When You’re Running Hard But Getting Nowhere: A Year-End Reflection on Burnout, Self-Doubt, & God’s Silence

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SPEAKER_00: If you, by any chance, are thinking to yourself, how in the world is the year almost over?

2025, gone in a flash, and you've left to wonder, what did I accomplish this year?

The goals, the dreams, the ideas I had?

What actually happened?

What came true?

And maybe more specifically, all the stuff I've been working on this year, what has it been for?

What do I have to show for it?

Am I any further ahead?

Am I any better off here at the end of the year than I was at the beginning?

My friend, if you've been wrestling with any of those questions, then this is the episode for you.

Because today I'm sharing my own personal journey, wrestling with these very feelings.

This idea of what's any of it worth?

And do I want to continue doing what I'm doing, what I've been doing?

Or should I maybe make a change?

And how do I know if I should make a change when I keep praying and I feel like I'm not hearing from God?

What do I do then?

What does it say about me that I don't know?

What does it say about me that I feel like I'm not hearing from God?

I'm not having the clarity.

All of that is what is inside of today's episode.

So, my friend, if you need just a good old, heartfelt, rambling conversation with a friend who gets you, who feels you, well then, my friend, you are exactly where you're meant to be.

This is episode 420 of Grit Grace and Inspiration.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I got Grit Grace and Inspiration.

SPEAKER_00: What's up, my friend, and welcome back to Grit Grace and Inspiration.

I am your host, Kevin Lowe.

And my friend, if we have not met, well, first and foremost, I am excited you're here.

And you might be wondering, who the heck is Kevin Lowe?

And why should I even be listening to him?

Well, who am I?

I am a speaker, an inspirational public speaker.

I'm also, of course, the creator and host of this very podcast.

But more than any of that, I'm just a guy on a mission to use what I've been through to hopefully be a benefit to somebody else.

And today, I hope that somebody else is you.

Twenty years ago, I woke up to be left completely blind.

Literally, in the blink of an eye, everything in my world changed.

And I was faced with the unthinkable, a life without sight.

Now, I could have chosen to allow this to ruin my life, but instead, I chose to let it be a catalyst, to send me into a new life, a new world.

Not one that I chose, but one with a greater purpose, a mission, to use what I've been through to be a help to somebody else.

And that is why I'm here.

That is why I speak on stage.

That is why I have this podcast.

So now, today, though, we're getting real about reflection.

And there is one thing that is for sure is that when the year is coming to a close, we tend to find ourselves reflecting back on the year that was.

This just so happens to be the year that was 2025.

Now, here's where it gets a little bit dicey.

Because as much as we would love to think that we get to look back on life, to look back on the year, and think of all the amazing things that we accomplished, all the goals we achieved, all the dreams that came true, the plans that worked out.

Yep, scratch all of that.

Because more times than not, the time of reflecting here at the end of the year, it leaves us depressed, disappointed, realizing what the heck did I do this year?

And that is where today is going.

Because my friend, I've done this very thing.

I've done the reflecting, and it ain't been pretty, let me just say that.

Yes, I'm no exception.

I am not excluded from this horrible death circle of a trap we can go down about reflecting on the year that was.

A year of a lot of things happening, but were they for any big reason?

Did we go anywhere?

And so the metaphor I want to use to represent how I've been feeling, and maybe you can relate, is the treadmill.

Yes, my friend, the almighty treadmill, the one piece of exercise equipment we all know.

We've all bought our own back in the day from Walmart.

We've all jumped on board one at the gym.

And you know how it goes.

You get on the treadmill and you start walking.

Maybe you crank up the dial.

Maybe you get up to a little jog.

Maybe you're in an all-out sprint.

Like you are sprinting for the finish line.

And you're going, you're working it, you're building up a sweat.

You got your headphones in, you're listening to your music, you're loving it.

You know you are burning some calories, you're working on them leg muscles, you got it going on.

And baby, before you know it, you've been on that treadmill for how long?

30 minutes, an hour.

You have been kicking butt.

But you know what's the really sad thing at the end of all that?

Is all that running?

Where did you go?

You're still in the same place.

You're in the exact place you were when you stepped on that treadmill.

My friend, if that doesn't feel like life sometimes, I don't know what else does.

Because for myself, I feel like life can be a treadmill.

We are constantly running, sprinting, sometimes walking, sometimes power walking.

