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In this episode, Margaret, a contributing editor for the Journal of Christian Nursing, shares her powerful story of walking through burnout and deep distress. After 22 years of missionary and nursing work in Haiti and Senegal, along with experience in a variety of nursing settings, she found herself in a season where she desperately needed God’s intervention. Through her honest story, listeners will hear how God met her in her brokenness, delivered her from burnout, and reminded her of her identity as His beloved child. Her story offers hope and encouragement to nurses and healthcare professionals who may be running on empty, reminding us that we don’t have to navigate exhaustion alone.
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Check out JCN: If you’re looking for thoughtful, faith-integrated perspectives on nursing, be sure to check out the Journal of Christian Nursing; our award-winning, peer-reviewed journal. It brings together current nursing research, clinical insights, and biblical perspectives to help you think more deeply about what it means to follow Jesus in nursing. NCF members get access to the journal as part of their membership, so if you’re not a member yet, we’d love to have you join us! https://nurses.events.intervarsity.org/membership
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Creators and Guests
Host
Lara Kay Kaiser
Lara is an Associate Director of Student Ministries for InterVarsity's Nurses Christian Fellowship. She lives in Jacksonville, FL with her husband, son, and two cats. After graduating from Michigan State University in 2012, she came on staff with InterVarsity as a campus minister and then area director in southeast Michigan before joining the NCF team. Her hobbies include indoor rock climbing, volleyball, crocheting, and hanging out at the beach.
Guest
Margaret De Jong Morgenthaler, MS, MDiv, RN
I’m a beloved child of God. Since 2021, I’ve been a contributing editor for the Journal of Christian Nursing (a publication of Nurses Christian Fellowship). My editing is quite a switch from 22 years of missionary and nursing work in Haiti and Senegal! I’ve also had brief nursing roles in med-surg, home hospice, and pregnancy care center settings. I’m on a honeymoon for life with my husband—I married Jeff when I was 50 years old! We enjoy adventuring in God’s amazing creation in northern Maine, whether it be sailing, canoeing, camping, hiking, skiing, or snowshoeing; and we love to travel and experience new places, cultures and foods. My precious stepson is a young adult, proudly being a geek away at college, with geek-genes inherited from his dad. (Education: BSN, Bethel College, KS, 1990; MS in Primary Care (FNP) and Community Health Nursing, Indiana Wesleyan University, 1999; MDiv in Christian Faith Formation, Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, 2019)
What is Following Jesus in Nursing?
Nurses, Students, and Educators -- Nurses Christian Fellowship is here for you as you follow Jesus in nursing! It’s a struggle to stay spiritually grounded with a heavy and stressful workload. What does it look like to be cared for by Jesus in a job full of daily challenges where you can also be surrounded by all kinds of trauma? Maybe you’ve wondered how to offer spiritual care to patients or how to face an ethical challenge. We will be hearing inspiring stories from nurses and students and getting sound, faithful advice from experts on these topics and more.
This podcast is produced by InterVarsity’s Nurses Christian Fellowship and hosted by Lara Kay Kaiser, Associate Director of NCF Student Ministries. Join us as we share new episodes with you!
Welcome back to season 4 where we're talking about heartful nursing in the face of burnout. Burnout can feel like wandering, like you're running on empty with no clear way forward. In nursing, that can look like long hours, emotional exhaustion, and the quiet ache of knowing something just isn't quite right. But what happens when that place of desperation becomes the very place where we meet God? Today's conversation is rooted in Psalm 107:1-9.
Lara:It's a passage that tells the story of a people who were lost, hungry, and weary until they cried out to the Lord and he delivered them. Today, we'll hear from Margaret who shares what it looks like to feel depleted, unseen, and spiritually dry, and how in a moment of desperation, she cried out to God and experienced his provision and renewal. If you've ever felt like your strength is running out or your direction is unclear? This episode is for you.
Margaret:To be honest, I was feeling like a failure as a nurse. Who am I? I can't even stay at this job. And my integrity was being questioned by my supervisors, but as I was burning out, I did not recognize to what extent my life was really ebbing away. I just knew something wasn't right. And when I recognized I wasn't sure how well I could hear God anymore, I knew something, just desperately something, had to change. And I came to the point of crying out to God, God, what do I do? These verses say they cried out to God and God delivered them. God delivered me, and so I am more quick to cry out, Help, God. I can't do this on my own.
Margaret:Call out to God. God will somehow answer. It may be different each time, but God will indeed answer when we cry out to him.
Lara:Hi, Margaret. I'm so glad you're here with us today. Thank you for joining me.
Margaret:Thank you so much for having me. I feel honored that you would invite me to come.
Lara:Well, we're so excited to hear your story, but first, before we get into it, could you just tell us about yourself and help our audience to get to know you a little bit?
