stress

Several years ago, I felt a strong pull to wake up an hour earlier so I could double my prayer and bible study time.  During this period, I experienced what I would describe as exponential growth in my faith and love for Jesus.  I was feeling both the presence of God and an indescribable joy on a consistent basis.  A few months in, I began feeling hungry for more growth and I vividly remember praying this prayer: “God, I’m asking You to prune me.  I don’t care how much it hurts or how long it lasts, I just want to grow.  I can handle it.” 

Knowing what I know now, I can’t tell you how naïve that prayer was. No doubt, I genuinely wanted to grow stronger in my relationship with God – it was a pure desire.  And I knew that God will always say yes to a request that is in line with His will for my life.  But there is more to this story… 

The pruning began immediately… first with difficult relationships at work.  Although never perfect, throughout my career, I had mostly experienced good work relationships and some of my greatest friendships came from the workplace.  But this was a challenging period of trying to balance managing employees and friendship with employees.  I suspect it was difficult for them as well.  In time, this did work itself out but not without some tough discussions and uncomfortable pain points.  This situation helped me grow in experience, not only as a manager, but as a manager from a Christian viewpoint.  It provided an opportunity to see things from another person’s perspective, an opportunity to see I am not always right.   

Next, I began experiencing subtle exclusion in a Christian friendship group, something I never would have expected.  These were friends who seemed to have one foot in and one foot out when it came to their faith and I felt I was sometimes excluded because of my conservatism.  Of course, it may have been for another reason but it was still hurtful to feel excluded, especially by professed Christians. Honestly, it wasn’t until a couple of years later that I looked back on that hurt and was reminded that all Christians are in different stages of their walk with the Lord.  Just as God is patient with me in the areas I am still growing, I must be patient and loving with others.   

Not long after my “prune me” prayer, I was asked to take on a new role at work.  The company had just gone through a merger.  The surviving executive management team made the decision to move the accounting for both companies to North Carolina where I was located.  None of the existing employees were willing to relocate so I was asked to lead the transition.  This consisted of hiring a new team and traveling with them for several weeks to train with the departing teams.  I accepted the offer knowing it was a good career move.

The job of pouring through resumes, interviewing, and onboarding 13 new employees all by itself was a feat I hadn’t anticipated.  This, in addition to the actual workload, travel, training, and stress (for both new and old employees), was truly unmanageable on my own… but the thought of failing or giving up was contrary to my personality.  Three months in, I did gather the courage to speak to my Supervisor about the workload.  He nodded, acknowledged, and then did nothing.  Five months in, I consulted with the Worldwide Controller.  I admitted the workload was too great and although every effort was put forth to accomplish the goal, including extremely long hours, deadlines were being missed and employee work was not receiving proper review.  His solution: “Just don’t work the long hours.”  Finally, eight months in, I gathered the courage to write a letter to my Supervisor, the Worldwide Controller, and the CFO.  I was slowly dying, and I was desperate. 

The CFO took action.  She immediately provided budget and approval to hire another manager to assist with team oversight and work review.  But by the time the new manager was onboard, it was too late for me.  Less than a year in, I experienced what I label ‘medical burnout’ which consisted of agitation, anger, depression, anxiety, emotional exhaustion, and an inability to concentrate, to name a few.  Before I knew it, I found myself on anti-anxiety and anti-depressant medications.  But I was grateful to have help.  Unfortunately, the new manager worked for only two months before quitting.  Before he left, he looked at me with regret and said, “I don’t know how you have been doing this.  It’s just too much.  I’m sorry.” 

Thankfully, though much damage had already been done, I finally had enough sense to quit that job and started finding my way back to a healthy lifestyle, at which point I had a short reprieve from further challenges.  During this time, I met my husband, Joe.  After a rather long absence from dating, I was excited to meet someone who was running the same Christian race as I was, not one of perfection (obviously) but one of desire.  This was a time of blessing.       