Other times we get up to a jog and we're doing it, and we're going through the motions, we're doing all the things.

And yet, what do we have to show for it?

Yeah, maybe we've got some life experience, we've learned some things along the way, but have we gone anywhere?

Am I anywhere different than I was at the beginning of the year?

For myself, this is what I've been dealing with.

And it's why I'm talking about this, is because I've had to ask myself the difficult questions of why am I doing what I'm doing?

What does any of it matter?

The dreams that I have, the goals that I set.

Why did I have those goals?

What makes me think that those dreams I had were gonna come true?

And what does it say about me that the dreams didn't come true?

Is that that I'm a failure?

Is there something wrong with me?

And that is where I sit.

Today, I don't pretend to have all the answers.

More so, I want today to be an opportunity for me to hopefully connect with you.

Somebody who maybe is feeling like this as well, where you feel like you've been on a treadmill for this past year.

Heck, for the past five years, 10 years, where you're putting in the work, you're doing all the things, but you feel like you don't have anything to show for it.

My friend, if you feel like that, trust me when I say I am right there with you.

I feel like I've been on the treadmill next to you this entire time.

Now, yes, if we want to be all positive, which I try to be, yeah, we've learned a lot, we've gained a lot.

But if we want to talk about tangible things, money in the bank, experiences had, what do we have to show for it?

For myself, I don't feel like a whole lot.

And it's been frustrating and it's been discouraging, and it's been leading me to really think about life.

Of what exactly do I want?

Because here's the thing back to the treadmill.

A lot of times we're on the treadmill and we're going through life, and we just keep going because it's what we've been doing.

And it's normal, it's routine.

We just fall in line.

We get up each morning and we don't think about the actions we take.

We just do it.

We're on autopilot.

But what if we decide to stop the treadmill, to turn off this normal routine?

Because we start to wonder, why am I doing what I'm doing?

What is any of it worth?

Does any of it really matter to anyone?

These are the questions I've been battling with everything that I've been pursuing.

And I'm talking about even this very podcast.

I've been doing this podcast for over five years.

Five and a half years I've been going strong.

And I've started to wonder, but is it for anything?

Does it really matter to anyone?

Yeah, I mean, I see the numbers on my dashboard when I log in to view the analytics, and I see that I have people tuning in and listening from all over the world, one of which is you, which, hey, thank you for being here.

But I have to wonder, does it really matter?

Is anything that I'm saying actually making a difference in anyone's life?

I don't know.

It's kind of hard when I'm just here talking into a microphone, putting something out onto the world wide web, onto your Apple Podcast.

That's as far as I get to go.

I don't get to talk to you unless you're somebody who actually reaches out and emails me, who sends me a message.

I have no idea who I'm talking to.

I have no idea if any of this matters.

And so I've been wrestling with the idea of do I continue doing what I've been doing?

Do I continue running on the same treadmill in the hopes that it's gonna turn into something?

It's gonna mean something to me or to somebody else.

Or do I think about changing tactics?

Do I think about jumping from the treadmill over to the elliptical machine?

Do I skip cardio altogether and just go straight in to start pumping some weights?

I don't know.

It's the reflections at the end of the year, the stuff we all encounter.

And this brings me to the next little point that I want to make here is that sometimes as a Christian, I hope that I could hear from God.

Because the fact is true, is that at the point I'm at in my life right now, even though there's a lot of things that I want and I dream about, to be honest, I'm tired of chasing after my own dreams and goals.

Because for me personally, it feels like everything that I keep chasing after doesn't work out.

I don't end up achieving what I wanted to achieve.

I feel like more doors are closed than open.

I feel like opportunities are lacking.

And sometimes I just wonder, God, what do you want for me?

What do you want me to do?

And to be honest, that's what matters to me at this point in my life, is I just want to do what God wants me to do.

Because at the end of the day, my friend, at this point in my life, having gone through what I have, the only thing that matters to me right now is that when my life is over and I go to heaven, I just want God to be proud of me.

That I did exactly what he hoped I would do.

That's what I want for my life.

But that brings me to the issue that I've been battling with is when we want to know what God has in store for us, but we can't hear him.

People say, with the best of intentions, for us to just get quiet and to listen to God and to follow his lead.

But my friend, that can be such frustrating advice because I don't know about you, but God does not have an on-off switch.

Yes, they say that you have to take time to get quiet, to just sit and listen to God.

