For the past month, I have been feeling anxiety, fear and intimidation and it has risen like a giant wall of foreboding in my life. At night I would lay in bed and my heart would start racing.  I have been walking in a fog for a month and I eventually went to the doctor for medication for my anxiety.

What has been going on? I believe I have been experiencing a form of burnout.

And, if I have learned anything, it’s that burnout breaks down our defenses and leaves us vulnerable to spiritual attacks on our body, mind and spirit.

Burnout is fear based.

It is often based on experiences from our past more than anything that is going on in the present. I started to get a sense of foreboding, as old memories from my past resurfaced injecting themselves into my life.

I had gone through periods of rejection in the past and they were returning to haunt me. And, this past rejection was becoming a stumbling block in the present.

As well, I was also placing unrealistic expectations on myself and trying to create a perfect balance, literally a version of myself that could keep up with everything and everyone else. One author says that striving for perfection is really a way of avoiding some of life’s realities. We create a dream world, that has no basis in reality.

Somehow I needed to prove my invincibility and all this did was bring me to a place of exhaustion.

Admitting that I can’t do everything has been tough. We have to let go of our need for perfection otherwise we will always find evidence to say, ‘you’re not doing enough.’

My past and my expectations of what I should do have been a constant drag on me in recent weeks.

But through this time, the Lord has ministered to me with visions of His presence lifting me up, walking and talking with Him. In one vision, we sat down together on the sandy shoreline and we laughed together as the waves gently rolled over our feet.  It was so easy being with Jesus and all we did was laugh and enjoy the view and the waves.

Two nights ago, I knelt again and I asked the Lord to fight this battle for me and to pull down the wall of confusion and fear that I couldn’t seem to break through myself.

What we really need is to engage the power of our God and heaven’s armies. We have a Divine warrior who fights for us.

“The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” (Exodus 14:4)