not alone here. A Messy Amen.

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Life isn't always Sunday best. Sometimes your faith is put to the test. If you feel unseen and all alone, it's time for stories you've never known. Hello, welcome back to A Messy Amen. I'm Michelle Torrey, and this is the show where we talk about the good and the bad and the holy parts of real life. Today I have Pastor Jim Westheim with me. How's it going today?

Speaker 1 0:22

It's going good. It's going good. Glad to be here.

Speaker 0:24

So today we're gonna be talking about mental health and um ministry and all of um just a lot of fun stuff in everyday life.

Speaker 2 0:33

Yeah.

Speaker 0:33

So first off, let's um just dive right into um like your background growing up and where you come from.

Speaker 1 0:41

Okay. I grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Uh lived there till I was 18, and then our family moved out to Charlotte, North Carolina. Um grew up in the church my whole life. Um I have been around Assemblies of God my whole life. Um I accepted Christ when I was five on Mother's Day, and uh I that's all I have known is walking with God. I've really known that. And I've doesn't mean that uh I haven't been exposed to all kinds of craziness in life, because I have, but um, it's been wonderful to have a Christian family. Uh my father worked in the food industry for years with Marriott, and my mother worked in full-time ministry, uh, doing conferences. Uh she was a soloist, and so she did a lot of concerts and speaking engagements, those kinds of things. And uh as I got older, uh early teen years, I used to mix sound for her at uh different churches that we were we'd travel to and do weekend uh retreats or weekend conferences for women, those kinds of things. And um just I grew up in all the environment of youth ministry and the events that were all around that. I was ingrained in the church that I was a part of, um, and just really enjoyed that entire environment. Had a wonderful childhood. And I know what everybody can't say that, but I can. Doesn't mean things were perfect.

Speaker 2:04

You might be the first on the children.

Speaker 1 2:05

Maybe, maybe, maybe. But I really had a wonderful childhood all the way around. I look back on it and go, wow, is that the way it's really supposed to be? Because I hear the horror stories and been around friends who came from horror stories and think, wow, I'm so glad I didn't have to go through that. I think my story is more of a story of God's keeping power rather than having to be rescued from a situation that so many have to struggle with. It doesn't mean one's greater or less than another, they just are different than other people's.

Speaker 2:34

Prayer for my children is that they have a very boring testimony. That's interesting. Yeah. That like, you know, that is the hope. And as I've heard some wild stories and some amazing like prodigals and um those sorts. It's but now raising ch um their own children.

Speaker 1 2:52

Right.

Speaker 2:53

I'm like, if we can pray that our kids have a boring testimony, that's okay.

Speaker 1 2:57

Yeah, it's a good thing. We have four kids that are grown and out of the house, and two of them are in full-time ministry, and two are working in in the care industry for elderly people and servicing them and being a part of that picture. Um you're asking that journey that I was on at age twelve, I was on a uh a youth retreat and sensed a call to ministry. And at that point in time I began to uh pursue other pastors in our church and have dialogue with them and just get connected to them and get involved doing different things. In fact, my home pastor, my the pastor I've known all my life, just passed away this last weekend.

Speaker 3 3:36

Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 3:36

And uh he was the one that took me on my first hospital visitation calls. I kind of learned at his feet watching him do those things. And I remember traveling around all the dialogue we had. And then um my youth pastor who is in full-time missions work now, has been that way for uh probably 30 years, maybe 40 years now. Boy, time flies. But uh he's in foreign missions work in Central and South America, and uh very, very successful. He and his wife, uh Betty, uh Mike and Mona Grahams, she was Graham's, the Mike and Mona Shields are their names. Um and I learned so much from their investment in me as a as a young person. Uh pre-college growing in my relationship with God, just learned so much from them, and that that brought me into the picture of uh full-time ministry and went off to college and met my wife there uh in my first my freshman's uh second semester's uh freshman year, and then we began uh connecting and enjoying a relationship and friendship together and were involved in ministries there. In college. In college.

Speaker 2 4:41

Awesome.

Speaker 1 4:41

And then we got married. Uh she was a year ahead of me, so we got we did our our time in uh three years to get it done quickly so we could get involved in ministry. And we graduated the same year. You did an extra credit, so you could be crazy to get it to happen, but we did it. We got married uh just the the end of the week after we graduated on Tuesday and we got married on Saturday.

Speaker 5:00

Oh my god.

Speaker 1 5:01

And we stepped into full-time ministry basically four days after that, you know, out in North Carolina.

Speaker 5:07

So that's almost like that's almost like having a baby right after getting married.

Speaker 1 5:12

We looked at it and thought, oh, this is nothing. I look back and I go, what were we thinking? You know, but but it's really that was the that's the But it felt natural at the time. It felt natural at the time, that's what we needed to do. There wasn't money to do other things, and so it was like it just felt it felt like a perfect fit. And so we've been involved in ministry, we celebrate this year our 40th wedding anniversary and our 40th year involvement in ministry. So it's been really cool. Um, it's been quite a journey. We've been all over the planet just doing different things missions-wise, from youth ministry teams overseas, uh, just uh been involved in small churches and very large churches, both in associate roles, uh, youth pastor, children's pastors, Christian education workers, um, you know, lead pastors, all of these things. We've been in those different roles. It's been a it's been a long journey full of all kinds of unique experiences, some really good, some exceptionally good, others just I'm glad that's done. There's always gonna be ups and downs. Yeah, you're gonna have that. And in ministry, it's it's always that way. It's never a uh it's never a trajectory upward, it's always a up and down and up and down mode.

Speaker 6:20

And unexpected, right?

Speaker 1 6:21

Yeah, all kinds of weird things happen and you can't plan for them, and you just take them as they come and uh you reach out to each other and you reach out to people around you that you respect and get good counsel and direction from people who have already gone down that path. What's interesting now is those people that were my age then are connecting now and saying, How do I get through this? How do we do that? I just had a phone call today with a young man who's wanting to go into full-time counseling ministry, and 40 years ago I could not have given him the counsel that I gave him today. But it just rolls off like because it's coming from experience now. It wasn't then. But I was doing the same thing at his age, talking about those very same things. So it's what goes around comes back around again to benefit and bless, and that's the the nature of ministry, and uh it's a wonderful, uh wonderful environment to be a part of, and uh it's priceless in so many ways, and taxing in other ways.

unknown 7:21

Yeah.

Speaker 7:22

Just like um a lot of good things that you know God calls us to.

Speaker 2 7:26

Yeah.

Speaker 7:27

Um, so as you were um all this time, was it always like um assemblies of God churches, or did you was it different um denominated?

Speaker 1 7:37

Okay. Yeah, we've been connected to the assemblies from graduation of uh college. Uh all the pastors we worked with were in the assemblies, or we were uh the church was an assembly of God church. Um but there were many m ministry opportunities we were connected to that were parachurch or interdenominational events that were taking place that we were connected to. Uh convoy of hope events where we connected to many churches in a region. Um Billy Graham Crusades in St. Louis, uh, Missouri, when he came in there, we coordinated our church coordinated all of the altar worker care for all of the crusade nights, but with all of the denominations of churches. So they all came and we did training with them, and then they were part of those nights. So it's it's not been just with the assemblies of God, there's been a wide variety of other denominations we've been connected to. Um really it's all about those who love Jesus and are preaching God's word. I'd look past the denominational lines. In fact, to be quite honest with you, I'm I'm assemblies of God to the core doctrinally and what I believe, and I believe in our fellowship. It's not a denomination, but our fellowship. I believe in that profoundly and very strongly. But what's really important is at the end of the day, do they know Christ as Lord and Savior and are they preaching God's word? I get behind that. You know, we can have all kinds of disagreements on on doctrinal things. We may not stand the same understand and believe the secondary things, but the primary things of God's word and what salvation means, that's what's important.