Nine months into my relationship with Joe, I began experiencing sleep deprivation related to very frequent awakenings and, most days, I found myself feeling ill or simply too tired to do anything.  While I was blessed to have an extremely patient and understanding boyfriend, this was a trying time for both Joe and me.  My lack of energy was not only debilitating for me, but it robbed someone who had energy of enjoying life with me.  To this day, I continue to be grateful for Joe’s godly perseverance and long-suffering.  We married after 18 months of dating, and my sleep deprivation greatly impacted my ability to fully enjoy both planning and attending my own wedding.  I come from an exceptionally large extended family.  The guest list on its own caused me a huge amount of anxiety.  After discussing my decreased capacity to manage stress, we discarded the guest list and went with immediate family and wedding party only.  While I was sad to exclude people I loved from my wedding, I was relieved by our choice of simplicity. 

It took close to a year following my sleep challenge onset before I was diagnosed with a condition called Hypopnea which results in frequent awakenings due to decreased oxygen while sleeping.  It essentially prevents you from having the kind of deep REM sleep we all need to be rested.  Two months following our wedding, I found myself sleeping through use of a CPAP machine and a very unattractive face mask, less than desirable for this newlywed… but, ah, I was sleeping!  

I could go on…  Suffice to say, these were not the happiest years of my life, but they were also not without their blessings.  I did, indeed, learn… and grow. 

As a human who experiences pain and suffering just like you do, I found out that I DID, in fact, care how much the pruning hurt and I DID, in fact, care how long it lasted.  Even more humbling, I discovered that “I” couldn’t handle anything.  While I did cling to God for strength during these times, I could plainly see that I overestimated my ability to be a consistent representative of Him during the hard times.  There were times when people could clearly see that God was guiding my hope and actions, but there were other times when my responses were less than God-like.  I was not as strong in my faith walk as I had imagined.  And this was a part of my pruning.  Talk about a growing ‘moment’!

Some of you may be thinking, “Hey, we all go through hard times… what makes your challenges any different and what makes you so certain that God was answering your prayer for pruning?”  I know that God was answering my prayer because of the numerous and continuous challenges I experienced, only some of which have been shared here.  These challenges were far beyond (in duration and number) anything I had ever before experienced.  But that doesn’t mean pruning doesn’t come without a request for it. 

The Father prunes as He sees fit.  God’s will for us is to become the people He created us to be, which includes growing in maturity and character… becoming more like Jesus.  And God knows that we often cannot obtain that growth without going through the fire that burns away our impurities.  Sound mean?  Let’s take an example of a three-year-old child.  Left undisciplined, that child becomes a person of extremely poor manners.  Given everything he or she desires, that child becomes spoiled, lacking appreciation for anything.  I don’t know about you, but I generally prefer NOT to be around undisciplined and spoiled children (or adults)!  God created us.  We are His children and He wants us to be the best we can possibly be and He wants us to represent His character well.  God’s pruning (and His discipline… which I’ll reserve for a future post) comes completely out of His love for us.

Others may be asking, “Did God ‘cause’ the burnout?”  Absolutely not!  God gives us free will… but we humans do not always make the best free will choices.  God could interfere and make everything perfect but then we would no longer have free will and those would be His choices instead of our own.  So God simply ‘allows’ our choices to have their natural consequences.  In my case, He allowed sin, both my sin and the sin of others, to have its natural consequences… and, through sin and circumstances, God allowed me to see my weaknesses so that I would know where I needed to grow.  For example, had I analyzed my work experience properly, I would have seen my sin of ‘pride’ in not wanting to be seen as a failure when, clearly, I should have quit long before I experienced burnout.  Pressing on to succeed at a task that was too big for me lead to the natural consequence of my burnout.        

I learned some other things as well.  In experiencing anxiety and depression, God equipped me to better understand others who struggle with these things on a chronic basis.  By suffering from extreme exhaustion stemming from my sleep disorder, I am better able to understand those with insomnia and other sleep conditions.  My empathy for others in these areas increased.  Empathy for the pain and suffering of others is, definitely, a characteristic of Jesus. 

Finally, I would be remiss not to point out God’s grace in my suffering.  While my few years of pruning were extremely painful, God never allowed more than He knew I could handle.  While simultaneously honoring my prayer request, He gave me moments of hope and sunshine to sustain me through the next challenge.  These intermittent bursts of reprieve showed God’s love and care throughout the entire process… and He is a God I will never let go of.