You're Not Burned Out. You're Being Robbed.

A few days ago I was walking down an aisle at the grocery store and passed a young family trying to decide which box of whatever to get.

The dad was in control of the cart. In the child seat was a toddler — maybe two or three years old. The mom was talking but the dad was absorbed in his phone. And the toddler? Also staring into a screen.

My heart broke.

Families can’t be together anymore without everyone’s face buried in a screen. And a child — a baby, really — being parented by Distraction. What I saw was a snapshot, a moment in time but I notice it everywhere I go. People physically together but “socializing” somewhere else entirely.

Distraction is a thief.

It doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t kick the door in — it just slips in quietly while you’re looking at something else, and walks out with everything that mattered.

It’s sold as FOMO — the fear of missing out.

Busyness is sold as purpose.

Then comes another lie: this is just how life is...

“It’s unavoidable.”

“Everybody is in the same boat.” Another lie sold as Belonging.

Lies that have rendered us bankrupt of something more precious than gold, more valuable than anything that only Blood could buy back: our souls.

The enemy of our souls comes to steal, kill, and destroy — not through dramatic displays of destruction, but through the tiny little taps of minor inconveniences and Distractions that leave very little room for God, and all the room for the enemy to seed his lies into the soil of our mind. His goal is to erode our soul and mind to the point that his thoughts are indistinguishable from ours. If he can hijack our mind, he only has to wait it out until your soul is a dry and barren wasteland. If he can hijack your mind, he can harden your heart.

Distraction opens up our internal home for the thief to walk right in and steal everything you value right from under you — walks past you in the hall, says thanks for the goods, walks out the door, and you didn’t even notice.

Distraction is not a new tactic of the Enemy, but his ability to wield it has never been easier. Distraction seems so pervasive it begs the question: is it even possible to fight back and win?

With God all things are possible.

Absolutely! And we must. We must rebuild the walls that guard our hearts and our minds. Our very lives depend on it. It sounds dramatic, and in many ways that’s because it is.

We are not without help. We are not without hope!

We cannot truly live with intention if we continue to dance with the Thief of Distraction and the Enemy of our souls.

My hope here is not to merely point out the negative and be done with it. That is not actually helpful or hopeful. There’s enough doom and gloom noise out there and I have no desire to contribute to it. No, thank you!

I want to be of help to those of us who are ready and willing to do the work of truly reclaiming our attention — and start really living in our God-given purpose.

So let’s set the stage.

We are formed by what we behold. The question is not “am I being formed?” but “by what am I being formed?”

We get answers by looking at the fruit coming out of our lives. What comes out of my mouth the most? What is manifesting most often in my body? What are my most frequent impulses?

Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

We’re all familiar with the idea that “you are what you eat”. Every cell in our body is built by what we consume. If we’re constantly eating junk food, the body starts to break down from lack of sufficient nutrition.

Garbage in, garbage out.

It’s an uncomfortable truth we all know but don’t want to talk about because it requires us to actually make different decisions.

Paul said in Romans 12:2 to be transformed by the renewing of your mind and to not be conformed to this world. He understood this ancient truth 2,000 years before neuroscience put a science-y label on it.

This world is forming you whether you consent to it or not.

The good news is that formation works in both directions.

What you give your attention to shapes you. Which means redirecting your attention — slowly and imperfectly — toward the true, good, and beautiful starts reshaping you too.

Distraction is one of many tools the kingdom of darkness — yes, I’m talking about real unseen-realm spiritual forces — uses to keep people moving along the assembly line of rote stupor.

The enemy benefits in keeping you distracted, not paying attention to your thoughts, what you are consuming, what your habits are. When the borders and gates are down it allows in the very force whose sole plan and goal is to steal, kill, and destroy you.

The Battle of Distraction is not merely a neurological chemical addiction. It’s a battle for the human soul, heart, and mind.

Whatever can capture the mind can influence the heart, and whatever influences the heart possesses dominion of the soul.

That is scary. It’s not merely a time management issue — it’s about reclaiming vigilance toward what we allow to set up shop in our minds.

I’ve been reading C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, a short yet powerful fictionalized book. It’s written in the form of letters from a high-ranking demon named Screwtape to his demon-in-training nephew, Wormwood.

Screwtape is giving Wormwood instruction, praise, and corrections on how to best capture the human heart for the Kingdom of darkness. It’s not through dramatic mortal sins but through the tiny onslaughts of Distraction that end up claiming his “patient’s” soul.

It’s never just the major moments, it’s the death from a thousand cuts.

And we’re none the wiser because now Distraction is normalized and just part of our modern day life.

Screwtape instructs Wormwood that their goal isn’t to eliminate all “that smells of the Enemy [i.e. God]”, but to “keep shoving all the virtues outward till they are finally located in the circle of fantasy, and all the desirable qualities inward into the Will. It is only insofar as they reach the will and are there embodied in habits that the virtues are really fatal to us”.

If the enemy can make virtues — which inherently require intention — seem impossible, like fantasy, then we’re much more easily led to succumb to our base impulses. If he can keep our attention fractured, we’re easier to control and manipulate.

There is a reason we are told to practice the presence of God as Brother Lawrence exhorts. Distraction is what pushes us, with no effort at all, onto the path of least resistance.

“Be sober minded: be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood around the world.” 1 Peter 5:8–9.

What brings me solace is knowing that I’m not alone in this battle of Distraction — coming up against an ancient enemy using modern day tactics of subversion.

“For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.” 2 Peter 2:19b

Naming the problem, however, is half the battle. We can’t merely be aware of a problem and jump straight into trying to solve it. We need to understand where this is coming from so our powers of discernment become sharpened.