Speaker 9:08

Yeah, and and I I really wish there wasn't, you know, 17 different ones in the United States here. Like it's my mom, um, I just um got to visit her church and I made a joke last time, although I look looking back, it was you know, I kind of left, but um it's called Evangelical Presbyterian. So I don't know what there is.

Speaker 1 9:28

That is a unique combination.

Speaker 9:30

I never heard of that, but um, it's called Trinity and it's um a lot of nice people, and it's a great place if anybody's in in the preliminary.

Speaker 2 9:39

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 9:40

Um like let's get into like even sermons and um like day in, day out. Like what what do you think about um like your daily rhythm? So like you wake up, are you in the word in the morning, or you feel like you're doing more devotions at night type of deal?

Speaker 1 9:55

I'm a morning person. Uh is when I get up. I'm I've always been a morning person. And that's when my time with the Lord takes place, primarily in the Bible. I also have time blocked on my calendars for just getting alone with God during the day. Uh that happens uh pretty consistently through the course of a day. Uh there are times when meetings just get pushed things out, and I just uh God's not upset with that. He understands that, and it's important for us to to be engaged in that relationship. Uh it's not about punching a clock, it's about the relationship that's happening. So there are many times that uh my one of my most favorite times with God is when I'm cutting wood outside. Uh it's one of my most favorite times. I can't I can't count how many times I've sat down on the wood pile and just had dialogue and wept in his presence and worshiped and you know no woods getting cut, but I've just had a great, a great time in conversation with God. Yeah, it's good for that. Um and so I I look at I look at my time with God and that and that rhythm as a as a a natural part of the day or the week that's going on. But if you're talking about ministry rhythms, there are very specific things that are that are that drive that depending on what season is going on and and what the focus is. Um as a lead pastor, it was very specific rhythms through the course of the week. Uh, when I first uh stepped into that role, uh it took probably three months for the church family to know that uh Tuesday mornings from 7 30, 8 o'clock until noon is my Bible study and prayer time. I don't take calls during that time. And we by that time of the three-year mark, we beg we began to get people managed to not engage the office at that time. They would front office, but they knew I was not going to respond unless it was an emergency.

Speaker 3 11:39

Yeah.

Speaker 1 11:40

But the front office knew what an emergency meant. And uh that was my prayer and Bible study time, and then there was usually a Thursday afternoon that was uh a final prep for Sunday, uh just going over message notes and praying and those kinds of things. But um those are normal rhythms uh that are part of of the day. But as far as the function of engagement of other staff and meetings and those kinds of things, they all follow a natural rhythm anyway. They're scheduled, they're planned, there's agendas like you would normally have uh in any business.

Speaker 12:10

How would you do that then if you had little kids around the house? Because you jumped right in, you may got married in ministry, then you had kids.

Speaker 1 12:17

Three years later we had children. Uh we were very planned in our children. Uh we we not that other sometimes they just happen, you know, but th we had three years between our first two, and uh that was that worked wonderfully, that was in the plan. And then um when we we decided that uh coming off of a mission trip is a very long story, but coming off of a missions trip, God had been working in my heart and working in my wife's heart at the same time, that we were going to adopt a child from one of the countries that we were ministering in. At that time, it was El Salvador. Uh that window closed abruptly to be able to connect there. We ended up adopting a little girl from Guatemala. Uh and at the one-year mark, we were in all in Guatemala City, uh, bringing her into our lives formally, going through the consulate, getting everything finalized. Um we moved to East Taoas uh in 2001, and uh about three years later we were adopting a little boy from the same country and uh he joined our family. So we have two biological and two from our heart. Um those last two that came into the picture created a very unique environment because the brothers and siblings are older and they're able to speak into their lives and be positive and help them along to be an assistant to us in that picture. Uh my wife has has always been on the team serving in whatever area of ministries needed. She's been full-time engaged in ministry. But you manage that properly. You you lead that properly from the children either being in the church and connected to things uh and are are are in another area of the building being watched by somebody, uh, or we have great grandparent figures that were always around us, whether they were the actual grandparents or they were grandparent figures in the church family. Well about at home, were you um did you wake up extra early or did you just kind of teach them to the kids don't wake up early, little ones wake up early and they're all over the house, but w we both played the role of parent in that, and then she was at home. We homeschooled our kids, and my wife was a Christian educator as a major, and so that was just nothing for her to do.

Speaker 14:20

So you took if they were awake, you just took turns having quiet time if they were already awake.

Speaker 1 14:25

Yeah, if they if they were yeah. It happened, it didn't always happen in the morning, sometimes it would have to happen at night, just depending on the routine of what was needed that day. But um, you know, the kids followed us and they learn your rhythms. And if your rhythms are healthy, they'll follow that. And sometimes they get bothered by that, but you help them learn. This is the way we do things, this is how we operate. And they got into that rhythm and it worked r it worked really well. There wasn't mean there wasn't challenges and days and incidents. I I get all that. I just we we pick the pattern for our kids and we govern how they manage that, and that's that's just part of being a parent, and you learn that as you go along, and you learn from others. I mean, there are many times we had conversations with people, how do you deal with that? How do we fix that problem? They say, Oh, this is what we did, and oh, okay, yeah, and you work with that. You take the best and you look at your kids and you adjust accordingly, and you have a lot of prayer. Say, God help me, how do I fix this? How do we work with this problem? How do we do that? And we just call on God a lot.

Speaker 15:28

I've been down a few rabbit trails in the last several years trying to figure out what kind of mama I was going to be, and you know, we I th I there is a saying I heard that you're the best parent before you ever have children. Because of all of I'm never gonna let my kid do that, or I'm never gonna feed my kid chicken nuggets from McDonald's or oh this X, Y, and Z. It's like that's not really um you know, realistic. And two, that's a lot of those things we think is not the point.

Speaker 1 15:58

Those are important.

Speaker 15:59

It's not as like it's not the end all be all. Like I've learned real quickly that um we're very um we've officially been very more limited on screen time because I was already like didn't l um let her watch certain shows and um we have like a we have a Christian streaming service we pay for, and then um like very picky on like Netflix and all that, and then next thing you know, she wants to, you know, play what could be argued fine stuff, but then it's not having a childhood and she's you know not playing and not talking talking to people, and you know, apparently that's the plot of Toy Story Five and coming out in June. Yeah, excited to see that one's a little bit on like hopefully that'll turn out okay if they're spending spending all that time writing it. But um, it's just interesting because um would you say that um I just have to ask one of your parents thinks like you do? Do one of my parents think the you're the way that you've been talking, like it sounds like a lot of strategy and rhythms and um you know scheduling and just that you've got a a system for something.

Speaker 1 17:06

Um I guess I I guess we are what we how we've been raised. I've always had very organized house. My parents were very organized, very structured, I guess.

Speaker 17:17

You feel like they kind of led that in a healthy way with also a lot of love?

