by Rob & Jen Schwinge, as told on the Story Partners Podcast
They told me it was an ‘honor’ that I got to serve more, even while my world was falling apart.
I remember looking them in the eye and saying, ‘That is not the badge I will wear. That is not the honor I want to have.’
Reaching Rock Bottom
Rob
The first thing in the psalm says, ‘The Lord is my shepherd. I lack nothing.’ I remember reading that and feeling like it was the biggest lie I had ever heard, because everywhere I looked in my life, there was a lack. I lacked a sister-in-law. I lacked a wife who was in a healthy place. I lacked a stable family. I lacked the security of a church. I lacked extended family—those close relationships were gone. I said, ‘God, this is a lie.’
As a pastor, I knew exactly what I would say to myself if I were sitting in my office. I knew the Bible verses I would quote. I knew the advice I would give. I knew the encouragement I would offer, saying, ‘Well, that’ll get you through,’ but none of it worked. I felt completely useless, helpless, and alone, because everything I thought I knew how to do—everything that was supposed to fix it—didn’t.
No matter how hard you try, you can’t create rock bottom for someone. They have to find it themselves. Until they find it for themselves, real, authentic change will never happen; it will just be behavior modification.
Death Comes In Threes
Life started to really unravel for us. It felt like we got hit with one unexpected wave after the next. Jen’s sister passed away. Two weeks after that, my grandmother, who was like a second mom—we lived with them most of our childhood—passed away very unexpectedly. Then my grandfather, who was like a second dad, passed away very unexpectedly.
I buried the emotion of trying to grieve all those losses. I heard a great quote once: ‘Whatever you bury, you plant, and whatever you plant grows.’ For a long time, I just buried all the grief, sorrow, sadness, and trauma until one day it grew. I reaped the harvest of falling apart because there was no foundation left. I faked it as long as I could until I couldn’t fake it anymore.
My relationship with Jen got more and more strained because everything was happening all around us. Every day was a bad day, and every moment seemed like a bad moment. If we talked about it all the time, that’s all we would talk about, and then we would feel like a burden to the other person. We didn’t know which way was up, and we started taking it out on each other. We wanted so badly to be there for one another, but we felt like we had nothing to give.
The Rock Of The Church
At the time, I was pastoring at a church that went through one of the hardest seasons I’ve ever experienced. I found myself being one of the only ones there, helping to care for and shepherd a few hundred people. I didn’t know how to do that while I was falling apart inside, not even knowing if I could get out of bed that day.
When you’re going through difficult seasons, and there are people in your life experiencing them as well, everyone is looking for someone to be the hero, the rock, the one who tells them it’s going to be okay. In our story, that fell to me—partly because there was no one left, and partly because our heart was to care for people. I remember feeling so alone every minute of every day and saying, ‘I don’t want anyone to feel this, so I will be there so they don’t have to.’
I had to be everything. I had to be the rock for everyone. We put these expectations on ourselves that we would be the savior. We would fix it; we would make them feel better; we would wipe every tear. We tried until we learned that no matter how hard we tried, we could never do that. The unfortunate thing was that we had created the expectation in others that we would. It felt like we were constantly failing them because we were. We could never be Jesus to them.
Growing Up Christian
Growing up in the church and hearing every day about how Jesus served and gave of Himself, you believe that doing anything to care for yourself is selfish. We just kept staying busy instead of facing what was actually going on in our marriage and our family. If there was a spare moment in our day, it needed to be filled because someone needed us. The problem is everyone is hurting, everyone is looking for God, and they’re going to find ‘God’ in someone or something. Unless you point them to the true God, they can very quickly be pointed at the wrong thing.
I would get caught in the crossfire quite often because I was not in a healthy place to point them to God. In that season, my identity became so wrapped up in doing. I remember people asking how I was, and I felt guilty if I didn’t say, ‘I’m so busy, I’m exhausted.’ Unless you said that, it must have meant you were being lazy. You had to be busy all the time; that’s how you knew you were successful. As long as you were never sitting still, you must be doing something right.
If the doors were open at the church, it was expected that we would be there. If someone was struggling, it didn’t matter if we were struggling. We were given the message that you can’t show weakness, you can’t slow down, and being intentional with your family time was unimportant. Giving of ourselves during that time meant giving from our hearts, but our hearts were broken. We literally felt like we had nothing left.
Burnout: The Badge Of Honor
When I hit burnout, many people celebrated it because they thought it was a badge of honor. They thought, ‘You must have done something right because you gave of yourself until you ran yourself into the ground. Well done, good and faithful servant.’
I remember sitting at a meeting one day where I was told I had to do more by a group of people who knew everything going on in my story—the grief, the loss, the struggle. They told me it was an ‘honor’ that I got to serve more even while my world was falling apart. I remember looking them in the eye and saying, ‘That is not the badge I will wear. That is not the honor I want to have.’
I stood in front of hundreds of people Sunday after Sunday and said, ‘Have faith.’ I used the cliché phrase, ‘If God feels distant, who moved? Because He doesn’t.’ I knew all the answers, but none of them brought comfort. I felt like even if I wanted to fake a smile, I couldn’t. So I didn’t.
Many people said to me, ‘God’s going to use this someday. God’s going to use your pain for someone else.’ I remember thinking, ‘How much more do I have to go through?’ I called Robin and said, ‘I don’t know which way to turn. I’ve hit rock bottom.’
