I remember when I first hit burnout and had to move to the other side of the globe back home, a friend had asked me if I felt like I failed. At that point I was too exhausted to even consider what that meant. I was at the state where I was thinking more of the losses of leaving the country I was serving in, leaving the ministry I was part of, and trying to understand what was ahead. My emotions were grieving from the losses, while feeling confused about the next season. I did not have the capacity to think if I had failed, when I was grieving what I had lost. 

In the last few years I have thought more on how burnout can appear to make someone feel like they are a failure. Or then perhaps the assumption that others may view burnout as a point of failure. The more I have thought about it, the more I see it from a different perspective: Someone who has hit burnout has been pushed beyond the capacity that they are created to do. Perhaps there are health reasons, other difficult relationships, certain circumstances, and situations that are out of one’s control which can all contribute to a person’s burnout.

Someone who has hit burnout has had stressors pile up and it causes them to run on stress adrenaline until they have no more capacity to function in the way they were created. Each one of us have different abilities with different capacities. We all learn throughout our lives what routines and rhythms work for each of us. What works for you may not work for me, and vice versa. That does not mean you or I are less than the other, we are simply created with different capacities. 

If someone hits burnout, hopefully they realise the pace they were traveling did not work for them. It is a time to rest, be restored and then re-evaluate a different pace to do life. It is not a failure. It is a time to realise that there was too much on the plate, too many expectations piled on, pushing one beyond capacity to a point of burnout. It is not failure.