Speaker 1 17:22

There there absolutely lots of love, lots of care, lots of affection. I I think the structured and organizational side of it kind of went acute uh in our home. I didn't think anything of it, but I look back on it and go, hmm, that was very organized and kind of weird too, you know, giving an example of it. We m we had plastic runners on our carpeting, okay, when I grew up. We had beautiful furniture, French provincial furniture, but it had plastic on it. And so I didn't think a thing of it. If I didn't think of thinking of it, flopping out watching a movie or something, and had my face laying on a velvet couch that had plastic on it. I didn't think about it. But then I had friends come over and they're walking around the house looking at, you know, do you ever take these things up off the floor? Oh no, we walk on those so the carpet doesn't get dirty. I look at it and go, that's weird. Okay, that's weird. So we never had that in our home, but I don't look back on it and say, you know, that's a wrong thing. I just look back on it and say, that is uh that contributes to my uh OCD about neatness. Let's put it that way, okay? Um I I I it could contribute to that. Only on my side, I can be in an in an environment that is that is not that way, and I doesn't bother me a bit. But I look at my place and I go, oh, I wish that was different. But yeah, I think it contributes to it. I think our our parents, our upbringing contributes to how we see life and how we function and interact with it, and then that translates to our kids, and they see things in a different light. And we hope they see the right things and we hope we prioritize what is most important in that picture. I probably was overtly challenging to my boys to keep the room neat because if I didn't say something to them, because I slept in the same room until their brothers and sisters came in the picture uh and they got older to get their own rooms, but they would they would let it become an absolute disaster. I think back when our little our our m youngest uh little boy's son, the youngest boy who came from Guatemala, uh, when he came to the house, he was raised with putting in the in an orphanage, taking a single toy out, playing with it, then putting it back on the shelf and getting another toy and playing with it. It was neat and tidy, and he came into his room, all of the toys were there neat and tidy on the shelves, and he immediately began following that process. I play with this toy, I take it out, I put it back. I thought, this is amazing, this is wonderful. And then he got around his brothers.

Speaker 19:55

Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 19:56

And they would say, Oh, come over here, Jordan, and they'd dump out an entire bin, and he would just wide-eye at it, and they would all play with him on the floor, and then they would go get another bin and dump that out, and they would play with all that, and they just immediately taught him that you can do that.

Speaker 20:11

Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 20:11

And it became like you ruined it. You ruined it, you ruined it. I'm not sure what is right or wrong in that picture because the correction I gave to my boys sometimes was very strong and very direct. And I know it frustrated them. I know they got grounded enough times for nothing to do. There's an interesting thought. It's an interesting thought. I don't know why that's not a good idea.

Speaker 20:40

I you know, I don't know, it probably been about a year now trying to be more mindful. And then, you know, especially like trying to learn different ways, like different language and different phrases and different ways to approach things. One interesting creator who is a Christian, I had you know made sure um, but um, she has a made a family, it's called a family flip book of uh scripts and how to talk about things.

Speaker 2 21:07

Oh, okay.

Speaker 21:08

So and it's a lot of redirection, but she doesn't say no. She says, You can um, yeah, we can do that after you eat, or we can do this later. So she's saying she's not saying no, and she's not being permissive, but she's saying, um, oh, you're you know, come in the room with kids are playing with their friends and it's a mess. Oh wow, you guys have been so creative. Let's help each other pick this up.

Speaker 1 21:34

It's an interesting twist on it.

Speaker 21:35

So every single thing is tied to something positive.

Speaker 1 21:39

I like the sound.

Speaker 21:40

I can I can hear I can listen hear you better if you can talk like I'm talking.

Speaker 2 21:44

Yeah.

Speaker 21:45

And then she one really interesting one, and you have to make sure you don't have a tone, is if the kids are being like having a tone with you and being rude, then it's like, who are you talking to?

Speaker 1 21:54

Yeah.

Speaker 21:55

Who are you talking to? And then how do you talk to mom?

Speaker 1 21:58

Yeah.

Speaker 21:59

And then you No.

Speaker 1 22:00

I think it's a learned that's a learned thing to teach yourself.

Speaker 22:03

Yeah, there's a whole flip book of instructions and ways to reframe these things. And that's one thing it's like that even at um I'm trying to be godly and should be like, okay, how do I num blow um, you know, lose my cool today?

Speaker 1 22:19

Yeah.

Speaker 22:20

Or how can I lose my cool as few times as possible? Right.

Speaker 1 22:23

I think it's a realistic way to look at it. We have these wonderful processes like that that are given to us, these self-help books, you know, or self-principle books.

Speaker 22:32

Which I've kind of g I've g tried to give up on some um a lot of them because I've found out uh recently in the last couple years, I'm like, the more um nonfiction books you read like that, then it makes you feel like you just have to keep do like it makes you feel like you're not not good enough right there. You need to try, oh, you then you gotta do the next thing, then you have to read the next book. I'm just like, let's stick to the Bible and then pick a few ones here and there. Yeah, starting with a children. I've tried to be really picky because the more and plus you have to be careful like some of the like regular secular secular ones, you just have I just have to be careful because they'll come up with their own ideas of, you know, woo-woo, like you know.

Speaker 1 23:10

I get it, I understand.

Speaker 23:11

And so but this girl, she it's just a lot of parenting, um, like scripts for c conversations to have and stuff like that. But um, as you've gone through, you know, 40 years of ministry, um are like that doesn't sound possible. Aren't you like 45 or so?

Speaker 1 23:28

Yeah, so thank you. Appreciate that. Yeah, appreciate that. I wish. Um 50. Yeah, you know, that'd be nice too.

Speaker 23:36

You really don't look more than 50. Thank you.

Speaker 1 23:38

I really appreciate that. I'm not even paying you for the opportunity to say these things, so that's great. Uh and I'm not planning to at this point, but uh because I'm about to have a problem. And I turned 61 in February, which is uh Oh, you guys started ministry still pretty young then. Yeah, we right out of college. So right out of college, we were stuck in the year.

Speaker 23:55

And if you graduated early, you might have been only 21-ish.

Speaker 1 23:57

Yeah, that's it. So we got married when we were 21. She was 22.

Speaker 24:03

I was I think 23-ish then when uh when we got married. So we'll be celebrating eight years in October. Well, that's wonderful. Some more than some, less than a lot of us.

Speaker 2 24:13

Yeah.

Speaker 24:14

We're working on um I'm working, I'm hoping to have sixty-four. Is that what we're going?

Speaker 1 24:20

Uh so you're hoping to have sixty four years together? Is that what you're saying?

Speaker 24:23

Okay, at least before one of us dies.

Speaker 1 24:26

You're planning for that, is what you're saying.

Speaker 24:28

This is really sweet, and I have to say the story, 'cause um Jaredon's grandmum, um, his grandpa had um just died, but he was planning to propose to me. And so he asked her, is it still okay um to go with my plan? Like, you know, it was in the within a few days basically. And then it all happened. Um, and she goes, Well, yeah, and then that evening she like I don't know if it was me or him, but she hugged and was like tearing up and she said, I hope you get sixty-four.

Speaker 1 24:57

Oh, isn't that sweet?

Speaker 24:58

It was sixty-three before um his grandpa died. And I'm like, So sixty-four is the goal, I think.

Speaker 1 25:03

So they probably were technically sixty-four because they were in they were engaged for the yeah.

Speaker 25:09

Yeah, and they were to they were together um for however long. Yeah. And um, so it is so um just so sweet. And um but as far as all this goes, like it's really cool to hear the the rhythms versus what keeps you grounded. So like as far as you know, 40 years, where would you say would be like the ups and downs of you for you personally, not just like, oh, some churches were like this, some were like this, but like what like if you're digging uh more person on a more personal level?

Speaker 1 25:41

Um that's a pretty easy question for me. Um I won't talk about the marriage side of that. We'll just leave that as it'll just talk about the ministry side of it. But um the on the ministry side of it, there is a a natural tendency for most people to enter into any job, a role of responsibility, to try to prove to themselves and prove to whoever hired them that they have what it takes. Okay, it's a natural tendency. We may not say it out loud, but we want to give it our very best. Anyone enters into a role of responsibility, job, whatever it is, that doesn't have that, they're not really entering into the job to do the work, they're just getting a paycheck. Okay. That's not ministry. I work first for the Lord, he's the one that provides my paycheck, he's the one that provides the opportunity. So I work for him, so he gets my very best, always has. I have a little block on my office and the desk that says uh that sign your work with excellence. And I I try to do everything I do to do my very, very best. And the problem in ministry is is that would you agree to this statement? I think God deserves 110%. Okay. I did too. There's nowhere in scripture, nowhere in scripture that says he wants 110% from you. He just wants your best. And he knows it's broken, he knows it's not gonna be the best, he knows you're gonna fail, he knows that you're gonna miserably mess up, yet he still loves you and accepts you, calls you and pursues you and wants a relationship with you. Going into ministry, you don't see it that way. Yeah, you see it in a different light. And if you have a perfectionist mentality, which I did, I viewed it as a badge that I wore.

