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What I Learned When I Felt Like a Failure. An Interview with Sarah Burt
93 Plays24 days ago
Thanks for listening to Season 1, Episode 3 of The After Dinner Mint, a podcast of Stories I’d Tell You at Dinner. Thanks for sharing your day with us!
We are interviewing all of our regular contributors in Season 1 of the podcast for you to get to know them better. Today’s guest is Sarah Burt, who lives on a farm in the Great Southern.
In today’s episode, we explore:
- The joys of amateur theatre and getting out into nature
- The slow process of coming to Christ from a secular family through friends, Christian Union, and God’s gentle leading.
- Sarah’s experiences of postnatal depression, what she learned about God’s character, and what helped her heal.
- Encouragement for those struggling with depression and for those struggling postpartum.
If you are struggling postpartum, you can contact the PANDA National Perinatal Mental Health Helpline, or with depression in different circumstances you can contact Life Line on 13 11 14.
You can also book an appointment with your GP for a Mental Health Care Plan. They can refer you for sessions with a psychologist or social worker under Medicare. If you’re in regional or remote Western Australia, these can even be done via telehealth.
Check out the show notes for everything mentioned in this episode.
Sign up to our free, weekly newsletter Stories I'd Tell You at Dinner to get honest stories from Christian women straight to your inbox on Wednesday. Never miss a thing - podcasts, essays, poems and fun events.
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Transcript
Introduction and Reflections on Faith
00:00:00
Speaker
I had to trust God even though was tempted just to go, no, this is too hard. I'm not going to follow God anymore. What has he done for me? And then I had to realise, well, he has done something for me. He's given up his own son to me.
Meet the Hosts: Bec and Sarah Burt
00:00:29
Speaker
Welcome the After Dinner Mint, a podcast of stories I tell you at dinner. We bring Christian women in Western Australia together through Honour Stories. I'm Bec and today I'm here with Sarah Burt, one of our regular writers.
00:00:41
Speaker
We're kicking off the podcast by interviewing all our contributors so you can get to know them better. Hi Sarah. Hi Bec. How you doing? Good, thank
A Week in Sarah's Life: Balancing Work and Family
00:00:48
Speaker
you. So Sarah, can you tell everyone who's listening, what does a typical week look like for you? What kind of things make up your week?
00:00:55
Speaker
Well, I work part-time as a school officer in our local school. say Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I go to work from 8 to 4 and it's at the school my kids go to. So I drive them to school and work there and then take them home again.
00:01:09
Speaker
And then Thursdays and Fridays are my days off. Thursday I like to be part of a ladies Bible study group and we've also got after school sports starting on Thursday afternoons. And then Friday I like to go to a fitness class and then just basically sleep.
00:01:26
Speaker
Oh, beautiful, beautiful. Saturday, i guess, yeah, we're heading into winter sports, so it'll be hockey for my kids and my husband, and Sunday is church. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah.
Farm Life: Cropping and Family Activities
00:01:36
Speaker
That's pretty hectic, like, and you guys, like, you live on a farm, right?
00:01:40
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, what does that kind of involve for you and your husband? It's a lot of work for him during the busy times, so we're looking at April, May, and November, December are the really hectic times on the farm where he's working on hideous hours,
00:01:54
Speaker
And, yeah, it does get quite hectic at the end of the year when you've got Christmas, you've got end of school events and everyone's just tired. So, yeah, they're the really busy times of the year. Yeah. So is that like what parts of it are the wheat parts and what part of the sheep parts?
00:02:09
Speaker
Explain like I'm five. I have no idea. Well, he works as a cropping manager. So his side is all cropping and his main job is spraying. So he basically just goes out in a paddock with sprayer and sprays.
00:02:20
Speaker
wow. And that's what he does most of the year. He doesn't really do a lot with the sheep side. There's some people that work just in cropping and some people that work just in sheep. So he doesn't actually have a lot to do with the sheep side, yeah, cropping is his thing.
