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Monday afternoon, Blaise, Clark, and I climbed aboard a Cessna Caravan and flew out of Tonj. I waved at our friends on the airstrip as we taxied away and my eyes welled up with tears when we lifted off the ground…tears of relief. We had made it. We had survived. We were heading to Kampala for three weeks of much-needed R&R.
Over the weekend, I was incredibly stressed as we packed our things to take, packed “in case” trunks should the worst happen (because once you’ve left one home for R&R and never been able to return due to war, you tend to leave like you won’t be returning), and prepared the interior of our house for the plaster guys who will be working inside while we’re gone. The idea of travel was also really stressful, because I knew there was no way we’d make it all the way to Kampala on Monday, and instead would have to overnight in Arua. The idea of not knowing where we’d be sleeping had me worried about Clark’s nighttime routine being too disrupted.
As we lifted into the air on Monday, however, and the lightness and joy bubbled up inside of me, it suddenly didn’t matter where we’d be sleeping that night because it would be in Not Tonj. And at that moment, that’s all that mattered.
I have really grown to love Tonj over the last three months. We have amazing employees who have become good friends, our team is awesome, our routine is comfortable, and our house perfectly suits our needs. Ministry has been a bit of struggle for me since I don’t get to get out into the community like I could before I had Clark, but I am able to spend time with Mary, who comes to do my washing, and I feel like that’s what I can handle and God has provided that relationship for discipleship. It’s enough and I’m thankful for it.
So it isn’t life in Tonj, per se, that had me so incredibly glad to be leaving, but the high level of burn out we’ve been experiencing left me desperate to get on the plane and get out of there. Not exactly a great place to be in, but that’s where we’ve been for the last several weeks. I didn’t wake up one day just over it and ready to go, but it was a slow wearing down. It was hitting the ground in January just a bit burned out already from the weeks I spent alone with a sick baby while Blaise was already in Tonj building our house. It was minor inconveniences and daily frustrations that add up. It was cultural expectations that caught me off guard.
We have had construction going on our compound the entire time we’ve lived there, which means managing construction crews, having strangers in our personal spaces, constant noise and busy-ness, and very little family time to rest and unwind. Then there was the unending need to be on-guard, to check that Clark wasn’t about to reach into a dark space and find a scorpion, to carefully monitor that the heat wasn’t stealing all of his moisture and leaving him dehydrated. It was the heat, it was the exhaustion, it was the scorpion carriers.
It was nothing and it was everything that led to our burn out. It was the chaos and demands of starting over. It was everything one would expect. But it came on the heels of a year and a half on the field. The leaving one home and never returning. The learning that we’ve been looted. The premature delivery of Clark. The NICU stay. The cultural frustrations. The wandering and waiting. The starting over. The separation. The reunion. It was really just normal ministry in a place like South Sudan.
So here we are, only one full day into our R&R time in Kampala and already feeling nearly weightless from the freedom we have, the family time we are enjoying, and the cool temperatures that are refreshing our very souls. Our time here will be too short, but we will use it wisely. We will have some important conversations that we haven’t had the time to have, sip coffee with nowhere in particular to go when it’s finished, crawl around in the grass with Clark, and prepare for our next rotation in. When we return to Tonj for our final rotation this term, we pray it will be with minds renewed, bodies rested, and hearts refreshed.
At the end of our term this September, after everything, I hope to look back and say, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4.7).
What about you? Have you ever experienced burn out in your job or ministry? What did you do to find refreshment in that season?