Speaker 2 27:34

Yeah.

Speaker 1 27:35

That wow, I'm a perfectionist. I really want things done well. Okay. Now that sounds great. On the outside, saying that to people, it says, boy, they're really committed to do their very best.

Speaker 27:45

But the problem is Unless you can't live up to your own standards.

Speaker 1 27:49

It's not just my own standards. It's at the end of the day who is smiling. And that is a battle that is a lifelong challenge. Wearing perfectionism is not a badge, it is a detriment to the person. Because I used to I used to get on the plane coming back from a missions trip, having had an incredible experience. Forty people on a missions project overseas, or a small remote people's outreach of a half dozen, eight people that are up in the mountains bringing the gospel to people who have never had it before, sleeping under the stars, I mean, just literally totally roughing it from backpacks, out in the middle of nowhere in northern Argentina, having God do pronounce and profound things while on that trip. I'd get on a plane, and before the plane is taking off, I'm on my laptop thinking, all the things we could do better, how can we adjust this? How can we make this trip better next time? How could we improve it? And God is wanting to celebrate what's happening. And I'm already moved on to the next thing. I've already critiqued it, scored it, and I have not listened to what God was saying was the best. That is a good thing in one way, in that you're a good leader wants to always be making improvements, but it's bad in another way because I was always the worst critic of everything I've done. And I I still am that way. I have to physically pause and say, God, what are you seeing here that's good? Because I'm not seeing any good at all. Yeah. Even though there's lots of good to be seen, I'm not seeing any of it. And he has to enlighten my heart to that, show that to me and reveal it to me. When you don't know that early on in ministry, and you think that that perfectionism and drive and giving 110% all the time is what God wants you to give, and then hearing a lead pastor say there are seasons in ministry where you'll give more than what you're giving now. If you're already giving 110% and you're burning your candle at both ends, and then it's a season where you got to give more, when you're young in ministry, you can do that. You just pull yourself up by the bootstraps and you dive in and you're given. I remember many times putting an 80-hour work week and going, man, I'm exhausted, but it felt good. God must be happy. Look at all we did. And realizing that what was happening was is I was slowly destroying my capacity to do anything well. And what ends up coming out of that, if you do that long enough, is you burn out. And I began to realize that happening to me when I stepped in. It was happening in in Illinois in a role that we were in there. Very wonderful ministry, wonderful leader, but lots of demands, lots of lean because of the capacity to lean. It wasn't that I wouldn't say no to things, but I would find a way to make it work, bringing other people in or having other people make it up, but I still had to manage it and get it over the finish line. But I could do that, and I could manage that. But when other things were added to the picture that were emotionally intensive, like you were asked, oh hey, I need you to do this emergency funeral, I need you to counsel with this person, and it didn't go well, or it did go well, but there were a lot of emotions. All of those things pull on you.

Speaker 2 31:12

Yeah.

Speaker 1 31:13

And there's a there's a there's an understanding in ministry as it is in the circles with doctors and any any people intensive thing. There is an understanding called compassion fatigue. And compassion fatigue is you give, give, give, give, give, care, care, care, care, care, care, care, and you can do that for a long time. But then all of a sudden, you don't have any more to give. And you wake up in the morning and you're ready to go, and by mid-morning you're going, wow, I just I I gotta I'm just gonna push through this, and you push through and you you begin to act the way you need to, but the heart is on fast drain to the point where you're not able to you come to a point where I'll tell you where it happened for me. I was coming home from a missions project in Honduras, and I got on the plane, and I'm normally uh I'm I'm jumping around in a gorilla costume in 100-degree high humidity, and I'm just loving every minute of it because I know I'm I'm like the Pied Piper bringing people to hear the gospel. And the kids come out of the woodwork and they just grab onto your hands and they run down the street with you, and you bring them in for them to hear the gospel, and you dance with them and you climb trees, and you just you're crazy with them. They get to hear the gospel, and I get to see peel off the grenade gorilla suit in a bus, looking out the window, seeing the gospel be shared, and seeing come to Jesus. Go, that's what it's all about, you know. And sometimes that's the roll is flipped and the gorilla's not there, and I'm sharing. Whatever the case may be, that's where the energy was. But I got on the plane and I began looking at all of these people coming out of Honduras, and I began to think things that I didn't ever think before. Oh, these people aren't listening, they're really never going to change. Uh you're exhausted. Why are you doing this? And I began to I began to feel this sense of emptiness. I could on the outside, I could sit right next to the person and talk with me about what what had happened and how cool it was, and even talk to a national sitting next to me, not have an issue with that. But inside I'm going, Oh, I'd be glad when they stopped talking. Don't ask me one more question, don't give me one more thing to do because I can't do another thing. And I just so happened to be reading on that flight going down an article by uh Gary Allen, who was my wife's home pastor, and he wrote an article on the signs of depression and exhaustion in ministry and burnout. And I took the test at the end of it, I failed miserably. I mean, I was epically over the edge. And I thought, no, this can't be. So I took it again. I got it worse the second time. And so I thought, no, this can't be. This isn't me. I'll just pull my book. My my philosophy, I sat with people in my office who were saying, Pastor Jim, I need to talk to somebody about depression, uh, anxiety, burnout. I need to talk to me. And my my my philosophy was, man, I am sorry that's happening for you. Let me ask you some really important questions. Where are you at in your relationship with God? Are you do you have a time with him every day? Are you worshiping him? Are you connected? Are you engaged in church? Are you connected in small groups? I'd ask them these questions, and that was my solution. We need just to do more of that. That's gonna help you with that, okay? I never talked to them about boundaries because I had none. Yeah, I had no boundaries. If somebody would say, Well, would you would you venture into that area ministry? Uh my response would be, boy, that is not my area. But I could get involved and I could help other people connect to it and then release it to them. So I could be involved in that. I could help that to happen because pastor needs it to happen. The team needs it to happen. I'll get it started, I'll bring people in, and I'll release it. And I did. But that's exhausting because it's outside of the boundaries. Outside the boundaries. And when we live outside of boundaries, we become unstable and we become unable to function inside the boundaries in a healthy way.

Speaker 3 35:30

Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 35:31

What happens outside that is the 110% or more that's being given. And it takes, it takes more to do the extra 10% energy and emotion-wise, than it does to maintain the regular commitment. And God's never asked that of us. And I never, I I could, I could agree to that, I could agree to that in conversation, but I could never um uh validate doing it myself. I could say to somebody else, man, you just need to do a little less, okay? You sound like you're really tired. Do a little bit less. God's, but I could not do that because I had limitless energy, okay? I've always been a person of limitless energy. And I just it's that's always been and will always be something that I have to deal with. But when it got to the point where I sat at home, coming home, I'd preach on Sunday morning. We'd have people responding to Christ. It was a wonderful service. I I would most people would say, Pastor, that was just awesome. We had a great service today. God's presence was really here. I'd be critiquing it from the moment I walked off the stage, walking across a lot. And then Sunday that I walked home and I said, I'm just gonna, I'm not gonna eat today. I'm just gonna go lay down and take a nap. I started taking naps immediately. I started pulling back from conversation. I started pulling back from uh engagement because everything became to be viewed in my mind as another drain on, like if if this were happening 20 years ago, if this were happening 2008, 2007, I'd be having this dialogue with you. But on the inside, my batteries are going, I'm on drain. Okay. In fact, I may even come here drained.

Speaker 2 37:19

Yeah.