00:02:35
Speaker
Oh, wow. Yeah. Thank you for explaining. I'm like, for you people, I'm like, I don't know, what what do you do with the wheat? I don't really know either, to be honest.
Sarah's Creative Pursuits: Baking and Arts
00:02:46
Speaker
Now, Sarah, what do you cook that everyone asks you for the recipes? Well, there's a couple of things. um There's some brownies that I make pretty much once a week because my boys really love them. And I got the recipe from my eldest son's kindy teacher, which was about eight years ago. And she gave us every everyone in the class a brownie recipe and it was really easy. And we just love it and we make it all the time because that's something that they're guaranteed to eat.
00:03:12
Speaker
And, yeah, people love it and have asked for the recipe, so I've actually passed it on a for few times. Oh, brilliant. And the other one would be, actually the Thermomix chocolate cake. People go, oh, this is a great chocolate cake and it won an award at our local show.
00:03:26
Speaker
Oh, wow. And people were like, how did you make this? I'm like, well, I just put it in the Thermomix and mixed it together and that's it, really. So, yeah, they're the two kind of staple sweet things that we eat.
00:03:37
Speaker
ah Oh, brilliant. Or would take when we need to quickly put something together to take a plate somewhere. Yeah, you might have to give me that brownie recipe. I will. Yeah, awesome. So, what,
00:03:49
Speaker
Are you doing when you feel most yourself, kind of like like, this is what I was made to do, like what makes you feel the most alive? I really love doing creative things. So i trained in Perth in creative arts at uni. So I just love writing or acting, something where I can just create something from nothing.
00:04:08
Speaker
and yeah, I'm a member of our local amateur theatre group, so we do about one show a year. And I think being on stage is, yeah, and making people laugh and just seeing the audience enjoying themselves is when I feel really alive.
00:04:21
Speaker
Oh, wow. And I guess the other thing is, it sounds a bit cliché, but just walking on the beach, just having the wind blowing across face and, yeah, smelling the nice salty air and feeling your toes in the wet sand. I think because I live inland and I don't get to the beach that often, I really miss it. So I really, yeah, enjoy that feeling of just being in God's creation at the beach.
00:04:44
Speaker
I think there's just something in that and just being outside. Like, again, I'm in the city but I come down here and, you know, we've been down at Grace Town and you think just being out in the big trees or in the bush and you're like, oh, I thought I had problems but actually I just haven't been outside in a while.
00:04:58
Speaker
It's a really calming kind of thing and especially when it's windy I find it kind just blows everything, like blows the cobwebs away. It's another cliche but it's true. It really does. Yeah, it's cliche because it's true.
00:05:10
Speaker
very invigorated.
Sarah's Spiritual Journey: Path to Christianity
00:05:11
Speaker
yeah no that's awesome yeah that's really cool how did you become a Christian grew up in Albany for the most part and my parents weren't Christian so it was just your kind of average middle class secular home really but when I got to high school and it was just a public high school I started making some friends with some Christians in my year and we kind of ended up in a group together and I thought they were a bit weird and bit nerdy at first.
00:05:39
Speaker
I didn't really understand because I hadn't actually met any Christians or been to church or anything like that. But after a while, I came to see that they had this kind of joy about them and peace and and they just, they generally didn't care what other people thought as much as I did or most teenagers do, I think.
00:05:58
Speaker
because they had this person called Jesus in their life. And I was like, I kind of want that for myself, but I didn't want to admit that I wanted that for myself. Yeah. So, i yeah, I just really enjoyed their influence but didn't want to get too close about it and admit to them that I kind of wanted what they had because I didn't want to be Bible bashed or anything like that.
00:06:19
Speaker
Yeah. But anyway, at the end of year 12, I got into uni. I moved to Perth. And my friends confided later that they were a bit worried that I was going because they thought, you know, maybe I'd meet other people that didn't share their values and I'd kind of, I guess, all the work and prayer that they'd sort of been putting into me, like they thought that would just go away.
