Burnout

Delores was one of the most remarkable women of any skin color that I have ever known. Delores was black, 70 years old, when I met her.

Back in another life, I would leave my practice and lecture to the tenth grade biology students at the local high school once or twice each year. They were a real challenge. My friend Geraldine, the biology teacher who asked me to speak to her classes each year, had a very good friend, Delores Mitchell. Delores had been teaching third grade for 50 years. Delores invited Geraldine and myself to her house for a Sunday afternoon lunch. This is when I heard my first description of “burnout”.

Delores still lived in the same house in which she had been born and reared, a three-bedroom bungalow-type structure. Her house had a front porch, living room, dining room, kitchen, the same type of house you will find all across the south. An only child, Delores was extremely bright. She graduated from high school at 16, went immediately to Shaw University and graduated at age 19. She entered a graduate program, started teaching during the school year, earning two master degrees during the summer months. She had taught in the same room, at the local consolidated school, for 50 years.

Over the years, she had lost both parents. It was not necessary for her to work, since they had left her the home and much farmland and rental houses. Instead, she worked continuously. Her mother had been known far and wide for cooking cakes which she sold in the local town. So, Delores continued this practice of her mother's: getting up every morning at 4 o'clock, cooking, preparing for the day until it was time for her to drive to the schoolhouse. One family who had worked for her father still lived on her farm, helping her with gardening, freezing, chickens, and her many rental properties. She said, “I handle everything. It does not take much for me to live, so I have established several philanthropies in the school and in the church.”

In addition, Delores was the organist/pianist at her church, and she had taught piano for many years. She was so interested in any young girl with talent learning to play the piano. Delores was often called upon to play at weddings and funerals--perhaps this constant movement had kept her in good health. She was well known as an accomplished musician, but she was better known as one of the world's best school teachers. Every parent wanted their child in her class, no student in her third grade class had ever failed.

These were her words which I will never forget, “I have done everything right: studied, worked, paid taxes, never been involved with any man. Now, nearing the end of my life, I am totally burned out. Other than going to a teachers' meeting, seminar, or post-graduate course of some type, I have never enjoyed a vacation, never spent many nights away from my home.” Because I met such individuals as Delores, and many others as you will find on previous commentaries, I am writing this, #1000, in which I am describing my own burn out after a long life.

The thing that has always amazed me most is that some individuals, so anxious to fulfill the goals set for them by God, have been so productive, while others are so incredibly lazy. I suppose I was destined for burn out...I was the first of four children, I had incredible parents, hard working, God-fearing, productive citizens, ancestry from North Carolina's first colonial families.

My parents put me to work doing chores as soon as I was able to understand such. My ancestors, early settlers, had founded Morristown, New Jersey, the poor side of the family had moved down to North Carolina. They were just land-poor, hard working dirt farmers. I worked my way through 8 years of university education, was commissioned as a medical officer in the Army, returned 100% disabled. Before total blindness, I practiced for a while. I was a community activist, busy as a Christian lay-leader, speaker, and writer. I became an active investor early in life (real estate, securities, etc.). I made every minute of every day count. When I could no longer practice, I was involved in many other business interests as an entrepreneur. During these years I traveled the world, and to this very day have personally handled all my business, philanthropic, and other affairs. I have thoroughly tested the resourcefulness of God...I have failed God many times, but God has never failed me.

Our government is a big Ponzi scheme, 59% of our citizens depend on a subsidy or entitlement from the government. I am glad to remember those who did not and do not believe in a “free lunch”. The “free lunch” mentality has taken over...social security, socialized healthcare, college grants, etc. During the Great Depression, and FDR's flight toward communism (crop controls, acreage allotments), my grandfather was the last farmer in the county to sign the papers giving the agriculture stabilization corporation legality over his land. He said, “the time will come when the farmer will have no freedom at all. The time will come when most of the people in the world will be hungry.” He was 100% right, for a bowl of pottage, sold out, the farms left are under government control.

Watching my country in its infancy, hard working people everywhere, not depending on government for anything. There were even bivocational pastors...our small churches could not afford a full-time pastor. From England, the old fashioned pounding of the preacher, members loading the preacher's buggy or car with farm products. The preacher had another job in order to make a living. The laymen in their church were also bivocational, assuming pastoral duties in the community...my first experience with servitude.

15 of the 35 parables in the Bible show servitude. The first doctors were slaves, the disciple Luke, short for Lucian, was a slave. Jesus taught servitude to everyone, teachers in our early country schools, including the one I attended, would practice servitude in the community, (helping with the sick, disabled, etc.). It is easy to have burnout in a home when someone is ill for a long period of time. So bivocational teachers, bivocational laypeople, assisted these families in distress, keeping them from burnout.

Government admits to a $14 trillion debt, but all economists claim the debt is nearer $75 trillion. This conservative, consecrated Christian veteran is tired, burned out, fighting the fight of responsibility when most of the people around him are having a good time...politically correct, living the life of ease, perversion, decadence. If you could squeeze $50,000 out of every man, woman and child in America, you could pay 20% of the national debt. Warfare and revolts leading to higher oil prices, higher oil prices leading to more inflation, higher food prices leading to revolution in the poorer countries...leading to even higher oil prices, leading to even more inflation. The less than 50% of us who pay all taxes are burned out by the stress.

The two things that cause all sickness are food and stress. It is hard to argue with a holy life; the resourceful, responsible, holy life is always associated with Godliness and beauty. The decadent, ugliness of things and people always associated with Satan. Truth is now on the scaffold, evil on the throne. Men will die for truth, but not for a lie. I have become burned out realizing that the world, the flesh, the devil is grabbing at fraud, religion and things around the world, while Christians cling to the promises of the old, rugged cross.

So I'll cherish the old rugged cross,

till my trophies at last I lay down.

Old Rugged Cross (Hymn)