Speaker 1 37:20

But I'd be talking to you this way, engaged with you this way, but inside, I can't wait for this to be done. Yeah, I just can't do this anymore. And I'd find myself waking up in the middle of the night, my pillow wet with tears, not knowing why I'm crying, not knowing why these emotions are happening to me, going out to the living room, laying on the couch, going, I don't know why, what's going on here? I I was looking for an exit. I needed an exit. An exit meant anything at that point. I'm leading a great church, wonderful people. We had walked through some very difficult times as a church, and we had a healthy board and good things were happening, but I just needed an out. I just, I couldn't do this anymore. And I called up our superintendent at that time in the Michigan district here, and I called him up and I says, I need to talk. I was a presbyter, I was overseeing 14 other churches in our area and engaging them with their challenges and having dialogue with them. But I was burned out. I was fried. How did I get here? How did I get here? And I just needed help. And so I went to our superintendent. I said, I need to talk. And uh he says, Oh, come. It was it was after a uh Presbyter's meeting, he says, Come on over to my house. I called my wife, said I'm spending an extra night down here. I called her, I went over to his home, and he, before I got to the house, called up a close friend of his by the name of John Opeluski. And I remember sitting in the basement of our superintendent's home, and I sat up at the edge of the chair and said, If I don't get an exit, I'm done in three months. I I just can't do this anymore. I I have all these people, there's demands, I have all these things going on, and I'm emotionally fried. I just can't hear one more whiner, one more need, one more anything. In fact, I'd pray for people at the altar, and I could hear the words coming out of my mouth, and I agreed with them wholeheartedly.

unknown 39:13

Yeah.

Speaker 1 39:13

Wholeheartedly. I agreed with them, I'd pray with them, I believed what I was praying. I believed in what I was praying. I understood it. I was spending time in God's word every day. I just there was the the spiritual dynamic was still happening. Well, how could how could you burn out in that time frame? Because I wasn't refueling myself. It was all going out, and nothing was coming back in that I was allowing to transform. I was on 110%, and I wasn't getting probably 10% coming towards me, allowing that to come towards me. And probably less, maybe none at all. Maybe it was a negative, okay, because emotions and attitudes and and and anger and frustration probably put me into the negative. Yeah. I had nothing. I was depleted. And so he sat up at the edge of his chair and he looked across the room and he says, John, why don't you talk about this? And I'll tell you, the conversation at that moment in time, I says, Guys, you've got to tell me what I need to do because I don't know what to do here. Help me out. Well, John's story is long, and you can you can go to convergecoach.com and and read John Opalouski's story. There's a book there, it's called Pastor Disaster. An amazing book. Read the book. He handed it to me. He says, I'm not just giving you a book. He says, This is my story, but let me tell you about it. And after about three hours of dialogue, um, he said, This is what you need to do. You need to disconnect from ministry for a period of time. You need to take what was then to me a foreign word that I didn't. Sabbaticals were for people who wanted to go write a book. Sabbaticals were people who wanted to do research for something. Sabbaticals were not in my dialogue of ever backing away from ministry, but I was ready to quit. Okay, I was ready to quit. So what does that mean? Need to take a break. Take a month off. And I says, a month is not gonna cut it. And he says, well, then take what do you think you need? I said, I need three months off minimum. I need I need a break from this. Superintendent says, I'll come to your church, I'll talk to your board, and the board will agree, and then we'll present this to your church, and we'll take care of all of that. You're gonna take three months off. When do you want to do that? I says, the end of May, June, and July. I want to take that time off. Uh June, July, and August, I just need to break away. I need I need to be disconnected. And he says, Well, he was telling me I need to do that. I says, Okay, okay, I'll do that, I'll do that. Uh basically at this point saying, Whatever you do, I'll do it. You know, just to try to recover something of this. And and so um in that time frame, he came to the church, met with the board, I told him what was happening. They were totally supportive of it, agreed completely. Superintendent came and preached on that Sunday morning and says, Pastor, this is like three weeks later, pastor's needing to take a break. This is what this means, it's a healthy thing. We want you to be praying for him, but here's what we want you to do. We don't want you to call your pastor during this entire time. We don't want you to text him, we don't want you to email him, we don't want you to tell him you're praying for him. You just leave him alone and let him get back on his feet again. You know, I felt like an absolute failure. I felt this is just horrible. But at that point in time, I didn't care. I didn't care what they thought. I was just out of any gas for anything, trying to figure out how did I get here? And uh I was angry, uh it it showed up in lots of ways, anger did in that picture. Um I lash out at the kids differently, I would be short with the family, or I would completely withdraw and not talk at all. And um we went on that sabbatical. I remember leaving on that Sunday, I remember everybody getting around us and praying for us, and it was just very, very healthy, healthy thing. I look back on it going, wow, that's wonderful, uh, the way that was managed and handled for us. But I remember John talking to me, he says, I don't want you to do any sermon writing. I don't want you to write a book. I said, Don't believe me, I won't. I don't want to have anything to do with it. I was even, I was even angry at God that how did I get this way? How did you, how did you let me get this way? Okay. And I was challenged into that situation. And so I looked at it and said, uh, whatever you need me to do, I'll do. He says, I want you to spend just a minimal amount, but a very fixed time daily in God's Word. You're not writing a sermon, you're just letting it feed you. He says, then I want you to I want you to refuel emotionally. What does that mean? Okay, what does that mean? How do I refuel emotionally? Okay, everything I did centered around ministry. Something I enjoyed to do was to refuel. Well, refueling to me was working on graphics. I love to do graphics at that point. So I'd build graphics for the church. That was a refueling thing, but no, it wasn't. It was connected to ministry. I says, What do I what do I have to do? He says, I need you to find something that was a hobby that you did that has nothing to do with ministry. Nothing. Don't Tie it. I felt guilty. I'm giving myself permission to go do something that is totally unrelated to ministry. That was so foreign to me, it was like another language I was trying to learn. He says, What's it going to be? And I just I just blurted out. I used to love photography. He says, then go shoot pictures. So I got a camera. When we went on sabbatical, got a good camera, and I just went out and started shooting pictures. And it wasn't the I remember sitting in a hammock the first day of sabbatical going, How did I get here? I was just totally disconnected. I just, I don't know, I didn't care about anything, didn't want to do anything, didn't want to eat, didn't want to do nothing. I just, it was horrible. And I beg week after week went by, and it wasn't until the first month passed that I felt like I was making some headway. And it was one of these times, I'll never forget it. I was I was down on my knees out in the middle of the woods with my camera. And I used to like when I was back when cameras weren't as fancy as they were today, the camera I had was really wonderful. I was laying down in the dirt in the woods, taking a picture of a little flower that had grown up underneath a mushroom. And it had come out, its stem had come out between the I call them the gills. There's a I'm sure there's a better name for that, but the gills underneath the the mushroom. And it had grown up and it was blooming on top. The little tiny picture that the whole the whole picture couldn't be more than that big, but I was right there looking underneath that mushroom. And that was the first time I really had God speak to me about me, which was really cool because I'd always been speaking about other people. And my time with God personally was it always would bend to uh well, how could this affect other people? How I'm surely other people are going to be like this as well. God, how do you want this to fit with them? And there was always that end to it, and it always could tie into something, but there was never a uh, there was never a uh uh what about you, you know, to this. Make them application deeper, make it bigger, make it better, and applied to me. And I remember him saying, this is simple just nudge in my heart, if I care about that, I care about you and where you're at right now. And I just cast that off. And I thought, oh man, yeah, well sure, I'm sure he is, but yeah, I I just I couldn't love myself at that moment. And so for the rest of that two months that we're left there, God nudged my heart over and over and over again, just that he loved me and that he cared and wanted me to know that. And I go back to that picture often, it sits in my phone in a special highlighted spot that I go back to and I look at it. Because those who deal with this area of depression, mine was brought on by stress. It wasn't a chemical imbalance. Depression was brought on by stress, uh, an overcommitment, a unrealized expectations uh that were that I put on myself for things that aren't there. Um and and as I read this book that John gave me uh and the tools that were there, I lacked those tools. I lacked the tools that were needed to be able to deal with this. And he he helped me see what those tools are so that I could put them in my toolbox. Because anyone who deals with depression, and I would I would encourage you if you're struggling with this area to recognize that you will always have depression or anxiety nipping at your heels. I'm sorry, I wish I could tell you different, but it is gonna be that way. It will always be nipping at your heels. But when you have the right tools, you know exactly what to do. You can reach in, grab that spiritual tool, is what I'm talking about, and and fix that area, address the problem. If you don't have the right tool, you're working without a net. You're you're gonna face that problem and it's gonna eat at you, and you begin to spiral downward. And I can tell, and in fact, I'm in a season right now, I can tell when when that nipping becomes a bite and and I feel myself being pulled towards that again. It is a battle that is always there, and I have to have the intentionality to address that problem. And sometimes you're just exhausted with it, but you know how to address it.

