It’s been a whale of a week.

The load was heavy and the pebble weights of many troubles and toils piled on without ceasing, it seemed. There were a couple pebbles of my own making. Pebbles that tweaked my sensitive trip wires that lead me to slight places of insecurity. Twinges that on any other week would have been a heavy sigh’s space away from leaving my emotional personhood.

But not this week. This week contained the weights sloughed of from the troubles of others.

It’s been a week of listening. Listening to sadnesses and situations. Listening attentively to pains, past and present. Sitting with my own feelings of capability or problem-solving or helplessness, depending on the situation sitting across from me.

Oh goodness, resilience is in short supply sometimes right now, isn’t it?

Where did I lose my ability to be able to sift through these troubles and place them upon the altar of God’s goodness?

Why is my grief at the struggles of others deeper these days? Why is my ability to release control over their happiness non-existent?

The load feels too heavy.

I am strong but not strong enough to shoulder the grief of children experiencing loss of friends, teenagers wrestling with the demands of life, young people experiencing the freedom and responsibility of free will, adults tired and lonely.

I just can’t do it in the way I believe I should.

All of my old tricks of releasing things to God don’t seem to work anymore.

I have become a burden bearer.

But aren’t I supposed to be? Doesn’t Scripture tell us to bear each other’s burdens? