Am I Jonah? Burnout and Christian Calling, and What Happens When You Run

You can be called by God… and still be running.

You can experience burnout and Christian calling at the exact same time.

You can believe the promise, know the assignment, and still quietly board a ship headed in the opposite direction.

I didn’t think I was running from God.

I thought I was just tired.

But the more honest I became, the more I started asking a hard question:

Am I Jonah?

In April, I was frustrated.

Not mildly irritated.
Deep-in-my-bones frustrated.

We were (and still are) living in an expensive house that didn’t feel like freedom.
No space. No land. Strict HOA rules. Constant financial pressure.

I was grieving the thought that maybe we’d be stuck here.
That Bella might grow up without siblings.
That when my husband and I die, she’d be alone in the world.

It felt hopeless.

I wrote about this in this post about Trusting God When It Doesn’t Make Sense.

And in the middle of that frustration, I felt something unmistakable.

God spoke.

Not audibly. Not theatrically.
But clearly.

“This time next year, you’ll be in the house with a baby in your belly.”

I remember asking — almost arguing — how?

How would that even be possible?
We were stretched financially.
Life felt heavy.
Nothing about our situation made sense.

And what came to mind surprised me.

This website.

And something I had been slowly building and stumbling through — Simply Shielded.

It wasn’t just an idea.

It was an assignment.

For the next two and a half months, I worked hard.

I rebuilt parts of the website.
Started a podcast — video and audio.
Posted weekly.
Experimented with different versions of Simply Shielded, trying to make it practical and sustainable, but it never quite felt finished.

There was momentum.

There was clarity.

There was hope.

It felt like obedience was directly connected to preparation for the promise.

I didn’t doubt the call.

I believed God had shown me a path forward.

But then my summer break ended.

I went back to work.

I’m the IT person at an elementary school, and our campus was under an extensive remodel. I was isolated in the library — quiet, mostly empty, doing nonstop prep to get the school ready for the year.

It drained me.

Back-to-school season hit hard in August.

The first half of the year felt like constant burnout from every angle —work, home, finances, relationships.

I kept telling myself:

“I’ll plan content tomorrow.”
“I’ll work on it this weekend.”
“I’ll record soon.”

Tomorrow kept moving.

Then something else happened.

I got inspired to write a fiction redemption story.

I became obsessed.

I outlined it.
Drafted chapters.
Built an entire world.
Wrote enough to split it into a duology.

It was creative. It was exciting. It felt purposeful.

But it wasn’t the assignment God had given me.

At the same time, other things started unraveling.

Our finances took a hit because I wasn’t paying attention to auto-payments.
My debit card had fraudulent charges and had to be replaced.
Some bills didn’t get updated in time.

Small details turned into stress.

My husband was exhausted too.
We were fighting almost daily.

Our house became a mess.

I was so burned out some mornings I barely made it out of bed.

Even worse than the exhaustion?
I stopped praying.
I stopped reading my Bible.

I knew what I was doing.

I knew I was drifting.

And I still didn’t change.

That’s the part that stings.

When we think of Jonah, we picture rebellion.

In Jonah Chapter One, we read that:
God said go to Nineveh.
Jonah went the opposite direction and boarded a ship to Tarshish.
A storm came.
The crew tossed him overboard when they learned he was running from an assignment from God.
He ended up in the belly of a fish.
He prayed.
Then he obeyed.

It sounds dramatic.

But what if running doesn’t always look dramatic?

What if it looks like:

• Overworking
• Creative exhaustion
• Emotional exhaustion
• Marriage tension
• Financial neglect
• Spiritual silence

Jonah boarded a ship to Tarshish.

I boarded a ship called “creative redirection.”

The book wasn’t wrong.
It wasn’t sinful.
It was meaningful and beautiful.

But it wasn’t Nineveh.
In my case, it wasn’t Simply Waterbury.

Christian burnout doesn’t always show up as defiance.

Sometimes it shows up as depletion.

And depletion can quietly pull you off course.

In the middle of all of this, I joined a small group at church called Freedom. It ended with a weekend conference.

Freedom is designed to help you identify spiritual strongholds, past wounds, and patterns that still shape your present. I didn’t realize how much I was carrying around until that conference weekend.

That weekend changed something in me.

The Holy Spirit met me in a way I’ve never experienced before.

I cried almost the entire weekend — grief from childhood, wounds from adulthood, burnout from the present, fear about the future.

I saw how tired I was.

And I felt connection with God again.

Deep connection.
Not performance.
Not striving.
Presence.

But it wasn’t my belly-of-the-fish moment.

It was my “deck of the ship” moment.

In Jonah’s story, before he’s thrown into the sea, he tells the sailors something profound:

“The storm is because of me.”

That weekend, I realized I had been blaming the storm.

Work stress.
Construction chaos.
Exhaustion.
Marriage tension.
Finances.
Creative obsession.

But I could see clearly that spiritual warfare had been circling my life — and I had been vulnerable to it.

The enemy wasn’t attacking with obvious rebellion.

He was attacking with distraction.

With depletion.

With misalignment.

I could see how burnout had weakened my discernment.
How fatigue had quieted my prayer life.
How overwhelm had made obedience feel optional.

And for the first time in months, I acknowledged:

This isn’t random.

This is a battle.

I even drafted a post to share about it. (You can read it here: I Went to War This Weekend)

But I never polished it.
Didn’t publish it until yesterday.
Never recorded a podcast for it. I was way too emotional for too long after writing it.

Even after the breakthrough, I delayed obedience.

Awareness is powerful.

But awareness isn’t the same as surrender.

My surrender didn’t feel dramatic.

It didn’t feel like a switch flipped.

It felt like a low rumble.

For weeks, my daughter and I had missed church because of a lingering cough. No fever. No major symptoms. We just didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. So instead of being in the room, I was watching online — and I also watched some of the spiritual leaders I look up to beyond my local church.

People like Lisa and John Bevere, Kirk Cameron, Mark Driscoll, who speak boldly about spiritual forces and discernment.

Several of their recent messages hit me differently.

One in particular — Lisa’s message titled, “If You’ve Messed Up, Watch This” — made that rumble louder.

It wasn’t condemnation.

It was conviction.

Not the kind that crushes you.

The kind that wakes you up.

And one day, without any emotional buildup or dramatic altar call, I did something simple.

I pulled out a journal.

It was a beautiful one I had received for Christmas, Scripture on the cover. I intended to use it with my third attempt of The Bible Recap this year.

But instead of jumping into another intense reading plan, I chose something lighter. More direct. More honest.

I decided to create a prayer journal.

Not for performance.
Not for completion.
For reconnection.

Around that same time, while mapping out what this prayer plan might look like, I stumbled across a show on Angel Studios called Testament. It’s a modern retelling of the book of Acts set in the UK. Watching the early church boldly live their faith in a modern context stirred something in me.

When Lent began, I committed to something simple:

I would read slowly through the Gospels.

And I would pray.

One broad “reset” prayer every day — asking God to realign my life, my heart, my home.

Then one focused prayer each day of the week:

For the new home.
For my calling.
For the new baby.
For Bella.
For my husband’s job.
For our finances.
For my burnout.

I had a Bible waiting to be turned into my newest prayer Bible. So I grabbed it and the supplies I had on hand.

I drafted all eight prayers.

I found Scriptures to anchor each one.

I organized them in the journal.

I added tabs to my Bible.
Highlighted verses.
Wrote short prayers on sticky notes.

Slowly, over the next week, I began implementing this new rhythm.

Not perfectly.

But consistently.

And that’s when I realized something.

The belly of the fish isn’t loud.

It’s quiet.

It’s repetitive.

It’s daily prayer when no one sees.
It’s small obedience when no one applauds.
It’s sitting still long enough for clarity to surface.

That next Sunday, my pastor preached about Hebrews 12 — about how sin can alter the direction of our lives. He spoke about David and Bathsheba. About how one moment of misalignment can ripple outward.

