I say yes to everything and bend myself into shapes to keep people happy. I am exhausted. How do I stop?

“And Moses' father in law said unto him, The thing that thou doest is not good. Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is with thee: for this thing is too heavy for thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself alone.”

Jethro watches his son-in-law Moses judging a queue of Israelites from morning until night and tells him bluntly that what he is doing is not good. The diagnosis is not laziness or selfishness but unsustainability: he will wear himself away, and the people with him. Notably the correction arrives from family, from outside the situation, because people carrying too much rarely see it for themselves.

“But so much the more went there a fame abroad of him: and great multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed by him of their infirmities. And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed.”

Luke reports crowds pressing in on Jesus with real needs, genuine sickness, nothing frivolous about any of it. In the middle of that demand, he withdrew into lonely places and prayed. He left need unmet in order to be with his Father, which is the detail a people-pleaser most needs to notice. Even for him, availability was not unlimited, and saying no was not a failure of love.