“Just because I can carry it, doesn’t mean it’s not heavy” A trending quote on social media. I know I’ve seen it on my timeline more times than I can count. I would presume to say, it’s trending because many must find it relevant and embrace its philosophic meaning.
Life has many heavy weights we must bear. I can hear little orphan Annie singing in my head “it’s a hard knock life.” And then I breathe a convicted sigh, and say “I know that’s right.”
What makes the quote so relatable is that most of us, if not all of us, have carried something extremely heavy, some life lesson baggage, all while gritting our teeth through the trenches; perhaps sobbing in the dark, yet, toiling on.
I vividly recall weights I carried as a child I thought no child should carry (not all of them were physical) but some really were physical. Case in point, five gallon water jugs across a dreaded rural highway.
As a child, let’s just say we weren’t in the middle class. Whatever was below the middle somewhere before the bottom is where we were.
I often hear people say, they didn’t know they were poor, because their parents provided for their needs as best they could, and it was never explicitly stated. Well, hone-ty. I knew it and felt it.
Growing up rural, poor, with well water that was gonna freeze in the winter season come hell or high water was an annual norm. My mother worked as chef at a hotel/restaurant and had access to these large yellow liquid butter jugs.
Can I just say right now, out loud how much I hated the sight of those butter jugs? Mom would bring home fresh ones about every ninety days or so, because we would drag ‘em and drop ‘em, and they would just look beat up over a period of time, but they were our water lifeline.
Just as bad as I hated the sight of them, I must also say they were necessary. We knew the well was gonna freeze every year and yet nothing about our need for water ceased.
This was our burden to bear. We were the only family in the community that still relied on well water. I can’t tell you the appreciation I have for running water in every season. Or the gratitude I have for those neighbors willing to sacrifice five, ten, twenty gallons of their city water at a
time. We were all tasked with water trips to wash the dishes, cooking, drinking and just taking a bath.
I can’t fully express the arm strength I had as a kid, although I was still fat. That’s a different topic for a different day. But I was a fat kid with muscle.
Each day, I grumbled across the street, and all the way back on the other side. But, as I recall this life experience there is something profound in not carrying my life source from the well, but from the neighbor’s house that just makes we pause, and give all glory to God.
Not only was carrying water from house to house a physical burden, but my God chosen neighbors were to be our burden bearers. They were the Simon Cyrene’s of my youth. Not physically, but they literally put the water in the bucket; each pouring in their own spirit of meekness and kindness upon our life circumstance.
Yes, it’s the weighty things in life that make or break us. We often miss the lesson in the going through. And when get to the “got through” those experiences become most pivotal.
It’s the bending of the spirit and weightiness of the burdens that make me more sensitive to the burdens of others. The older I get, the more I empathize. It’s an emotion I intentionally call on often. I have trained myself to put myself in someone else’s shoes.
I recognize empathy as a divine gift. For many don’t possess it. The emotion you use most often is the emotion that surfaces first. When we fail to use empathy, it tends to produce a more critical point of view. I get it. But, I also recognize, it is not my job to try and fix the person whose burden I feel. But, it is simply my job to feel it.
Ultimately, it is only God who can heal and work on a person’s heart and manage the lesson that life’s burdens reveal– He is the only one who can change the heart and bring His healing touch to the broken.
My heart desperately needed this reminder today. “Just because I can carry it, doesn’t mean it’s not heavy.”
Sis, I feel your pain. Be encouraged in your “go through” for, a shift in thinking once you “get through” can help you to go from a grumbling burden carrier, to a God