Busyness crowds out God. In our modern culture, “busy” has become a status symbol, and “buying” has become a form of therapy. We live in an era where the constant drive for more—more activities, more products, more scrollable content—is exacting a heavy toll on our souls and our mental health. This message is my life’s anthem: You are a human being, not a human doing. Your worth is in who created you.
The Consumerist Trap and My Breaking Point
In my life, I have measured my worth by the extent of my exhaustion. I believed that saying “no” to an opportunity was a failure of stewardship. I was caught in the consumerist trap: not just buying things, but consuming every ounce of my time and energy, treating myself as a disposable tool. The result wasn’t holiness; it was anxiety, burnout, and a deep distance from God. I realized I was actively violating the dignity of the life God had given me. I had cluttered my life with “good” things and, in doing so, had crowded out the best thing: silence in the presence of the Lord. I was broken and couldn’t “do” anymore. I finally stopped striving and picked up the Bible. That’s when I truly encountered the Good News of Jesus Christ. Salvation is a gift through faith in Jesus.
The Solution: The Gospel Message
God, in His infinite love and mercy, sent His Son, Jesus, who lived a perfect life, died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sin, and rose again, conquering death. True life begins when you stop relying on your achievements and trust in Christ’s finished work.
Reclaiming my mental health was a radical act of rebellion against the culture: I started doing less so I could receive the rest Christ offers. God engraved three core truths on my heart through this journey:
- The priority of presence: By constantly redirecting our energy, we are taking it away from the people who need us—our families and neighbors. It is an act of justice to give our bodies and minds the rest they are due.
- My identity is not in what I produce but in who created me. We fail to set boundaries against the culture’s intrusion, violating our inherent dignity.
- Mercy is essential to life: it is an act of mercy to forgive ourselves for not doing “everything” and to extend that same grace to our families. We must reject the consumerist mindset that commodifies everything, including our time and worth.
My experience has shaped my calling to advocate for two critical, interconnected issues, rooted in the Catholic principle of respect for life. While “Respect for Life” is often viewed through the lens of physical survival, it absolutely includes respecting the quality of the life God gave us. I am passionate about guiding young people toward healthy boundaries, teaching them that joy is found in creation and connection, not consumption. I passionately advocate systemic change and personal action that prioritize human dignity over profit. Our peace is a necessary spiritual battle. We must support policies and personal choices that challenge the “throwaway culture,” which treats people as disposable tools. Cherish life. Say “no” to one nonessential commitment this week to make space for silence.
The Messy, Grace-Filled Pulpit of Everyday Life
Reflections on Outreach, Mistakes, and the Bridge Between Faith and Community
We often imagine sharing our faith as a polished production—a theatrical altar call, a perfectly scripted theological defense, or a flawless campaign executed with professional precision. But my recent journaling tells a profoundly different story. They tell a story marked by human anxiety, missteps, consumerist burnout, and the raw, vulnerable realization that God doesn’t need our perfection; He only asks for our open hands and willing presence.
When I set out to experiment with spiritual outreach, my initial instinct was familiar: leaning heavily on intellectual arguments, writing articles about “busyness,” and trying to hand down solutions from a pedestal. Yet, life has a humbling way of breaking down our neatly constructed frameworks. As author and speaker Brennan Manning famously noted, “In ordinary life we are not required to be great, but we are required to be human.”
My journal entries reveal that I frequently stumbled into the consumerist trap. While critiquing modern culture’s obsession with “busyness”—where work becomes a status symbol, and buying becomes a form of spiritual healing—I found myself running on fumes. A conversation with a friend brought this painfully to light. She looked past the abstract writing and gently reminded me of simply being a disciple of Jesus, rather than adding another high-pressure project to an already overloaded life.
The Trap of the Pedestal
There was a time when I caught myself attempting to hand out answers rather than sharing in the communal struggle. Sharing our beliefs, when approached as an ego-driven achievement, quickly turns exhausting. It becomes just another item on a professional checklist. But when we strip away the need to impress, the entire landscape changes.
Being a servant changed everything. When I began approaching my neighbors and community members not with an agenda to fix them but with deep empathy to understand their real, granular struggles, the friction disappeared. Writing stopped feeling like a forced performance. When my writing meets hands-on service, spiritual outreach shifts from abstract words on a page to a lived, incarnational presence in the neighborhood.
Embracing Mistakes as Refinement
One of the hardest lessons in this outreach experiment was learning to separate my self-worth from public reception. Writing about faith, trauma, family illness, and personal recovery opens you up to all kinds of feedback—some encouraging, some challenging, and some critical. In the past, a critique felt like a direct blow to the ego.
However, true spiritual growth requires us to view feedback not as an attack but as a divine refinement. As leadership expert John C. Maxwell observes: “A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.”
When I opened my work to critique—allowing others to edit, redirect, or question my thoughts without taking offense—the anxiety began to lift. I realized that my writing, my teaching, and my coaching are simply trusts given to me to care for others, not trophies to display.
The Pulpit of the Pen and Keyboard
For me, the pen and the keyboard have become the pulpit. Whether drafting a newsletter, profiling a quiet volunteer behind the scenes, or sharing personal struggles with burnout and recovery, the goal is simple: to serve as a bridge connecting a reader’s heart to the divine.
Lord, let me decrease so that your love might be felt here. Use these hands and these words however you choose.
If my mistakes and experiments in outreach teach anything, it is that God can work powerfully through our mess. We do not need to have it all together to share our faith. In fact, in our acknowledged weakness, our shared exhaustion, and our willingness to listen before we speak, Christ’s presence shines brightest in our communities.
Michael Lerchenfeldt 