"How We Got Here"

Imagine you are on a treadmill at the gym.

You set it at a comfortable walking pace. You could keep going like this for a long time.

Then someone standing behind you increases the speed by one-tenth of a mile per hour. You do not exactly notice. Your legs move a little faster, and you adjust.

A few minutes later, the person does it again.

Then again.

Every increase is small enough to absorb, so you keep moving.

An hour later, you are in a dead sprint. Your shirt is soaked, your legs are burning, and you cannot remember when you stopped walking. You never agreed to run. Someone else was setting the pace, and you kept matching it.

That is the most accurate description I have for what has happened to many of us over the past thirty years.

Nobody woke up one morning and decided to become exhausted. Nobody looked at life at twenty-five and said, “I think I will build my identity around my output and keep running until something gives.”

Yet here we are. Millions of people are moving at a pace that is quietly taking them apart, and most could not tell you how they reached it.

That is what this chapter is about.

If you are going to get out of the current, you need to understand how the water became so fast. This is not simply a personal discipline problem. There are forces around us that have been increasing the pace for years.

Once you see what has been touching the dial, it becomes harder for those forces to keep moving you without your noticing.

I am old enough to remember when you left work and were actually finished working.

My first seven years as a counselor were with a nonprofit organization. I saw four or five clients a day, and I was off Friday through Sunday each week. We took two months off during the summer.

I had no idea how good I had it.

I coached my son’s soccer team and my daughter’s softball team. I worked on my doctoral studies. I had hobbies.

When I walked out of the counseling center at the end of the day, I was free to be with family and friends. I drove home with nothing in the car but the radio. No email followed me. Nobody expected an answer from me at ten o’clock that night.

When I left the office, the office stayed there.

Weekends felt different too. Saturday was for ballgames, yardwork, and time with family. Sunday was church, lunch, and a long afternoon that nobody had filled in advance.

I am not suggesting that life was perfect. People had financial problems, difficult marriages, illnesses, and painful years, just as they do now.

What we had was margin.

There was space between things.

That space has largely disappeared, and I do not think most of us noticed it leaving.

Think about a normal day now.

You wake up and reach for your phone before your feet touch the floor. Email. Text messages. News. Whatever happened overnight.

You have not brushed your teeth, and your mind is already processing other people’s needs.

You get yourself ready and, if you have children at home, get them ready too. From there, the day accelerates. Meetings. Messages. Calls. Deadlines. Lunch eaten while doing something else—or skipped altogether.

The afternoon disappears.

Then there is dinner, homework, practice, and the email that arrived while you were at practice. By the time you finally sit down, you are too tired to think but somehow not too tired to scroll through your phone for another hour.

Then you go to sleep and do it again.

Some version of that describes nearly everyone who sits across from me.

Here is what troubles me: we have accepted it as normal.

We looked at a pace that would have struck our grandparents as unreasonable and said, “Well, this is simply how life works now.”

It does not have to be.

I want to be clear that I like technology.

I am not going to tell you to throw your phone into a lake and move to the woods. Nancy and I can see our grandchildren’s faces whenever we want, even when they are far away, and I do not take that lightly.

Technology has given us remarkable things.

I also think we need to be honest about the trade.

The phone erased much of the line between work and rest.

There used to be a beginning and an end to the workday. Now work is in your pocket, on your nightstand, and buzzing during your child’s game.

In many workplaces, the expectation is no longer that you will be available during business hours. The expectation is that you will be available.

We accepted that change without much of a conversation.

That was a significant bump on the treadmill, but it happened gradually enough that most of us adjusted before we understood what we were giving up.

The phone also handed us comparison on a scale no previous generation experienced.

Every time you pick it up, you are looking at the best moments from other people’s lives. Their vacations. Promotions. Renovated kitchens. Well-behaved children. Anniversary trips.

Something happens inside us when we see all of that. It is not always envy, at least not in the obvious sense. It is more like a running deficit.

We begin to feel behind.

We think that if we worked a little harder, earned a little more, organized ourselves better, or finally got serious, perhaps our lives could look like that too.

Several years ago, I counseled a young mother who told me she felt like a failure every time she opened Instagram.

She had a good job, a solid marriage, and a healthy baby. By almost any measure, her life was going well.

But every time she scrolled, she saw mothers who appeared thinner and happier, with cleaner houses and more creative birthday parties.

She knew she was seeing only the polished parts of their lives. She understood that social media was a highlight reel. Knowing that, however, did not make the feeling of inadequacy go away.

She had already seen through the illusion, but the illusion was still wearing her down.

I have watched that happen to a great many people.

Knowing that social media is selective does not keep comparison from finding a way in.

Somewhere along the way, our culture began preaching a gospel of work.

Not usually from pulpits. It came through podcasts, airport bookstores, business conferences, and motivational accounts.

Outwork everyone.

Sleep is for people without ambition.

Put in ten thousand hours.

Be up before dawn and still working after everyone else has quit.

I have listened to successful men brag about sleeping four hours a night the way someone might brag about finishing a marathon.

I have heard executives describe working seven days a week as evidence of character.

The second half of that message is rarely spoken, but it is always there:

If you cannot keep up, that tells us something about you.

That was another bump on the treadmill.

