When Loneliness Has Become Your Normal

When Loneliness Has Become Your Normal

Some loneliness passes, but other loneliness sets in and stays until it becomes the climate you live in. This episode looks at how to bring that long-haul loneliness to God the way David did, and the practical steps that begin to move it. Some loneliness is temporary. You move to a new city, or the kids grow up and the house empties out, and for a stretch of months you don't have the people you used to have. But there is another kind that sets in and stays. The friendships you assumed you would have by now never quite formed. The marriage you are in feels more like two roommates sharing a calendar. You go through whole days where the longest conversation you have is with a cashier. You can be surrounded by people and still go unknown, and after enough time, you stop expecting it to be any different. When Vivek Murthy served as U.S. Surgeon General, he traveled the country expecting to hear about opioids and chronic illness. What he kept hearing instead was that people were lonely, even on campuses where thousands walked past each other every day. In 2023 he declared loneliness a public health epidemic, reporting that one in two American adults felt measurable loneliness, with a physical toll comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Then he admitted he knew it from the inside, having felt profoundly lonely himself and believed, with shame, that it was his fault. That is the thing about loneliness: it hides, convincing the person feeling it that they are the only one. Scripture refuses to tidy this up. In Psalm 25:16, David prayed, "Turn to me and have mercy, for I am alone and in deep distress." No silver lining, just a man telling God plainly that he was alone and asking God to turn toward him. And that prayer made it into Scripture. God did not edit it out for being too raw. When you pray your loneliness plainly, you are not failing at faith. You are praying to a God who turns toward the alone rather than away from them, and who sees you tonight no matter how long you have felt this way. Then there is the practical side, because you can pray and still need a next step. One move is small reconnection: send the text you have been meaning to send, or reply to the person who reached out a month ago. Loneliness whispers that everyone is fine without you, and one small action pushes back on that lie. The other move is service. When you are lonely, every instinct says to turn inward and wait to be sought out, and the way forward is to do the opposite. In this episode, Bart shares that his own loneliness, when he was younger, tended to arrive when he was already tired or low, and that it lifted when he stopped waiting and reached out to serve someone else. A numb, isolated stretch is real, but it is not the end of the story. You are seen by a God who turns toward you, and one small step toward others is never a step you take alone. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: * Why long-haul loneliness can slowly become the climate you live in * How Psalm 25:16 gives you permission to pray loneliness plainly * Two practical moves that begin to push back on isolation You are seen by a God who turns toward you. Pray your loneliness plainly, take one small step toward others, and you will not take it alone. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/272 [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/272] Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail] Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast. https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/] Rate and Review https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/] Connect with Bart Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusyliveshttps://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives [https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives] Website: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com] Feeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus https://daily-devotions-for-busy-lives.kit.com/b33aa395d1here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe].

What to Do When You've Lost Your Sense of Compassion

It's possible to care for a long time and slowly go numb, until you nod along to someone's pain and feel almost nothing. This episode looks at compassion fatigue and how the ability to feel for others gets refilled, the way it did for Jesus, who kept returning to the Father. You can care deeply for a long time and slowly go numb without realizing it. The news shows another tragedy and you barely register it. A friend tells you what they're walking through and you find yourself nodding without feeling much at all. There's a name for this. It's called compassion fatigue, sometimes the cost of caring, and it doesn't mean you've become a cold person. It means a warm one has been pouring out faster than they've been refilled. Esther Smith knows the pattern from the inside. As a Christian trauma counselor, she spends her days absorbing other people's worst moments, and she names plainly what years of that can do: the same heart that pulls you into caring can go numb, until you catch yourself feeling almost nothing. The strange part is who it tends to strike. It's often the most devoted ones, the people who pour themselves out for everyone else and never stop to be refilled. It isn't only a counselor's problem. A parent of a child who has struggled for years can reach it, and so can the friend who is always the strong one. Anyone who keeps giving can run empty. Jesus shows us where the refilling comes from. Matthew 9:36 says, "When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd." That moment came in the middle of relentless ministry, the exact conditions that leave most of us with nothing left. Yet Jesus looked at one more crowd and was moved. The Gospels keep showing the reason: again and again, He slipped away to be alone with His Father. His compassion flowed out of those hours, and it kept flowing because He kept going back to the source. That is the encouragement here. Your compassion isn't gone for good. It hasn't been destroyed, only depleted, and depleted things can be filled again. You won't get it back by gritting your teeth and ordering yourself to care more. You refill it the way Jesus did, by getting alone with the Father and letting Him do for your heart what you can't do by force. Compassion is downstream of communion. When the river feels dry, you don't fix it at the riverbed. You go back up to the spring. In this episode, Bart speaks candidly about the numbness that set in after making more than a thousand death notifications in law enforcement, the point where the next one was just another call. What brought his compassion back was rest and reconnecting with his calling. A numb heart isn't a dead one. It's a depleted one, and the same Father who refilled Jesus is ready to refill you. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: * Why caring for a long time can leave even warm people feeling numb * What Matthew 9:36 reveals about where Jesus found compassion to spare * Why you refill compassion at its source rather than by trying harder to care A numb heart isn't a dead one. It's a depleted one, and compassion gets refilled the way it did for Jesus: by going back to the Father. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/271 [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/271] Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail] Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast. https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/] Rate and Review https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/] Connect with Bart Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusyliveshttps://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives [https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives] Website: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com] Feeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus https://daily-devotions-for-busy-lives.kit.com/b33aa395d1here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe].