00:06:42
Speaker
Yeah. But when I got to campus, I was just walking around on O Day, which is an orientation at uni. They have all these stalls, like all the different clubs and societies come out with a stall and They try and get people to join up, especially if you're a first year.
00:06:57
Speaker
So i was wandering around and a couple of people from the Christian Union or Christian Fellowship, as it was called then, came up to me and wanted to do a survey. And I said, yeah, all right, because I have nothing else to do. And one of the questions was, who do you think Jesus is?
00:07:11
Speaker
Is he the son of God? Is he a prophet? I think it was like, is he a lunatic or is he not even real? or there Something like that. And I looked and I thought, oh, I think son of God is the correct answer.
00:07:23
Speaker
but I don't want them to know that I think that. Yeah. So I put profit. So they probably thought I was a Muslim or something. But they must have decided that that was sort of an acceptable answer to have some potential.
00:07:35
Speaker
So they rang me and said, because they got my details, and said, would you like to come to these public Bible talks? And I went, yeah, okay. So I came along and i' kind of like just being in a crowd where people weren't zeroing in on me as the non-Christian there, where i could just sit and listen and then just leave.
00:07:53
Speaker
So I did that for a few times. But as the semester went on, I just got really busy and I kind of just stopped going. But by the end of the first semester, i was feeling really homesick.
00:08:04
Speaker
Yeah, I wasn't really enjoying living in Perth. And I thought, I don't know, just it felt like God was just saying, go back, go back to the Christian Union talks. and That was a bit weird. But I decided when the second semester started, I would. So I walked in.
00:08:18
Speaker
And it kind of just went from there. i ended up in a small group where I got to study the Bible and realise I knew nothing about the Bible at all. And then i did Simply Christianity, with which is a course, yeah, with two other girls.
00:08:32
Speaker
And at the end of that I decided quietly to myself that I wanted follow Jesus. Wow. Yeah. So that's it really. Wow. Yeah, so cool. I love just like like that slow path where like you weren't ever, you know, it sounded like you were quite hesitant at first, but it sounded like God didn't really push you further than you wanted to go. You just kind of were gently led along.
00:08:54
Speaker
Yeah, it was pretty much like that. And it was a very, very slow process. It definitely wasn't one of these great big blinding light experiences that some people think they had where their life changed immediately after becoming Christian. Yeah.
00:09:08
Speaker
So after I became a Christian, I didn't tell anyone. i just sort of prayed quietly and then I wondered what on earth I'd done. I was like, how on earth am going to live as a Christian? I don't know what to do. I'm going to start going to church.
00:09:22
Speaker
I don't know how to tell people i' become a Christian. Are they even going to believe me? Like some people knew I was kind of anti-Christian before. Yeah. i don't even believe that i was genuine. So I kind of kept quiet and I didn't.
00:09:34
Speaker
I went to church a bit, but then I went home for the summer holidays and didn't go to church at all and it was just it was a very slow process of God refining me I think and it still is. Yeah no I ah I can really relate yeah mine was similar just being like I think I think I'll go to church is that what Christians do like yeah very yeah so who do you reckon someone who's like encouraged or inspired you in ar Christian walk and why?
00:10:02
Speaker
There's been some particular people but there's also been particular types of people so not necessarily individuals but people with certain traits I guess that I admire. So one person was Meredith Bandiclip who some of you will know of.
00:10:16
Speaker
Yeah. I met her online quite a number of years ago when we were both blogging and we got to know each other and we realized that we knew a lot of mutual people and we have met in person once and I've just found her writings especially to be really encouraging especially on the topic of encouragement. She's written a fair bit about that and Yeah, really found her just a gentle, quiet, practical, encouraging person.