Speaker 2 48:46

Yeah.

Speaker 1 48:46

And when you don't know how to address it going into it, that's a real problem. Yeah, that's a real problem.

Speaker 48:53

So um the interesting thing is I feel like sometimes I struggle mentally with that aspect. Obviously, I'm not like working at church, but in a sense of, you know, caring for things that need to be taken care of. And then um there I always say there's a little bit of um selfish desires for me to have the hobbies.

Speaker 2 49:16

Sure.

Speaker 49:16

I have loads of hobbies. If you ever need any um ideas, I I got an extra hobby for you to borrow. Um, I have loads of fun ideas, but I and I so I struggle with a balance between wanting to pour, you know, good goodness into the children and being excited and thankful and you know, all of the thing, and then feeling like the Susie Homemaker type of deal. And well, I just need a little time to myself and I want to do something fun.

Speaker 2 49:48

Sure.

Speaker 49:48

So that there's something that makes me feel like a little bit um frustrated and angsty and like, oh, I I'm gonna get so mad if I can't just take a break or whatever. So that and then whether it's helping friends and stuff too. But the other side is um I've been dealing with a lot of grief the last um year or so. So um, which you um, you know, you came j like right around the time um time um my sister passed away, um, where you they announced like you know you know got announced to the whole church. And um so I right now I'm kind of the opposite where I'm like, if I'm re if I am as b if busy, busy, busy, then I don't have time to be sad.

Speaker 1 50:31

Yeah. And how unhealthy is that? Isn't that terrible?

Speaker 50:34

It is so I um so we lost my uncle, um my uncle John um passed away last May, who was my sister's favorite, um one of my um her favorite people in the whole world. And then um she and then she had to she missed the funeral for a liver infection that put her in the hospital.

Speaker 1 50:52

Oh my goodness.

Speaker 50:53

So we we and we were actually out of um town to go to it.

Speaker 2 50:58

Right.

Speaker 50:58

So it f f wrong hospital, wrong whole thing. Yeah, it is a disaster. And then we're just thinking, because liver issues, um, this is completely brabbitrail, but liver issues never there's not a good way to describe the symptoms of them. They show up in a weird way. So she goes, Oh, my back hurts, oh I'm having like this, you know, my mu I'm like, I'm like, did you hurt your back lifting Lydia over the bed? Or what get over it? We have we have to go somewhere. But like she's in tears, but she never really cried for like pain. She cried for, you know, if she was angry, but like she was upset and like something was wrong. We were um it was a whole thing. But then a few months later, she got a same sim a similar woman that um and then it was like a bile duct infection that turned um into sepsis, and then within 48 hours um of getting to the hospital, she was just gone.

Speaker 1 51:56

So how'd you deal with the grief?

Speaker 51:57

I mean, what did you do with that when you uh cr I um let's just say I was hanging on by a thread. Yeah. Had a seven-week old baby who didn't like my breast milk, and um he's my friend took um took the kids for um a night, and then um he drank formula, which I had uh given her as a backup, and he smiled at her, my friend, and was happy for like the first time in seven weeks.

Speaker 1 52:25

So you learned something.

Speaker 52:27

So I um he had chummy troubles. My sister passed, and I'm just like, what am um postpartum sucks anyway? Like people say terrible twos. I love two-year-olds, I think they're a blast.

Speaker 2 52:39

They're fun.

Speaker 52:40

When a tiny itty bitty baby is not happy that they're supposed to be like this little angel that just sleeps all the time, and that this one wouldn't let me put him down, and he was like screaming. I'm like, this is not what I signed up for. But so anyway, there wasn't like there's been times of like joy like, you know, bittersweet, like in a good way moments of talking to um uh Lydia about it.

Speaker 2 53:06

Right.

Speaker 53:06

And then there's been times where it's like hits hits you in the gut.

Speaker 2 53:09

Sure.

Speaker 53:10

And so to be honest, like it's been a lot of, you know, um, you know, latching onto like, you know, a symbolism or like, well, I'm gonna sm so cherries is my little godwink for her because one of the last things that I remember her asking my opinion for was should I get this water cup or this water cup? And she asked Lydia, and Lydia says the p the one with the pink stripes and the cherries. Okay. So now I buy stuff with cherries, and it reminds me of like a good way to deal with a gloss or something. And so I b I found a book at the Christian bookstore and it was for helping your children through stuff. Um, and it like then the last page has a bunch of activities you could do to remember somebody and a list of Bible verses. So it's like it's hard to try to remember those things when you're just like, Well, this sucks. I want her back. Yeah. So like I'm torn between two types, you know, I guess two types of those depressions. And it's like, well, I don't want to be burnt out, but I don't want to sit and think about being sad.

Speaker 1 54:10

Right, right. I think there's a big difference in in in recognizing being down and being depressed.

Speaker 54:17

Yeah.

Speaker 1 54:17

Life is full of ups and downs. Depression is when you go down and you keep going down and it spirals and it feeds on itself. And one of the big indicators of that is is your view of yourself, your um your self-talk. Let's call it that. How how you talk about yourself. And again, there are seasons where this is you're doing wonderful, and then there are other times when you do absolutely horrible at this, and you have to recognize it for what it is and deal with it. Sometimes you don't have the energy to do that, but and you need somebody to catch your attention. This is what you're doing. Stop that. You know, and that somebody comes in and says that, has permission to do that. But self-talk is a big, a big component of it, speaking to yourself positively.

Speaker 55:07

Uh and th and remembering what God says to us. Like, you know, we there's so many good verses about like our identity in Christ.

Speaker 2 55:15

Yep.

Speaker 55:16

So if we I I love to s um practice those over like the four-year-old, and she and I tried to teach her this thing I had we were talking earlier um about AI, and that it couldn't be, you know, be nice as a tool, but then sometimes, you know, we there's a lot in the in the news and it could people are like, oh no. And but one thing I ha asked it to come up with a really sweet bedtime liturgy that talks about like um who we are um in God and all the um and it was yeah, it was really cute. And so now Lydia likes to ask me, Who am I? And um and uh like you're God's child, and like um and oh yeah, no, it's who made me, God made you. Why why? And it's to love him and glorify him. And then there's a whole list, and so she's got some memorized, and so she likes to take it to um turn it to me so it's really cute. And so the then the um AI said, Well, kids really learn the best through songs. I'm like, Yeah, but sometimes I'm we're talking about denominations, sometimes I miss the Lutheran liturgies and the c column answers. Repeat, yeah. I think that's a fun traditional thing that's you know, um not always um not done. I don't know if it was ever ever part of like Assemblies Again, but um I know it's not part of most contemporary um services or like, oh, this is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

Speaker 2 56:41

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 56:42

But like you know, as far as grief goes, I you know, I guess I wouldn't have said it's like suit like major depression, but and w one hand it's like, yeah, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me, but then I I almost can't let myself go go there. I'm like, oh I got kids to raise, I got things to do.