When You've Been Wrong About Something Important

Sooner or later, most thinking Christians discover they were wrong about something they were sure of, and it feels like a small earthquake. This episode looks at the strange grace of changing your mind, and why being corrected, like Saul on the Damascus road, is one of the kindest things God does. Sooner or later, most of us realize we were wrong about something we were certain of: a position we defended, or a verse we'd read one way for years. The discovery can feel like a small earthquake. It isn't only that one belief that shifts. Suddenly you're aware that if you were that sure and that wrong here, you might be wrong about things you've never even questioned. The ground feels less solid than it did an hour ago. Tom Tarrants knew that kind of certainty before it cracked. As a teenager in 1960s Alabama, he was sure he was defending a Christian America, and that conviction led him into the Ku Klux Klan and, eventually, to a Mississippi prison cell with a thirty-year sentence. Even caught and nearly killed, he wasn't sorry. The change came later, alone in a cell with nothing to do but read. He picked up the Bible he thought had been on his side and met a Jesus he had never paid attention to, one who told him to love the very people he had spent his life hating. The certainty he had held like a weapon finally cracked, and the man who left that prison went on to co-pastor a church of the people he once called enemies. It's the oldest pattern of grace there is. In Acts 9, Saul was breathing out threats, certain he was serving God as he hunted down Christians, until a light put him flat on the road and a voice asked, "Why are you persecuting me?" He didn't reason his way to a better position. He was knocked down and made to see what he had refused to see, and that was a mercy. He was sincerely, religiously wrong, certain his harm was holy, and the most loving thing God could do was stop him cold. We don't usually think of correction that way. Being wrong feels like failure, a crack in our credibility. But for someone who loves the truth more than being right, the moment you finally see your error is a door, the light getting into a room you'd kept locked. The people who keep growing their whole lives are the ones who hold their certainties with an open hand: sure of Christ, and humble about the rest. In this episode, Bart speaks from 56 years of following Jesus, including the experience of reading the Bible as if for the first time and rethinking things he had believed for years. He names a freeing humility, that there are things we're each sure of now that we'll get to heaven and find we didn't have quite right, while holding firmly to the one thing none of us can afford to be wrong about: the gospel, salvation by grace through faith alone in Jesus Christ. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: * Why discovering you were wrong can feel like the ground shifting under your feet * What Saul's experience on the Damascus road reveals about the mercy of correction * How to hold your convictions with an open hand while staying anchored in the gospel Being wrong and finally seeing it is one of the doors God walks through. Hold your certainties with an open hand: sure of Christ, and humble about the rest. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/270 [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/270] Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail] Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast. https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/] Rate and Review https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/] Connect with Bart Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusyliveshttps://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives [https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives] Website: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com] Feeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus https://daily-devotions-for-busy-lives.kit.com/b33aa395d1here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe].