Margaret:Sure. I'm Margaret De Jong Morgenthaler. I was blessed to grow up in a Christian home. I made a decision to personally follow Jesus just shy of my 13th birthday, and it's only by God's grace that I've been walking faithfully with Jesus since then. In my spare time, I love to be in the outdoors. I currently live in northern Maine, and I love cross country skiing and snowshoeing in winter, and hiking and sailing and canoeing in the summer.
Lara:That sounds beautiful and, like, so much fun.
Margaret:It is awesome. Yes. And I have worked in various nursing roles, mainly overseas, actually, as a missionary nurse in Haiti and Senegal, doing community health work and providing primary care as a family nurse practitioner. And before I went overseas, I worked for less than a year as a nurse on a general med surg floor. And since being back in the U.S., I've worked as a hospice home care nurse and as a nurse manager of the ultrasound ministry at a pregnancy care center.
Margaret:And currently I'm working as one of the editors of the Journal of Christian Nursing.
Lara:You have done a wide variety of things, and you are quite the adventurer.
Margaret:You got it! Yes, adventure plays a key part in my life.
Lara:Yes, I hear it, I hear it. Well, thank you. That's such a helpful background to kind of get a sense of who you are and where you've been. So this season, we're talking about burnout and being in the midst of it, overcoming it, how God has been present to us in the midst of it. So let's get started with your story. What was that season like when you were experiencing burnout?
Margaret:Sure. I was in a job where I was putting in long weeks. The organization I worked for stated work/life balance was one of their priorities, but I didn't see it. I was regularly working 50 to 55 hours a week. And I pointed out to my supervisor that my work weeks were longer than my colleagues' of how patient assignments were made, But my supervisors refused to admit the truth about the data that I kept placing in front of them.
Margaret:And my supervisor questioned my integrity because I was occasionally calling in legitimately sick. And this happened to fall on a Friday or a Monday a couple times. And my supervisor thought I was just trying to get a long weekend. It felt very hard, being challenged for my integrity.
Lara:Insulting.
Margaret:Yeah. And for the most part, I enjoyed relating to my patients and their families. I was repeatedly thanked for my quality of care and for really listening to them. So it was a job in many ways I loved, but I'll get more into what wasn't right in a minute. And I would share in team reports when I provided spiritual care and prayed for patients, and my supervisor asked me if I was spending too much time praying. That was hard for me to take when there was no affirmation of the importance of spiritual care.
Lara:On the one hand, that's hard to take, but also I'm like, good for you. The worst thing they can say to you is you pray too much. What an insult. I hope to be accused of that. And you do pray a lot. I appreciate that about you as a teammate. Tell me more about, like, what were the signs that something wasn't right in your mind, body, the ways you were interacting at home, at work? What was, like, the radars that were going off that were alarm bells. This is not an okay situation to stay in.
Margaret:The bells came gradually. I don't know if it would be alarm so much as gradually awakening. to this. But I was getting physically ill way more frequently than is typical for me, and I had less to give to my patients. I said I enjoyed relating with them, but over time I had less to give to them. I could see I was getting more frustrated when patients were having a hard time understanding how to take all their meds, and typically I love helping people figure things out, but I just didn't have the energy left for that kind of teaching with patients anymore. You know, that was ringing some bells for me.
Margaret:And at home I was definitely more grumpy, more likely to get upset by little things. But then there came a point where I realized I was so tired that I didn't even know what my emotions were anymore. I sensed my exhaustion was playing into my ability to hear God. That's probably when the bells really went off. I felt I was so exhausted that in a very limited time I had to sit and be in God's Word, I was so tired I would most likely be numb to however God might be trying to speak to me.
Margaret:Yeah. And that really disturbed me.
Lara:Yeah. I would imagine so. The two things I hear in your story are that tired, that you were very tired in a lot of different ways, physically, emotionally, mentally, and that you sounded like you didn't feel like yourself, really.
Margaret:Good way to put it, yes. I was not myself. And myself, who I was, was being questioned, you know, my integrity was being questioned too.
Lara:Good point. That would be very disorienting. Like, I don't know who I am. Other people don't seem to recognize who I am. What does this mean about who I am?
Margaret:Exactly. Yeah.
Lara:Okay. We're gonna come back around to that. But this season, we're weaving in a section from a psalm with our stories. And so the section that you have selected to share with us today is from Psalm 107:1-9. So could you go ahead and read that for us today?
Margaret:Sure. "Give thanks to the Lord for he is good. His love endures forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story, those he redeemed from the hand of the foe, those he gathered from the lands from east and west, from north and south. Some wandered in desert wastelands, finding no way to a city where they could settle. They were hungry and thirsty, and their lives ebbed away. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He led them by a straight way to a city where they could settle. Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind, for he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things."