Speaker 1 57:03

Well sure everybody has that. We can't and so But you get to a point though in that picture where you don't have the ability to move forward. It just it just freezes. You're locked up, you're stuck.

Speaker 57:14

And when you're at that point in time, maybe screaming into a pillow in the basement might not work for them.

Speaker 1 57:20

No, it doesn't, but that means you're probably locked up emotionally, and that is a real difficulty. I sat in that basement and the superintendent's wife, uh, she was in the room with us and she says, I'm gonna share with you something here. And he looked over and says, Yeah, go ahead. And she shared, which was public knowledge to many friends and people around her, that she had struggled with depression for most of her adult life. And hers was a chemical imbalance. And if she did not have a medicine that brought a balance to it, she was just she called it crazy. She was just crazy. And he nodded his head and laughed, and that was one of those light moments in the room, but for me it was uh okay, are we gonna talk about this? Because I really need to talk about this. Because when you're locked up like that, your body is craving something that it doesn't have. Now, be really careful. It is possible for God to intervene in that situation in a momentary point of time for you to be delivered from that struggle. Okay. But if God did that for all of our problems, if if if he just answered everything immediately, healing immediately, food immediately, finances immediately, we would never have a struggle and we would never know that God could solve problems for us. And what faith in his word does, we'd never know that, because we're just saying, God, give me this, give me that, he does. You know, he's not this you know sugar daddy in the sky kind of a thing, okay? And so I I I had prayed that God would fix this, but it wasn't happening. Uh and that it had already gotten to this point where I was locked up. And so I I I I said, What do I need to do to get better this way? And she said, Well, before you go on sabbatical, you need to go to your doctor. And I remember going to the doctor, and she said she had said, You need to find out what medication you can go on that'll help bring balance to your emotions. And I thought this was really difficult for me because there's a difference between saying I have a struggle with something and then I'm on a medication that helps you think better, that helps you manage your emotions. I remember her telling me the first one she went on and it didn't work for her, and a second one she went on and it didn't work for her, because most of those medications, and if you're watching today, if the doctor says this is the medication for you and it's not working, go get another one. Get another one because you gotta find the one that works for you. And I'm not advocating going and get medication, but if it's what you need, you want to get it. Because if yours is a chemical imbalance, you need to bring balance to it. The medication will never fix the problem, it only brings balance so that you can use the tools so you can fix the problem, and that's really important in the picture. And so I remember I she went on a medication and uh uh she says this one has worked really well for me. They call it at that time was it the Cadillac of Medications? I thought, oh great, it's gonna have a Cadillac price too. But I at this point in time I was willing to do anything, and and so I got on the medication, and uh it was it was the first one they gave me, I tried, I tried the the what would have been like the Model T because I didn't want to pay the price. That's what I wanted. I didn't want to pay the price of the Cadillac. It didn't work at all. I uh it it didn't do anything. And then so I finally bit the bullet and got the right one, and we got that just in time for us to leave on the sabbatical. I started taking so I remember holding that pill in my hand and putting it in my mouth the first time, going, I I can't do this. I I just I was so every part of me did not want to do this. And she knew when I was starting my medication and she texted me and said, This is gonna be okay for you. You're going to get through this. And then she said these words, and you may not have to be on this forever. I thought, okay. And I remember being on it for the sabbatical. By the time I got to the end of it, it was bringing balance to it. I wasn't having those wild emotional internal swings. It was just balancing things out so that I could see things as they are and begin working on it. And um uh I stayed on it for a little over a year, and uh I was back into pastoring. There's a long travelogue there of good things that had happened. I remember coming back from sabbatical thinking, boy, I sure could have used a couple on another month or I wasn't quite healthy yet, but I had the tools and I was using the tools and it was good. And I remember October 24th, we were setting up for a Halloween outreach, and I said, I think I'm gonna go off of this and just see how I do. And I I s went off of the medication slowly over the course of time. Don't do a knee jerk. I'm I'm done today. You don't do that, you you have crazy things go on, okay? I weaned myself off of it over the course of several weeks and uh got off of it and stayed off of it. And that was a win for me. Uh it was a win for me. And that was 2008, that would have been 2009, 10, 11, this would have been 2012. I went off of it, somewhere right in there. I was off of it for quite some time, and then as recently as three years ago, twelve, thirty yeah, three years ago, I had this dive again emotionally and very difficult times, very stressful. And uh I just I I had the tools, but my emotions were out of control again. I thought, oh, I can I can do this, I can do this, I can I know what to do, and I couldn't do this. I needed help again to get balance, and I called up my doctor and says, Hey, I need to do this balance uh this medication again, and she says, Oh, I get it, we can go back on it. We'll put a low dose in. I did, and I went on it. And uh I think that it was Affixer XR was the name of it. And uh uh it just helped to bring balance again, and I was on it for uh six months, and then I took myself off of it again and got where I needed to be. So medication isn't for everyone, but don't be afraid of it, is what I'm getting at. And if you have to be one that has it, like our superintendent's wife did, for your whole lifetime, that's fine. Uh we don't think a thing of it if somebody has a thyroid that's not working right or or has glaucoma and they have to put drops in their eyes their whole life. We don't think a thing of it. But when it is attached to mental health, we go, Oh my goodness, that's terrible.

Speaker 1:03:52

Like somebody's replacing um prayer or God's word. Yeah. And and people get ostracized for it. And um, can you tell me more about some of the tools that help you? Um, like if you're spiraling. We talked a lot about anxiety um on a recent episode that is yet to be published, but um, like what what kinds of tools um helped you that people taught you?

Speaker 1 1:04:17

Yeah. Um, I wanted to I wanted to give your viewers the exact words that were shared with me. So I went back to that exact content. I'm gonna read it word for word so that you heard it the way I heard it, and I've interpreted it differently personally, but I want you to hear this. This comes from a book that John Opeluski wrote called Pastor Disaster. It's come out in another another version of it that is less about the story of the pastor disaster. It's called the Unshakable You. And I'm not here promoting a book or a man, but the man has gone through things, he's made a huge difference in my life and in the lives of countless people across our nation, uh, pastors and leaders in that as well. But it's called The Unshakable You. And here's listen to this closely. I chose to love myself as Jesus commanded, and that's very hard to do when you're experiencing depression. The self-talk, what you say about yourself, when nobody's around. Um John John makes a story about leaving a cup of coffee up on top of his car with his briefcase and driving off and uh pausing the car as the coffee spilt and and not having what he needed at work, and not having the computer at work, and sitting just saying over and over to himself, you're an idiot, you're an idiot, you're an idiot. And I'll tell you, that is that is negative self-talk, and it doesn't put you in the perspective of God. I know the tool, I know the fact. You just have to train yourself and return to the training, refresh the training, do it regularly, because that helps you see things in light. And trust instead of sharing. Shame, self-hatred, and a constant self-criticism. This is hard for a perfectionist. Okay? It's hard for a perfectionist because you always see things the way it should be, not the way it is. Even if there's improvement happening. And here's the next one. Choose to manage your anger instead of it it managing you. Choose to manage your anger instead of it managing you. Recognizing anger is a healthy, is healthy ways there are pause it again. Recognizing anger in healthy ways and responding wisely rather than reacting to it destructively.

Speaker 1:06:43

Could you have told me that yesterday?

Speaker 1 1:06:44

Yeah, that's the challenge. Anger is the lowest form of human response to anything. It's the lowest form. When people explode, it's the lowest form of communication, it's the lowest form of physical response. Being controlled in that takes time to be managed right. But if you are aware of the fact that you're struggling with depression or anxiety, and your natural response to everybody is anger or or um or shortness, which is really anger disguised. It's putting off your response because you don't have any more to give. That's really what that is. And I I've given all I can, and I can only give you a short response because if I go anymore, I'm gonna explode. Um that may be human, but that's all it is. It's certainly not a God response.