00:10:41
Speaker
And the other sorts of people that I find really encouraging are people that have gone through trials and they're still Christian. so I think of people that are dealing with things like prolonged singleness or they're unable to have children or they have health issues, maybe they're terminally ill or just battling with some ongoing health concerns.
00:11:02
Speaker
they're not getting angry at God and walking away. They're still following him regardless and just trusting in him because they know that this life is not all there is. And just the quiet joy that they have in trusting God is a great encouragement.
00:11:19
Speaker
Yeah, that it's that but steadfastness. Yeah. That kind of like I'm going to keep going even though like everything around me would say just give up, like, you know, what's the point?
00:11:30
Speaker
Yeah, that's exactly it. There's no earthly reason for them to keep going the way they are, but they know that, yeah, this life is not all there is. It's almost, yeah, it's almost with the harder things that that, it's almost like a greater testament to that faith than if everything was going well.
00:11:49
Speaker
It is, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's something, I think there's just something in that in just sharing stories. I mean, probably that's why I'm like, I love this. But I just, yeah, I think there's something in hearing other people's stories and being like, wow, if you can endure, then than I can too. Yeah.
00:12:05
Speaker
Yeah. yeah Which I think kind of leads really nicely into that next bit, which is like, can you tell us about hard season or suffering that you've walked through?
Overcoming Postnatal Depression: Challenges and Triumphs
00:12:14
Speaker
think the hardest season I've walked through was right after the birth of my two children.
00:12:20
Speaker
so I ended up with really severe postnatal depression and i ended up in hospital hospital. after each child so for about a month each time um and ended up ah in a place called in perth called the mother baby unit there's one attached to king edward hospital and there's one attached to fiona stanley so with the eldest one when he was about 10 weeks old i was in such bad shape i guess that i ended up in the mother baby unit for a month and that pretty much saved my life praise god thank you i'm in
00:12:52
Speaker
But it was still a very long road to recovery afterwards and probably a number of times where I should have gone back there for a bit more, but because I lived in the country and it was very disruptive to our lives, I didn't.
00:13:03
Speaker
Yeah. So when I was pregnant with my second son, yeah, there were a number of times where I think I should have gone back to mother baby unit, but I didn't because being from the country, it's really disruptive. So by the time I was just about to have my second son, we had plans in place to, I guess,
00:13:21
Speaker
not stop PND happening again, but just to be really aware and watch for the signs of it happening again and what we could do. So... what kind of things did you have in place? Things like going really easy on myself and not having lots of visitors and not putting pressure on myself to go out anywhere. So I had two-and-a-half-year-old and a newborn and I just...
00:13:42
Speaker
I was just going to take it easy, I guess, and not stress about what other people were saying about routines and you need to follow this book or you need to follow this person or you need to do what I say. I was just going to with the flow.
00:13:55
Speaker
And I thought couple of weeks into, like after he was born, I thought i was doing quite well despite the sleep deprivation. He didn't actually sleep on his own unless he was in my arms, which was quite uncomfortable. But I thought when I was managing okay.
00:14:12
Speaker
But by the time he was about five weeks, I crashed really badly and I ended up in the mother-baby unit know again, this time in the Fiona Stanley one, and I was there for a month. So that was really hard because I felt like I failed um despite all the the planning. And I think it just really taught me that you can't plan these things.
00:14:34
Speaker
Like I didn't plan to have a baby that barely slept at all except on top of me. yeah so there wasn't... a lot I could do in that situation. I just had to trust that God knew what he was doing, even though I was in a really dark place.
00:14:49
Speaker
Yeah, I ended up back in there for another month. So that was a really hard month, particularly because my husband and my eldest son were back in Cochinup, where we were living, and they were traveling up every weekend to see me and the baby.
00:15:04
Speaker
So that was a really tough time. i went home Yeah, I needed a lot of help at home. We actually got a couple of au pairs and and also different friends coming by to just help me with daily life, really. Oh, wow. Thank God. Because my baby didn't sleep and had quite bad reflux as well and just dealing with a toddler on tour of that. So I just needed a lot of help to get through the day. So 2016 was a really tough year. There's probably a few times I should have gone back.
