Am I Exhausted or Called to Leave?

Beloved,

There was a Monday morning when I couldn't tell if I was exhausted or if I was done.

If you're in this work, you already know the cost. You're present for people's most tender moments. You hold space in funerals and difficult conversations and the times when someone's faith is breaking open. You show up even when you're running on empty. Of course you're tired.

But this felt different. This felt like I was showing up to my own life and not recognizing it.

I remember sitting in my office watching the RE program—the one we said we were committed to—dwindle down to a handful of kids. Promises were made and discarded. People who should have shown up didn't. And I was supposed to hold it all together, to make sense of the contradiction between what we said we valued and what we were actually willing to do. Inside, I was asking questions I was terrified to say out loud: Is this still mine? Should I leave? Did I ever belong here?

The thing about exhaustion is that it sounds a lot like clarity. It sounds urgent. It sounds like the answer is obvious if you're just honest with yourself.

I spent months thinking I needed to leave because everything felt broken. And maybe everything was. But I couldn't tell if I was seeing clearly or if I was just empty.

Here's what I learned: Exhaustion and true calling trouble feel completely different, but you have to actually rest to know the difference.

It sounds simple. It's not.

Exhaustion flattens everything. The textures disappear. A real crisis looks identical to a hard day looks identical to burnout. You can't see the difference between a problem that's solvable and a fit that's fundamentally wrong. Your body is so depleted that it can't do anything but survive the next moment. And survival mode has a very clear answer: leave.

But calling trouble feels nothing like that. It arrives slowly, after you've actually slept for more than three hours. It's not the frantic voice screaming that everything is wrong. It's something deeper. It's the recognition that you and this work are no longer woven together in a way that makes sense. That this system is asking you to be something you're not, or shouldn't have to be. It arrives as sadness, not as panic. Like grief for something you thought was yours but isn't anymore.

I needed to stop long enough to feel the difference.

So I took a real break. Not a weekend of catching up on admin. An actual break where I slept and moved my body and remembered what it felt like to not be in crisis mode. I talked to another religious professional who knew me and could hear the truth without being invested in whether I stayed or left.

Slowly, the picture changed.

The weight lifted. I could see that some of what felt broken was actually just hard. Some of what felt like failure was actually me caring deeply about things I couldn't control.

I didn't leave. But I did change how I was in that system. I set boundaries I'd been too afraid to set. I stopped trying to fix things that weren't mine to fix. I started asking for help instead of pretending I had to have all the answers.

It turned out I wasn't called to leave. I was called to stay differently.

I'm sharing this because I hear the same question from a lot of religious professionals: How do I know if it's time to go?

And here's what I've learned: You can't know while you're running on empty. Your depleted self doesn't get to make that decision. Your rested self does.

So before you do anything else, rest. Really rest. Give yourself permission to step back from leadership and remember what it feels like to just be human.

Then ask yourself some questions.

If I were fully supported and rested, would I want to stay? Is this system toxic, or am I just depleted? What would it look like to stay differently? What am I actually grieving here?

And maybe talk to someone who can hold the complexity with you. Someone who knows you and this work but isn't inside your congregation.

The answers might surprise you.

This week, I want to invite you to something: Notice where you are in this story. Are you in the desperation? The confusion? The shift?

You don't have to have answers yet. Just notice where you are, and be gentle with yourself there.

What's one small thing you could do this week to actually rest? Not to solve anything. Just to let your nervous system settle.

With you in love,

Rev. JeKaren