Psalm 23
One night, my faith was tested the most. Jen and I had another difficult night of arguing. We were disappointed in ourselves and each other. She went into the bedroom, and I took my unfortunately all-too-familiar spot on the couch. I remember lying down and yelling to God, ‘I can’t fix this! Everything in me is falling apart, and nothing is working!’
The response I heard in my heart was, ‘You’re right, you can’t.’ That was the last thing I wanted to hear because I was already experiencing it. But thankfully, the conversation didn’t end there. The follow-up was, ‘You can’t, but I can. Are you going to let me? Are you going to let me be the rock and stop trying to be the rock?’
That night, because I couldn’t sleep, I opened my Bible. I was so empty I didn’t even know where to look. I just opened it to the middle, and it fell to Psalm 23.
‘The Lord is my shepherd. I lack nothing.’ I read that and felt it was a lie because of the lack of my sister-in-law, a healthy wife, a stable family, and a secure church. But I kept focusing on that phrase. I realized that I wouldn’t live without lack because I had things, but because I had my Shepherd. That night, it changed my whole perspective. I had become so focused on all the things I missed that I missed the Shepherd. I said to the Lord, ‘All right, You be my Shepherd. You’re going to bring me through this dark valley because I can’t do it on my own.’
Just Take The Next Step
I’m grateful God didn’t show us the end of the journey then, because I don’t know if I would have had the courage to keep going. But He kept saying, ‘Keep taking the next step.’ Jen woke up the next morning, and I said to her, ‘I reached out to this pastor, and he invited us to a marriage retreat. Would you go with me? If nothing else, at least we get a trip to Nashville, and it’ll be better than what we have here.’
Thankfully, she said yes. That was the next piece of our restoration journey—prioritizing our own healing instead of just trying to restore everyone else.
When someone is in the midst of a difficult season and begins a journey of restoration, we can get frustrated because we hope the journey will just be over. The reality is, we have hope because we’re not journeying alone. The journey may last the rest of our lives, but we won’t be walking empty-handed. When I stopped trying to ‘get through’ it and realized I was going through it with Jesus, everything changed.
A few years into our restoration, my family was stir-crazy, and we decided to visit a farm. While we were walking, I was having an argument with God because He was putting on my heart: ‘This is where it’s going to be. Your ministry will take place on a farm so you can create space for others.’ After we got home, I felt a peace over my body and heard Him saying, ‘I want you to use your pain for good.’
I told my wife, ‘We need to talk. God’s been telling me we need to leave our role at the church because that season is done. We need to sell everything and move to a farm.’ She looked me in the eyes and said, ‘Okay.’
Restoration Family Farm
I didn’t know what the ministry was or what it would look like. He didn’t give us details, He just gave us the vision of Restoration Family Farm.
We found very quickly that farms are not cheap. We didn’t have any money or a job to prove we could pay back a loan. We said, ‘God, we’re willing, but we can’t do it.’ We decided to sell our house to scrape together what we could. It sold in less than three days during the pandemic. Even then, we were well over $100,000 short. I had no way of coming up with that money.
We prayed about a loan. I talked to one person; they came back the next day and said, ‘I prayed about it. I’m not going to loan you the money, but God put it on my heart to donate it. We don’t want the money back; we want to see the ministry go forward.’ In two days, we raised all the funds we needed. Every time we turned around, God provided.
Moving was a shock to everyone. In North Jersey, roots run deep. We had inner turmoil about disappointing people. Our kids, Nathan and Hope, were losing their friends and their community. I told my son, ‘Buddy, this is going to be so hard, but you’re not journeying alone. We’re going to figure this out together.’
When Obedience Looks Like Rest
We live on a little piece of heaven now called Restoration Family Farm. When you come here, we fight for you to have rest. In Psalm 23, the Shepherd tells us to lie down and go by still waters. These were steps I never thought He would take us to, because I always thought He wanted us to do more. I didn’t realize He wanted us to obey by resting.
We work hard to create moments of rest every single day so we can have a constant connection with our Shepherd.
Being at rest just means feeling completely filled up by Him and knowing that we are His children. That’s it.
People show up here and trust us to journey in the messiness of their lives. We sit down at dinner together at one table; people come and become part of our family. God reminds us, ‘Remember that time in your journey? Now you’re going to use that experience for the people coming tomorrow.’
Rest is a gift available to everyone, but it looks different for every person. God isn’t calling everyone to move to a farm or homeschool their kids. Part of the journey is understanding, ‘God, what does the rhythm of rest You created for me look like?’ It begins each morning by saying, ‘What is my next step?’
Rhythms of Rest
We should strive to create rhythms of rest every day so we don’t reach the point of burnout where we have to completely disconnect from life because we can’t navigate it.
The Lord shows me when I need to rest. It doesn’t feel like a correction or being hit over the head; I can hear Him gently guiding me back.
The beauty of a restoration journey is that it’s never over. Years ago, that would have overwhelmed me. I just wanted the page to turn. But when you realize the Shepherd ensures you live without lack, you find joy in the journey. Every day I remind myself: this is out of my control, and that is a good thing. I can’t do this, but He can. I just need to keep holding onto the Shepherd and take the next step.