Lara:The Word of the Lord.
Margaret:Amen.
Lara:So before we discuss this passage, just a little bit of background. Psalm 107 is a song of thanks to the Lord for bringing the Israelites back to Jerusalem from captivity in Babylon. And the psalmist describes the experience through a series of four vignettes of distressed people and God's response to them. So the verses we're looking at today are just that first section. I'd encourage listeners to go read the rest of the psalm and look at the other three vignettes.
Lara:But today, we're just looking at the first one that's talking about wandering travelers. So as we get into the text, we like to start with what we see and what we observe. So what are the things that stood out to you as you read this passage, Margaret?
Margaret:Yeah. I guess the themes and repetition really stood out to me about the importance of giving thanks to the Lord for his goodness and his love, and just all the actions that the Lord is doing here in this section. He's hearing, he's redeeming, delivering, helping his people, And He's described as loving, and He acts wonderfully on our behalf. And God satisfies our thirst and hunger, but not just with anything, but with good things. All those really struck me. And the imagery of hungry and thirsty, that metaphor, that played a lot into my own story as I look back.
Lara:That makes sense. Those are great observations. I was noticing, like, this big contrast in the before and after descriptions. So before God's deliverance, the exiled Israelites were described as wandering, hungry, thirsty, troubled, distressed. So to paraphrase, they were empty, directionless, and I would say burned out.
Lara:And then God took action. Like you noticed, God has so much of an active role in this passage. And we could describe the Israelites then as full, fed, satisfied, settled, gathered, redeemed, and delivered. What a beautiful, beautiful picture. So where do you resonate maybe with these before and after descriptions? And how did that feel in the transition between the two?
Margaret:I love the way you point out the before and after. Yeah. So as I was on the road to burnout, I was very hungry and thirsty in my inner being, you know. I knew I couldn't go on. And I was also hungry and thirsty for physical rest.
Margaret:But as we've talked about, for affirmation of being a person of integrity, and for more time to just be alone with God. I just wanted to soak up God's goodness and love and care. I knew that's who God was, but I just didn't have time to soak it up. And you know that phrase, their lives ebbed away, that really struck me. That's an apt description of how I was feeling, even though I probably couldn't have described it at the time.
Margaret:Interestingly, when I was recovering from my burnout, I journaled at various times about how parts of me were coming to life. Literally, I wrote those words, coming to life. You know, like I was dreaming again with my husband about fun adventures we could have together, and I prayed specifically to God for new life to be born in me. I even had a dream in my sleep about tulip bulbs sprouting new life. I mean, clearly this was something that I needed to come back into me. But as I was burning out, I did not recognize to what extent my life was really ebbing away. I just knew something wasn't right.
Lara:Yeah. That's so interesting. I hadn't thought about that before. The verb ebbing, it's sort of a slow, like, easing back. Right? So it makes sense in your story. You didn't really realize it. It took a while to realize it.
Lara:Slowly retreating, your life of who you are. And I love this description that you're talking about dreaming about fun adventures again of, like, there's the adventurous Margaret that we know. So as we move into sort of interpretation of this Scripture, one thing I noticed the psalmist repeats this phrase twice, a city where they could settle. So at first, it says they couldn't find a way to the city. And then it says, you know, God provided the straight path to a city where they could settle. Why might this image sound appealing to someone who was wandering and exiled or burned out? And how did you sense Lord bringing you into such a space of being settled?
Margaret:You know, if you're wandering in your heart or soul, you just want a place to land and rest your inner being. That's at least how I felt. God's heart is for those who are weary and wandering. We clearly see that in these verses. God desires to strengthen us and satisfy us, and my inner being just wasn't settled. I knew something wasn't right, and I just didn't know how to correct it. And when I recognized I wasn't sure how well I could hear God anymore, I knew something, just desperately something had to change, and I came to the point of crying out to God. God, what do I do? Do I stay in this job? Do I quit?
Lara:And we're gonna come back to that because you did end up leaving that job. And I think you're gonna say more a little later about What that all looked like and felt like. So before we get to that, just an application, how has this Scripture changed you personally?
Margaret:You know, I think it's about just being quicker to cry out to God. I mean, these verses say they cried out to God and God delivered them, and so I am more quick to cry out. Help, God. I can't do this on my own. I'm also more willing to admit that a task is too big or not the right match for me, that perhaps I need to switch tasks or move on from a particular role.
Margaret:In my case, within a week of crying out in desperation and asking God if I should stay in this job, it became clear by my supervisor's actions that it was only going to get worse if I stayed there, and God gave me peace that it was okay to resign. And so I have learned from that, and I want to continue to apply that. Call out to God; God will somehow answer. It may be different each time, but God will indeed answer when we cry out to him.
Lara:Yes. That's great, that's such a good word. And the third is giving thanks to God for his love, goodness, and wonderful deeds for us. It repeats that part at the beginning and the end of the passage. So walk us through what these three actions could look like for a nurse who's in the midst of burnout.
Margaret:All three of these actions really don't take much time or energy, which when you're burned out, don't have much of. You can do this even if you're feeling exhausted. Like you can talk to God about your challenges just about any time or anywhere. You can literally shout out to God while you are in the car to and from work, or even silently cry out in the middle of caring for a patient, or on the way from one patient to the next. Or maybe while you're shedding your clothes after a rough day's work, you know, you can shout out your challenges and frustrations to God at the same time. So that's the crying out to God part, and then you can remind yourself of what God has done for you, no matter how small it may seem.
Margaret:Better yet, verbalize it to a colleague or friend or family member. You know, was it a miracle that you made it to your shift on time because of exhaustion or your kids being sick or an accident that happened in front of you? Name God's goodness. It's good for your own mental health, and it can also encourage others. And then after remembering what God has done for you, tell him thank you. As the psalmist says, give thanks to the Lord for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever. As I said earlier, you can talk to God just about anytime, anywhere. And for me personally, remembering what God has done and thanking God for it always turns my heart from frustration and discouragement to one of hope in what God will continue to do.
Lara:Well said. Thank you. And that's such good news. Like, you're right. None of these take a lot of time or energy, which is great news when you're not feeling like you have a lot of energy to give. And it's really just a simple perspective shift. Like, we're already lamenting the things we feel stuck in. So why not just turn those cries of our heart towards God? We're already feeling it anyway.
Margaret:Amen. Yes. For sure.
Lara:And like you said, to exchange some of those maybe, frustration sessions for gratitude sessions. So as we kind of merge the psalm we looked at with your story, how do you see God at work in your burnout story through the lens of this psalm as you look back?
Margaret:Yeah. Now looking back, I see this was an opportunity for me to admit my dependence on God, you know, just to cry out in desperation to God, And also an opportunity to be reminded of my identity as God's beloved. I mean, the song talks about God's amazing love for us, you know. My identity is ultimately as God's beloved, not as a nurse. I mean, to be honest, I was feeling like a failure as a nurse. Who am I? I can't even stay at this job. And my integrity was being questioned by my supervisors. But when I cried out to God in desperation, God delivered me. God gave me the courage to leave my job, and he took me to a new place to settle and work.
Margaret:I initially experienced God's love in rest and in fellowship with others, and eventually in life-giving new work settings. God satisfied my hunger and thirst with good things. And I love it that now I'm getting an opportunity to share this story with others. We're just talking about that, tell what God has done to others, you know? And verse 2 says, Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story. And I believe God will somehow use my story and this psalm to encourage a listener struggling with burnout right now. I don't know how God will lead you in your particular situation, but I know God loves you, and His answer will be the best thing for you.
Lara:That's beautiful. Thank you so much, Margaret, and thanks for sharing your story. And we'd just love to end this time in prayer, so would you be willing to pray for those listeners right now who are listening and who are experiencing burnout?
Margaret:Yes, thank you, and thank you that you appreciate prayer. Thank you, God, that when we call out to you, you will indeed hear us. You are the God of love and good deeds. I pray for those who are tired, exhausted, burned out. It's a rough place to be, God. You know that. Jesus, you experienced that. You were tired and exhausted. Give them the courage to call out to you, God. Show them the good deeds you are daily doing for them. And Lord, I pray you would give them hope that you are going to satisfy their hunger and thirst with good things, that you will indeed bring them to settle in a good place, because that is who you are. Thank you, God. Thank you, thank you. We can't thank you enough for your amazing love for us. In the powerful name of Jesus, amen.
Lara:Amen. Amen. Thank you so much, Margaret.
Margaret:My pleasure. Thank you for an opportunity to share today.
Lara:As we close, hear the rhythm of Psalm 107. Cry out to the Lord in your trouble, and he delivers you from your distress. If you're feeling burned out, hungry, tired, or like your life is ebbing away, you don't need perfect words. You can simply pray, "Help God." And then begin to notice his goodness. Where has he met you? Tell that story. Give thanks.
Lara:And if this episode encouraged you and your longing to stay rooted in both your faith and your nursing practice, consider subscribing to the Journal of Christian Nursing, where voices like Margaret's are helping equip and encourage nurses to follow Jesus in every setting. JCN's subscription is included in NCF membership, and more information can be found at ncf-jcn.org/membership. Let's end with this reminder.
Lara:Give thanks to the Lord for he is good. His love endures forever. For he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.