And then he mentioned Jonah.

Something clicked.

I realized I had been in the belly of the fish.

Not being punished.

Being preserved.

Waiting for direction.

And that day, I felt it clearly:

Write the post.

This post.

So if the ship was the distraction…
If the storm was the burnout…
If the deck was the awareness…

Then this is Nineveh.

Not a perfect beginning. Just an obedient one.

I had originally intended to post this last week, but it was again more of the same hurdles as before that tried to both slow me down and make me consider giving up.

I like to post here on the website first, then my podcast on YouTube, Rumble, Apple, Spotify, and Amazon Music, then send an email, but everything that could go wrong with the recording did.

I tried out my new camera and setup, but was missing a cable to connect the camera to the computer properly. I tried to make it work anyway. The video and sound quality ended up terrible, and editing became a nightmare.

Between trying to squeeze editing into short breaks at work and switching devices at home, files didn’t save correctly, the audio and video wouldn’t match right, and the whole process became frustrating.

By Saturday, I felt defeated.

I had the story.
I had the message.
But I couldn’t get the video to work.

For a moment, it felt like one more obstacle.

Then on Sunday, one of the pastors at my church preached a message called “How to Stay Free.”

He walked through Philippians 3:12-14.

“…Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

Philippians 3:13b-14

And sitting there in church, I felt like God was speaking directly to me.

Last week didn’t need to be perfect.

I didn’t need to fix every mistake I made over the past several months before moving forward.

I just needed to forget what held me back last week, strain towards getting this message to you, and press on to reaching more women through Simply Waterbury.

So that’s what this is.

Not perfection.

Just obedience.

This isn’t just about a website.

It’s about family.
Home.
Marriage.
Motherhood.
Daily Prayer.
Daily Bible Time.
Stewardship.
Mental Health.

If you feel like you’ve been drifting, here’s what applies to all of us:

You don’t need to spiral into guilt.

Just acknowledge:

• “I’ve been overwhelmed.”
• “I’ve neglected what matters.”
• “I need to realign.”

Clarity begins with honesty.

Not a 1-hour session where you talk out of obligation, not from your heart.

Five minutes.

One honest conversation with God.

You don’t have to cover everything every day, there’s always tomorrow.
Focus on where you’re hit hardest in that moment.

Christian burnout recovery starts with reconnection, not productivity.

You don’t need to study the Bible for 2 hours.
No need to buy commentaries or workbooks.

Five minutes.

One Psalm.
Or One Chapter.

Let God speak to you through His written word.

Pick one room.
One drawer.
One load of laundry.

Chaos feeds overwhelm.

Small order feeds momentum.

Exhaustion isolates.

Sit on the couch together.
Pray together once this week.
Apologize quickly.
Assume the best.

The enemy loves burnout because it weakens unity.

Not everything.

Just one.

One app.
One unnecessary commitment.
One mental obsession.

Obedience grows when noise decreases.

Jonah didn’t map out the entire future.

He went to Nineveh.

You don’t need a five-year plan.

You need today’s obedience.

Not rebelliously.

Not angrily.

Just… quietly.

Have you been overwhelmed instead of aligned?

Have you stopped praying because you’re tired?

Have you delayed the thing God asked you to steward — your home, your health, your marriage, your calling?

If so, you’re not disqualified.

You may just be experiencing burnout and Christian calling colliding at the same time.

When burnout and Christian calling collide, it doesn’t mean you’ve lost your purpose — it means it’s time to realign with it.

And that doesn’t mean the promise is gone.

It means it’s time to return.

I created a simple 3-day Scripture and Prayer Reset for women who feel like Jonah.

It’s gentle.
It’s practical.
It’s not a guilt trip.

Just a quiet return to daily prayer, daily alignment, and steady obedience.

You can get it free when you join Simply Collective.

Each week, I share encouragement, Scripture, and practical rhythms for staying aligned in faith, family, and home.

No noise.
No pressure.
Just consistency.

Let’s go to Nineveh together.