00:15:35
Speaker
up to Fiona Stanley, but I didn't want to. I didn't want to be in hospital again and have that disruption to my family. still not sure whether really made the right decision, but you can't really change something that happened nine years ago. 20-20 hindsight.
00:15:49
Speaker
Yeah, so, yeah, here I am. That was probably the toughest period at where I really just... I had to trust God even though was tempted just to go, no, this is too hard. I'm not going follow God anymore. What has he done for me?
00:16:03
Speaker
And then I had to realise, well, he has done something for me. He's given up his own son for me. Yeah. And, like, that really leans into, like, what did you learn about God and like, what did he teach you about his character through that suffering that, like, you don't think you would have learned otherwise?
00:16:19
Speaker
don't think I would have really understood the gospel. And it's not that I didn't understand it before. It's more that you come to a deeper understanding that God is a God who has suffered as well. and He's not this kind of remote God up there in the sky who's watching his people suffer and he has no idea what it's like. He's actually been in human flesh and he's suffered and died when he didn't need to. It's something he chose to do for us.
00:16:47
Speaker
So I think that that really helps and humbles you in a way because you understand just how much God loves you And even when everything just seems really dark, God is just there holding you And I think that's what I really needed to know, like that he was there and that he was trustworthy and that he was good.
00:17:11
Speaker
love that, like because that sense of, you know, i kind of like how you were saying when you ended back up in the mother-baby unit, like rather than seeing that as a thing that saved your life, that sense of like I failed, like I failed being in here. But I love that like the thing that you learned about God was how He was with you.
00:17:28
Speaker
Yeah, even though it was just such a dark, difficult time, just even if you're just lying there in the dark and you just know that God is there is a great comfort.
00:17:40
Speaker
Yeah, it's almost like, yeah, there's nothing, like he wasn't going to turn his back on you. He wasn't going to leave. Like he was always, and almost like from that, even at the start it sounded like when you started to know the Lord, like he was slowly drawing you close, like he wasn't pushy.
00:17:58
Speaker
He wasn't like steamrolling in your life. He was kind of gently saying, come to me, come to me. And then when you're holding on by a thread, he's like, but I'm here. Yeah, I think so, yeah. the fact that I'm not holding at all, like the fact that he's holding me a great comfort because I didn't have any strength to hold on to him.
00:18:18
Speaker
Yeah, but that's really beautiful. How did you, just out of interest, like what helped?
Recovery and Support Systems
00:18:27
Speaker
Because it sounded like there were quite a few things there like at the start that really helped that sense of, you know, having to let people help you, you know, getting the au pairs and getting friends, like just, you know, to see you in that heart. Like was there anything else that helped along the way, like after that experience?
00:18:44
Speaker
Not really. It was... just really a combination of things and just of time. So things like my children getting older and and sleeping a bit better and just being able to do a bit more things for themselves. I think me getting more hours of uninterrupted sleep really helped. Like I'm a person that needs a lot of sleep to be able to function properly, which is probably not a great idea to have children. But, yeah, so as I got more sleep, I was able to think a bit more rationally and I wasn't in such a dark place.
00:19:16
Speaker
Yeah, that was sort of the main thing. Like there was also things, you know, medication, counselling, yeah, trying to look after myself. i think people have this idea that, oh, you know, you just need to go out in nature and then you'll feel better. And it's like, no when a person's in that darker place, you can't even get out of bed, let alone going into nature. so I really needed medication in order to be able to get out of bed get out.