It was part of her daily routine to walk through the grove of lilies, greeting the sunflowers she and her husband had just named. Crossing through the gentle stream to get to the large tree situated in the middle of the garden, she’d sit under its shade for hours.

One day as she sat beneath its branches, behind her came a familiar voice — one she had heard many times before. This time it asked a question. A question that was anything but a question.

Did God really say…?

Four words were all it took to seed doubt that God was holding out on her. That if she did not partake of that fruit, she would miss out on limitless knowledge.

You will become like God.

The original lie. That once you have access to all there is to know, you will become like your Creator.

But the irony is that we already are like God. We are His imagers. We bear His image, but we were never commanded to bear the weight of the world. We were never given omniscience and omnipresence. And oh, what an utter relief that is.

And so the original lie is back in full force. But how did that go for us the first time?

Our phones and social media sell us a false omnipresence we were never meant to operate from — the lie that we can and should be everywhere, know everything, and never miss a moment.

It is the exact same offer the serpent made in the garden, just repackaged with a notification badge. And just like Eve, we reach for it without stopping to ask whether it’s ours to have.

We need to get back to being where our feet are — seeing with our eyes the very real physical world before us. Being okay with not knowing everything. Missing out on things we were never supposed to know and participate in.

Friends, that is the kindness of God.

I believe much of the frenetic pace we find ourselves operating in has to do with being on the incessant hamster wheel of being “on” 24/7. We’ve been so programmed with the fear of missing out — which I feel like renaming the Lie of Missing Out. That fear is driving us to completely miss the present moment because the elusive FOMO is future-oriented on steroids.

If we don’t make it a habit to operate from a place of peace, we’re prone to making impulsive decisions. The irony is that FOMO doesn’t actually help you not miss out — it’s the very mechanism by which you do miss out on what is most important.

When we feel like we have to do everything, be everything to everyone, be everywhere all the time — we’re making it easier to operate from a constant state of Distraction. Physically present but emotionally, mentally, spiritually absent.

Instead of succumbing to the pressure of saying yes to whatever crosses your path, pause.

Distraction is what makes everything feel urgent.

And if everything is important and urgent, then really nothing is. So is it inevitable to feel the push and pull of a distracted world? Only if we continue on as we are.

We’ve all heard how damaging social media and digital Distraction is — and yet it still feels like there’s “realistically” nothing to be done. Yes, it will require intention. It’s not going to feel good at first. But honestly, I feel like our lives depend on it.

We must have guardrails. Going against the Current of Culture while white-knuckling it will wear us out quickly and that riptide will overtake us. We need to put systems in place that make Distraction harder to pull us off track.

And here’s the thing — building these systems is not a self-help project. It is an act of faithfulness. It is stewardship of the soul God gave you.

Every guardrail you put in place is a brick back in that wall.

I’ve been experimenting with some things lately that are making a serious difference in reducing Distraction. Not because they’re clever productivity hacks — but because each one creates a moment of pause between me and the pull.

• I turn my phone all the way off and stick it in my desk drawer until mid-morning the next day. No notifications. No pull to check it. The silence is startling at first and then it becomes a relief.

• Last year I got a sunrise alarm clock and just started using that instead of my phone’s alarm. The light gradually brightens until it reaches the wake time, and I have it set to birds chirping. It’s a genuinely delightful way to wake up and my phone never has to enter the equation.

• Scripture and prayer before technology in the morning. This one has been a game changer. Anchoring into Truth, consecrating the day, and coming into alignment with the Kingdom of God before I enter the madness of the world — that is a refuge. It reorders everything.

• A paper planner which I’ve used for years anyway because I just cannot do digital organizational systems. Believe me, I have tried but keep coming back to what I know works for me.

• Physical books only for me. Not because e-readers are evil but because reading is a tactile experience and you just can’t replace the satisfaction of physically turning the page or seeing your progress. And even if an e-reader looks paper-like, it’s still a screen. (Audio books are a different thing. I actually like those in the right context).

• Turning the color off on your phone if that would make it less visually enticing. I haven’t personally done this yet but I know for some people it makes a real difference.

• Taking the Substack app off my phone along with YouTube Studio. Desktop only. I don’t need to check it constantly. The analytics aren’t going anywhere.

• Bullet journaling my schedule and to-do tasks. I know, I know. I’m so late to this party. But wow, I am loving the dot grid!

• I’ve also started physically writing out my articles with good ole pen and paper and it’s been the most wonderfully inconvenient thing I could do for my writing. I wrote the initial draft of this article in a notebook and it felt so freeing. My thinking is sharper when I’m forced to write out each word in ink. Writing and thinking on paper also becomes a guardrail against Distraction and the pull to “just check my email real quick.”

The point is never perfection. It’s always about intentionality and slowing down long enough to be able to listen and receive God’s available counsel.

Start with an audit. Where are you most vulnerable to Distraction?

Make your own list. If we want to live with intention, reclaim our attention, and restore our lives, it’s going to require guardrails and boundaries to protect our spirit, soul, and mind.

Be kind to yourself. Distraction didn’t set up shop in our lives overnight and breaking those patterns won’t happen overnight either.

Ask the Holy Spirit to help you. He will.

The thief has been walking in and out of our homes for a long time because we left the door wide open. The beautiful thing is that it’s absolutely possible to take back control, lock the door, and stand watch. The walls can be rebuilt. Your attention, your soul, your present life are worth guarding.

Will it be easy? No.

Worth it? Yes.

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” John 10:10

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