The pressure reaches almost every stage of life now.

If your five-year-old is not in three activities, are you doing enough?

If your teenager is not building a résumé, will they ever get into the right school?

If you are not climbing as quickly as the people you graduated with, have you fallen behind?

The pressure begins earlier with each generation, and it does not let up.

What troubles me most is that we have dressed all of this up as virtue.

We admire people who never stop, provided we call it passion, drive, or dedication.

A man works eighty hours a week, and we think, “There is someone who has his life together.”

We do not ask what his marriage is like.

We do not wonder whether his children know him.

We do not ask when he last sat quietly with God without reaching for his phone.

We see the output and move on.

I know because I did it.

There was a stretch of years when I wore my schedule like a trophy. I was proud of the number of clients I could see and the number of responsibilities I could carry.

People affirmed it.

“I don’t know how you do it all,” they would say.

I would smile and give some modest answer.

The honest answer was, “Not well. I am not doing any of it well.”

But I did not say that.

At the time, I am not sure I knew it.

This is the section I have rewritten more than any other part of the book because I do not want to be unfair to people I love.

I love the church. I have spent most of my adult life in ministry, and I believe deeply in what God does through His people.

I have also watched faithful, generous, God-loving people serve, lead, and give until there was almost nothing left.

Often, the response they received was gratitude instead of concern.

Someone said, “Thank you for your faithfulness,” to a person who needed someone to say, “You need to stop.”

That may be the hardest bump to recognize because of where it comes from.

The church has its own current, and it often reaches us through spiritual language.

In some churches, busyness begins to look like godliness. The more you serve, the more spiritual you appear. The more committees you join, the more valuable you seem.

Say no to something, and you may feel guilty for days.

Step away from a ministry role because you are exhausted, and the unspoken conclusion may be that your faith was not strong enough to keep going.

I spoke with a pastor not long ago who had not taken a real vacation in three years.

Three years.

He told me he was afraid the church would come apart if he left.

I said, “If the church falls apart because you take a week away, then either you have built something unhealthy or you do not trust the God you preach about every Sunday.”

He did not enjoy hearing that.

He also did not argue with it.

Here is what I wish were said from more pulpits:

God never asked you to burn out for Him.

It is not in the Bible.

What we do find in Scripture is a God who rested on the seventh day—not because He was tired, but because He was showing us something about how life is meant to work.

Work and rest were both built into the design.

Skipping the rest is not extra faithfulness. It is ignoring the design and calling that obedience.

It is all right to say no at church.

It is all right to step away from leading a group when you are running on empty.

It is all right to sit toward the back on Sunday morning and receive instead of serving.

There are seasons to pour out, and there are seasons to be filled.

God is not tallying your volunteer hours before deciding how He feels about you.

That is the current talking, and it has learned to do a fairly convincing impression of your Father.

Step back and you can see the whole thing more clearly.

Technology weakened the boundaries.

Social media supplied the comparison.

The culture taught us that our worth was tied to our work.

And in some places, the church blessed the arrangement.

Each change was small enough to absorb.

Taken together, they were enough to take a person apart.

You stepped onto the treadmill twenty or thirty years ago at a walk. Now you are sprinting, and nearly everyone else in the room is sprinting too, so the pace feels normal.

There is one important difference between you and the person in my treadmill illustration.

He did not know someone was touching the controls.

You do now.

That matters more than it may seem.

When you understand that the current is not entirely your fault, you can stop treating your exhaustion as a personal failure.

Your tiredness does not necessarily mean you are weak.

It may mean you have been trying to live at a pace no human being was designed to sustain.

God designed a rhythm instead.

Work and rest.

Pouring out and being filled.

Giving and receiving.

Somewhere along the way, we abandoned that rhythm and tried to carry the entire load ourselves, hoping effort would cover the difference.

It was never going to.

We were never meant to keep up.

Before you move on, sit with your own life for a moment.

Look at the pace.

Look at the people and forces that helped set it.

Then ask yourself one question:

Is this really how God wants me to live?

I suspect you already know the answer.

Nobody chose the sprint. The speed increased a little at a time, and we adjusted. Before moving on, take a few minutes to trace how the pace changed in your own life.

1. Picture the treadmill. What were the bumps that increased your pace over the years—a job change, a smartphone, a season of parenting, financial pressure, or an expectation at church?

2. Where has technology erased the boundary between your work and your rest? Name the particular time of day when it most often happens.

3. When you scroll through social media, whose highlight reel leaves you feeling behind? What does it suggest that you should be doing, owning, or becoming?

4. Have you ever called exhaustion faithfulness or described burnout as service? Where might you be doing that now?

5. Is this really how God wants you to live? Sit with the question before explaining your answer away. What is your honest first response?

1. Choose one boundary technology has erased and put it back this week. Turn off email after a set hour, leave your phone outside the bedroom, or create one part of the day when you are unavailable. Choose one boundary, not five.

2. Write down the single cultural, technological, workplace, or church expectation that increased your pace the most. Name it specifically. You cannot resist a current you are unwilling to admit is pulling you.

Lord, I did not choose this pace, but I have been carried by it. Open my eyes to the forces that have shaped me without my permission. Help me stop treating my exhaustion as a personal failure and begin choosing a different way to live. Amen.