The Slow Climb Back from Burnout

Burnout rarely announces itself; you can live in survival mode for a year or two before you notice how depleted you've become. This episode looks at the slow climb back, and why recovery starts the way Jesus prescribed it for His worn-out disciples: with rest you don't have to earn. Some stretches of life shrink down to one goal: just make it to the end of the day. Maybe a crisis dropped you there. Maybe caregiving did, the grind of being responsible for someone around the clock. The strange thing about survival mode is that it works at first. You lower your head and push through. Then one day it stops working, and it can take a long time to notice. By then you've been running on empty for a year or two, and you can't remember the last time you felt like yourself. Patricia Benamon hit that wall as an emergency room nurse. When the pandemic surged, she took travel assignments far from home, sleeping some nights on an air mattress, working shifts so relentless she would go 10 hours without a break or a meal. Slowly, a knot of dread and a sense of defeat settled in. She loved nursing, yet she was running on empty, and she came to what she calls the end of herself, the point where there's nothing left in the tank. What she found there surprised her. She found God already present, waiting for her to stop long enough to ask for help. Jesus saw this coming in His own disciples. They had been healing and teaching, pouring themselves out for crowds that never thinned. In Mark 6:31 He told them, "Let's go off by ourselves to a quiet place and rest awhile," because there were so many people coming and going that they didn't even have time to eat. Notice what He prescribed for depleted people: rest, with no time limit attached, and a meal. That is the picture of recovery, and it's gentler than most of us would write for ourselves. Your way back from burnout starts the same way. Not by trying harder, but by stopping, by letting yourself be fed and refilled by God and the people He has placed around you. It's worth naming that some of what Patricia faced was compassion fatigue, the particular wearing-down that comes from absorbing other people's pain day after day. It's a cousin of burnout, common in caregivers and first responders, and the road back runs through the same door: you stop pouring out long enough to be poured into. In this episode, Bart speaks openly about hitting full burnout twice in his years of ministry, and how recovery came only as he turned back to God and trusted the calling God had placed on his life. Patricia's way back came as she let her faith and her church community hold her up. The climb is rarely fast, but it begins where Jesus began it for His disciples: come away and rest. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: * Why burnout can run for a year or more before you recognize it * What Mark 6:31 reveals about how God treats depleted people * The difference between burnout and compassion fatigue, and why the way back is the same The climb back from burnout begins with rest you don't have to earn and a God who feeds you. You stop pouring out long enough to be poured into. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/269 [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/269] Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail] Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast. https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/] Rate and Review https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/] Connect with Bart Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusyliveshttps://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives [https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives] Website: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com] Feeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus https://daily-devotions-for-busy-lives.kit.com/b33aa395d1here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe].

What to Do When You're Feeling Sorry for Yourself

Self-pity is one of those things you can be deep into without recognizing what it is, until every thought circles back to you and how unfair things feel. This episode shows how to name it and break its hold by lifting your eyes off yourself and onto what God has done and who still needs you. Self-pity is sneaky. You can be neck-deep in it and never name it for what it is. Maybe you're worn out, or something painful happened and you have every right to be hurt. Either way, the mind drifts toward the long list of reasons you have to feel sorry for yourself, until every thought circles back to you and how unfair things are. It rarely announces itself. It just takes over the narration. The Bible has an almost comic picture of this, and it stars a prophet. God had just spared the city of Nineveh, and Jonah, who had been sent to warn them, was furious that God showed them mercy. In Jonah 4, God answers all of Jonah's drama with a calm question, asking whether it is right for him to be so angry. A whole city was just rescued, and all Jonah can talk about is his own disappointment. Then it shrinks further. God gives him a plant for shade, and when it dies the next day, Jonah sinks lower and says he would rather be dead. He is grieving a shrub while a hundred thousand people barely cross his mind. That is the problem with self-pity in one scene. It shrinks the picture down to you, until a dead plant feels bigger than a rescued city. Your pain may be valid; Jonah's discomfort was. The trouble is that the lens has zoomed so far in on you that nothing else fits in the shot. The way out is the one thing self-pity cannot survive: you lift your eyes, off yourself and onto what God has already done and who around you still needs you. J.R. Martinez learned this in a burn ward. At 19, he was pulled from a burning Humvee in Iraq with burns over more than a third of his body, and the day he first saw his own face, he sank into anger and the endless question, why me. Then a nurse asked him to visit another patient down the hall who had stopped talking to anyone. J.R. didn't think he had anything to offer, but he went, and as he spoke he watched something lift in a stranger. For the first time since the fire, he wasn't thinking about his own face. He started visiting patients every day, and he would later say God opened up a whole new world for him in that hospital. In this episode, Bart is candid about his own long history with self-pity, and the realization that every time he gave in, the subject was always himself. The turn came when he lifted his eyes off his situation and onto Jesus and his calling. Gratitude widens the frame, and so does service. The moment you remember someone who needs what you have, you stop being the only one in the picture. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: * Why self-pity is so easy to slip into without recognizing it * What Jonah sulking under a withered plant reveals about self-focus * A two-step way out: name it, then lift your eyes off yourself Self-pity shrinks the world down to you. The way out is to lift your eyes, onto what God has done and who still needs you. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/268 [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/268] Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail] Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast. https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/] Rate and Review https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/] Connect with Bart Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusyliveshttps://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives [https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives] Website: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com] Feeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus https://daily-devotions-for-busy-lives.kit.com/b33aa395d1here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe].