Burnout? Failure? This is What Happens When Wounds Become Wisdom

It’s easy to spot transactional religion in others but oh so difficult to see how it creeps into my own life. That’s why I love the honesty that Tanya Godsey shares in this story of how her striving led to surrender. By revealing her own struggles, she helps me turn duty for God into devotion and worship. That’s why it’s an absolute delight to welcome Tanya to the farm’s front porch today…

Guest Post by Tanya Godsey

A mentor of mine once told me that no one benefits from a lie.

The place where that happens the most is deep down inside our very own hearts. Many of us know many things in our gut but have been conditioned to dismiss those instincts. Yet it is the truth that sets us free.

How do I know this?

Failure. I had lied to myself.

I was several years past twenty-nine, but few words triggered me on a neurobiological level more than “You’re not going to succeed.”

But I knew my calling was from God Himself, and I knew it wasn’t going to simply disappear into thin air even if it didn’t align with music-industry norms. My call would forever echo off the walls of my heart if it did not find a way out of my body. The music industry had a template for artists, and I didn’t fit it. But as I saw it, I had no choice. I had to steward my calling.

In 2015 I set out to make my third record. I recorded, engineered, comped, and tuned my own vocals in my own studio until the wee hours of the morning with my husband, a four-year-old, and an eight-year-old close by. I did my own preproduction, from programming drums to fine-tuning MIDI keys. I tweaked parts until they were absolute perfection in my mind and swam in an ocean of musical minutiae, sometimes until 4:00 a.m. Then I would rise and shine at 6:45 a.m. to get kids off to school and work a full day at the studio with only a short lunch break.

“It’s the truth that sets us free—if we have the courage to face it.“

It was intense. But I knew no one would care more about these songs and this work than I did, and I didn’t expect them to.

At the end of what I referred to then as a “labor-intensive sowing season,” I will never forget how God brought harvest from scattered seeds. It became my most critically acclaimed record at the time. I booked a successful tour and recouped my money within two months of said tour, but I was falling apart.

My physical, mental, emotional, and relational health had been sacrificed on the altar of this success, and the carnage was widespread and undeniable. I had stopped eating, and sleep was at a minimum. I was on a mission to save the world, but at the age of thirty-six, I was the one who needed saving.

Let me tell you something. All the success in the world doesn’t mean much when you are laying your very body, mind, and soul on the altar of achievement to secure it.

The idol of man’s approval had granted me momentary public success, but the private fallout was disastrous.

I was suffering from the worst case of burnout possible. My marriage, my body, my mind, and my soul were barely surviving. I needed a full stop. I needed to sleep. I needed to eat. I needed to heal. I needed to mine the meaning of how I had let myself get to this breaking point.

It’s the truth that sets us free—if we have the courage to face it.

In hindsight, I fought hard to reach the fullness of my potential, and while there were some benefits to the development of my skill set and to the overall project, I also learned that if we’re not careful, workaholism can become a little-g god that can bind us to a mindset of striving. This mindset can deplete us spiritually, mentally, physically, emotionally, and relationally while enslaving us to a life rooted in the idolatry of achievement, self-sufficiency, and the approval of man.

“I learned that working from God’s pleasure within us is vastly different than working for God’s pleasure. “

I learned that succumbing to perfectionism is not the same as offering excellence. Excellence is simply about receiving what God gives us and responding to Him with faithful stewardship. Excellence is about working with a proper fear of the Lord, an awe and amazement of Him.

I learned that working from God’s pleasure within us is vastly different than working for God’s pleasure.

I learned that God was already pleased with me through Jesus, His Son, and my attempts at earning anything more than what He had already given was a false gospel rooted in transactionalism. Failure was the great teacher because pain was the great motivator that led me to ask transformational questions and to have the courage to answer those questions with nothing less than the truth.

I discovered that when you reach your own professed “Promised Land” the wrong way, the milk and honey doesn’t taste so sweet. 

My heart longed for an intimate friendship with God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The antidote wasn’t in a passionate approach of doing more or trying harder. The answer would come in a metamorphosis of motive. Surrender and obedience first, then passion, then endurance with a respectful sobriety of my weak points and tendencies.

All this, the fruit of failure. Beauty from the ashes of extreme burnout.

“I discovered that when you reach your own professed “Promised Land” the wrong way, the milk and honey doesn’t taste so sweet. “

God remade me in the fires of my own collapse. Transformation began with new practices. I never stopped working hard to steward my call, but I began to take the Sabbath, a twenty-four-hour period of rest and delight, very seriously.

I began to see the Sabbath as an act of trusting God with all the people, things, dreams, and projects I couldn’t control. Contemplative prayer followed. Sleep. Rest. Margin. Wonder. These all became new spiritual practices that yielded life, inspiration, renewal, joy, and a closer awareness of God’s activity and the Spirit’s leading and movement.

Failure offers many gifts. 

One of them is the authority to speak truth mined from lessons learned.

Transformation turns to gold when wounds become wisdom.

*Taken from Befriending God: How We are Undone, Changed, and Made New by Tanya Godsey © 2025. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.*

Tanya Godsey is a worship leader, a speaker, a spiritual director, and the founder of Redeeming The Story, a nonprofit organization focused on spiritual renewal and personal development resources and gatherings.

Tanya is the artist and voice behind four critically acclaimed albums that invite others into God’s transforming presence and serves as the host of The Unforced Gifts podcast. Tanya and her husband have been married for over twenty years and live in the Nashville area with their two children. Follower Tanya on Instagram and Spotify.

Befriending God was birthed in a south-Texas, immigrant community and influenced from studying the radical loyalty of people like Moses, King David, and John the Baptist.

Artist, worship leader, and spiritual director Tanya Godsey shares her experiences of striving, suffering, and surrender, and explores ways to create intimacy with God in each moment-by-moment of your day. Learn to trust God’s power, faithfully face life’s disruptions, find hope in suffering, and ultimately quietly rest in the shadow of the Almighty. 

{Our humble thanks to NavPress for their partnership in today’s devotional.}