Speaker 1:07:36

Called for more.

Speaker 1 1:07:37

And we're we're called to do better than that, but that weighs heavy on somebody who is struggling with depression. So training yourself to recognize that anger is not the response that we want to have, it's a reaction to something bigger, and you gotta figure out what you're reacting to and work on that. I'm reacting to the fact that I'm exhausted. Then go sleep. I'm reacting to the fact that I I don't have any emotions for something, go do something else that refuels you. Okay, those kinds of things. The next one was I choose to protect myself from abusive people. Uh there are people in your life that all they do is speak negative, they don't need to be in your life. Okay. If they're a relative, isolate yourself from them. If they're a friend, they're not really a friend if they're abusive to you. I think there's enough to be said that. But toxic people, manipulative people, are damaging to who you are and to your view of yourself. And that's you gotta deal with those people. There are people in your life that you gotta work out because they are emotionally exhausting. And the next one would be choose to refuel emotionally. We talked about this earlier. Prioritize what remo refuels you and replenishes you, what rhythms bring health into the picture. I had to literally set a schedule while I was on sabbatical internally, and I'm getting up at whatever time I wake up and I'm gonna go out and shoot pictures. I'm going on a hike. I love hiking. Go on a hike, refuel, whatever fuel refuels you, do that. But it should not be part of what brought you into depression or anxiety, whatever the situation is. And the last one is choose to stay alert, remaining aware of your emotional signs, uh, things that are indicators for you, what are unhealthy patterns. I can tell you that if if I lose sleep, I have poor diet, and there's lots of stressors, if all three of those are in play, I am a major candidate for a crash or a major candidate for something going wrong. If one of them is in play, I gotta be wise of that because there's something pulling on me, it's draining me. I gotta know what those things are, be wise to it. And and another one is watching spiritual drift is a part of that staying alert. It's very easy to come to church every week, even as a pastor, and go through the motions of something and not be engaged spiritually connected to it. That's your responsibility as a Father of Christ to stay in tune with God and in his word and engaged in things. Because if you don't, that drift will bring you into all things secular, bring you into all things that the enemy can speak into and say, Oh, you don't need God, you don't need these things, you don't need that. Uh, and he'll pull you away from that relationship. There are there are a couple of verses that tie into this picture, and this is these are the ones that there were dozens of verses that came to me while I was going through this and have since come to me, but these verses really spoke to me. Philippians 4, 6 through 8. Don't worry about anything, instead pray about everything. Tell God what you need and talk to him for he is all talk to him for all he has done. Thank him for it. Then you'll experience God's peace that exceeds anything you can understand. His peace will guard your heart and your mind as you live in Jesus. And know, brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right and pure and lovely and adorable. Think on these things that are excellent and worthy of praise. That is a pattern of routine that can help you refuel emotionally, it can help you see yourself in the light of who you are in God, it can point you to where your source is. It can do all of those kinds of things for you. And the promise is perfect peace. Perfect peace can happen. Doesn't mean everything around you is perfect. It just means that inside you are back to a healthy state again. Another verse, Isaiah 26, uh, three out of the New Living Translation. Uh he will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you. So during a time of loss, during a time of grief, during a time of emptiness, during a time of darkness in your life, fix your thoughts on God, continue to keep them there, and put the right tools in play so that you can do what you need to do. And then the last one is this verse, John 14, 27, I am leaving you a gift of peace of mind and heart. And a peace I give to you is the one that the world does not give. So do not be troubled and do not be afraid. Those kinds of things are are a beginning point for individuals who are experiencing depression, who are experiencing these kinds of things in their life, and I think if they'll put those tools in play and work with them, they'll find a uh and they may need to have medication too.

Speaker 1:12:32

Yeah. So what I'm hearing is to avoid burnout, carve out time for things that you enjoy.

Speaker 1 1:12:38

Yeah.

Speaker 1:12:39

Would you say that is really important too if you're for moms?

Speaker 1 1:12:43

Yep, absolutely. Putting that in play is a great it's refueling emotionally. But the other tools that are in play, dealing with anger, because that's a natural byproduct of burnout, dealing with your self-talk, that's another one. Okay, and then guarding your who who are speaking into your life, the people that are abusive, and then recognizing that you have to stay alert all the time in those pictures. Uh you can never let your guard down on it, because when you do, it comes, it's always nipping, like I said, it's always nipping at your heels. It's always there, and you gotta you gotta be wise to it. You can give it a few bites, you can let it nip for a little bit because you're smart and you know what's going on and you have a little bit of time to work on it, but don't let it go too long because it will eventually bite. And when it bites, you gotta then you gotta really work hard at it.

Speaker 1:13:32

Yeah. That is you know, the rhythms I feel like are so important. And, you know, sometimes carving that time out to rest, we have to fight for it too. Like it's not it's not gonna our schedules fill fill up sometimes, even if we didn't put anything on our supposed to be. Oh, absolutely. You know, everything ever other people need you or other people have things going on. And then um, but I think personally I will um not I'm not gonna ever feel bad if I have a babysitter and I have a couple hours or a day to myself, and then trying to um whether it's um recharging or my um my new love lovely full full-time commitment of content creation and all of that stuff that I didn't realize was going to be as deep of a dive as it has turned into. But really, um that um, you know, is very uh you took me to church. So I I got some notes taken and I'm going to as far as um the uh I have to I do have I need to get that book as well. I hope as hopefully it's still in print.

Speaker 1 1:14:38

Yeah, oh absolutely. It's available on Amazon.

Speaker 1:14:40

Perfect.

Speaker 1 1:14:41

I will download it, Kindle it, whatever you want to do.

Speaker 1:14:43

I'm gonna link that in our show notes for sure.

Speaker 1 1:14:45

I'll give you a set of some verses too that are content driven.

Speaker 1:14:49

Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:14:49

That they can go back if they're struggling with this specific type of change.

Speaker 1:14:52

Maybe maybe I'll even make up a s a special set of bookmarks or something.

Speaker 1 1:14:56

Something.

Speaker 1:14:56

So there's um there's um so much that it um is encouraging and that um and I love how you touched on the two different types of depression. There's like the situational kind, you know, I've been dealing with grief and trying to learn, you know, some healthy, some not so healthy things that I've done to try to make um feel better. And you know, I admit that I um could use a little bit more prayer in that too. But we can't, it's not uh if there's ever things that is not getting better with prayer and worship and community, sure, that sometimes we need a little help.

Speaker 2 1:15:34

Yeah.

Speaker 1:15:34

And that you said that we're getting a balance and tools. Yeah. It's we're not saying that the meds are gonna fix everything, but it can be something um a stepping stone to get better. But like as far as that goes, that um I got my notes and I could almost write my um, you know, I love it. Um, and then you said that you love hiking and being in nature. Yeah, it's a bit neutral for me. I'm going to um we'll have to make plans because I think you're pretty close to one of my favorite scenic spots. Oh, okay. And I th I that's neat. But um this has been um you had a perfect nod and uh you were on a roll, so I didn't interrupt, but um you just said one of the verses that um Holly in episode 10 shared about um the uh Philippians 4, 6. She said six and seven, so you piggybacked off it perfectly, and the um a lot of kids can say whatever in a naughty way, but we can say whatever. I say whatever is pure, whatever whatever is holy, whatever's lovely and true. Think about such things, right? So that about sums it up. Thank you for honored to be here.

Speaker 1 1:16:48

Thanks for being a part of it.

Speaker 1:16:50

So, as always, check out um uh companion devotional over on Substack, and all of the things are available on the link tree. Check out the mug, the t shirt, the bookmarks, you name it. And that was a nice clink for the microphone. We'll see if we can get that edited in post. Um, we'll see you next time. Have a great day.