But I don't know if you've ever felt like you've heard God's voice before.

But for me, it has never, ever come when I've been silent, when I've been really wanting to hear from God.

No, it's never happened like that.

Instead, it happens in just the normal day-to-day chaos of life.

Matter of fact, there was one day in particular, one situation.

It was just a normal day, middle of the afternoon.

I'm standing in my kitchen cutting up a grapefruit, and all of a sudden, God spoke to me like I never had God speak to me before.

The Holy Spirit just completely took over my body.

I was saying something out loud that I swore I would never say.

This particular situation was forgiving someone who had done harm to my family who I swore I would never forgive.

And yet, right there in my kitchen, cutting up a grapefruit, I forgave them.

It wasn't me even speaking.

It was God speaking through me, the Holy Spirit.

I've been witness to God performing what I would call miracles.

I've been witness to literally my sister being in a hospital, us thinking that she was about to die, to literally watching her before our very eyes, sit up in bed and be ready to go home.

I know God is real, and I know that God performs amazing things in our lives.

And I know God can speak to us, but it can be so frustrating sometimes when people can act like it's so easy.

And it can make you feel like there's something wrong with you, that there's something wrong with your faith, with your relationship with your creator, that you're not hearing God.

They say to just listen to God and do what God says you should do.

But my friend, it's not that easy.

And what I want to do right now is to be sure that you understand that if you've been in the same situation as me where you want to hear from God, but you're not.

You're not hearing from Him.

You don't know what you're supposed to do.

Every decision you've made in your life feels like it's always been the wrong decision.

Even the ones that you think God is leading you in that direction, and yet they still don't work out.

My friend, I just want you to know that I understand exactly how you feel.

When you feel like you're just being led astray, and you pray, you ask God to give you direction, to speak truth to you, to let you understand what to do.

And yet it just feels like God is silent.

My friend, I understand how that feels.

And I don't really have an answer for you or me, other than the fact that what I've learned in my own life, in my own faith journey, is that God does speak to us.

But rarely ever does it come across like people make it seem to be.

We're in the perfect situation while you're quietly just sitting in your living room, sipping your morning cup of coffee, meditating, reading the Bible.

No, instead, it just comes out of nowhere in the middle of an afternoon with the TV on, you standing in your kitchen cutting up a grapefruit, or driving down the highway in the middle of your normal everyday life.

Maybe it's a song that comes on, a song that you've heard a hundred times before, but all of a sudden, this time you hear the song differently.

The lyrics that are spoken are as if they're being sung by you.

It's like God came through in that song, in those lyrics.

God came through in the sunrise, where all of a sudden the same sunrise you've seen every day of your life, it just hints differently.

You have a whole new outlook on life.

It's like you're seeing your future for the first time.

Those are the little moments when God speaks to us.

And we need to not discount them, that they're God.

They are God 110%.

So, my friend, I guess what I want for you to get out of today's episode is the understanding that if you're feeling like this year has been a big fat failure, if you're feeling like you've been stuck on a treadmill for the past five years, if you're feeling like you just wish that God heard you, you're not alone in any of those feelings.

And all I can say is what I've been telling myself is that right now, you just need to have hope for a better tomorrow.

Don't lose hope.

Hope in a better year.

We're almost into 2026.

Now, what does a turn of a calendar really mean?

I don't know.

But we put a lot of weight on it.

So we're just gonna go with it.

It's a new year, it's a new day, a new opportunity.

And so to you and to me, let's not give up on life.

Let's not give up on the chance to make those dreams come true.

Let's just keep fighting the fight, doing the thing, and let's see where we get in the end.

My friend, if at any point you would love to connect with me, maybe something I said today resonated, something you'd love to talk with me about, please check out today's show notes where you can find links and information on how you can contact me.

You can also just go to my website, which is gritgraceinspiration.com.

Pretty easy.

Just the name of the podcast, gritgraceinspiration.com.

That is an easy way for you to be able to get in touch with me.

And lastly but not least, my friend, make 2025 a year to remember by just focusing on this month.

We got one month left to go.

Spend it with the people you love, do some fun things, and remember to keep tuning in to this podcast as episodes are going to continue to drop all the way up through the end of the year and beyond.

My friend, I'm your host, Kevin Lowe, and this, of course, is Grit Grace and Inspiration.

SPEAKER_02: I've got grit, grace, and inspiration on my mind.