00:19:41
Speaker
Yeah. I heard someone say once that medication is triage, and I think that's really true. It's what helped me be able to get helped does that make sense absolutely it's like that scaffolding it's like hey let's let's help you be able to get out of bed you can do a couple of other things that will help you feel a bit better yeah that's exactly right but yeah i mean if you're in you know there's a reason they use sleep deprivation as a torture method yeah absolutely yeah it would be horrible like if you weren't depressed before it will make you depressed so like i think all of those things together yeah you're like you
00:20:14
Speaker
I think that the medication and the counselling and the help, all of those things, like none of it was a magic bullet, but all of it sounds like it worked together along with the theological of like I know that God is there and I know that he's with me. Like all of that together slowly helps you get better.
00:20:31
Speaker
And I think also yeah people kept telling me, oh, this will pass, like you'll get better. But I also thought, and people thought I was being morbid, but was just trying to be realistic that sometimes you won't.
00:20:42
Speaker
So I've still got depressions. I've kind of been left with it. And, you know, maybe one day God will take it away, but maybe he won't. Maybe I'll have it for the rest of this earthly life and that's something like the thorn in my side that I'll just have to deal with.
00:20:56
Speaker
So it's about matter of trusting God, yeah, in the ongoing life, I guess, so that that part of my life, even though that's past, I'm still left with some after effects of it.
00:21:11
Speaker
and it's not necessarily going to magically go away unless it's his will yeah like can i trust a god that i because think that's the thing you're like well if i knew it was going to get better than i could trust but actually like it's quite an active hope because it's not like that hopelessness hasn't set in where you're like well then this will never go away and i will always despair you're like well i can trust a god who gave it to me and is holding me with it even if it doesn't go like that's And I can trust that God's going to use it somehow in my life either for my benefit or for the benefit of others.
Using Personal Struggles to Help Others
00:21:47
Speaker
So he might use me to encourage other people. I've given talks at postnatal depression events, just sharing my experience and sharing where to get help, I guess. So I guess he's used it in that way able to help other women, particularly because a lot of women aren't even aware that mother-baby units exist anymore.
00:22:06
Speaker
They may not know anyone with postnatal depression or they might not think it really exists.
00:22:13
Speaker
So what would be a word of encouragement you can offer to a woman listening who might be walking through a similar season? I think just get help. Trust the medical people um and seek help. there's There is so much help out there.
00:22:28
Speaker
It seems a bit overwhelming, and especially when you're in a really dark place and you can't even get out of bed and look after yourself. But there is a lot of support out there for women going through this.
00:22:40
Speaker
Yeah, please trust somebody. I'm not saying just go out there and trust everyone. I'm just saying find someone you trust and and go through the the channels to get help. So there's a lot of medical help out there, counselling and support and groups available for mums going through this.
00:22:58
Speaker
So please, yeah, trust somebody and get the help you need. But also be kind to yourself and don't try and compare yourself to mums who seem to do everything, like people who just have children, next thing they're working and in a million committees and going around to Disneyland and, you know, just be kind to yourself even if you don't go out or even if you just go out and sit in the sunshine or, yeah, don't put pressure on yourself to get your old life back in two seconds.
00:23:25
Speaker
Yeah. Just, yeah, this is a new season. It's okay. It's going to feel a bit different and weird and, and depressing sometimes, but you will get used to it and it will feel normal after a while.
00:23:40
Speaker
Love that.
00:23:42
Speaker
And who who do you nominate for
Closing Remarks and Next Guest Nomination
00:23:45
Speaker
this next? Like who do think you think who would be good to hear from? A friend of mine, Lea, is going to join the riding team in the middle of the year, I think, and she lives in Esperance. I think it would be great to have another country woman to hear from.
00:23:56
Speaker
So Lea and I used to live on the same farm in Cochinup. um So I'd really like to hear from her next. Oh, brilliant. Brilliant. So that's the end of our interview today. So if you like what you hear, you can sign up to our weekly newsletter for essays, poetry, interviews and chatty episodes about what we're learning.
00:24:15
Speaker
The link to Stories I Tell You at Dinner is in the show notes.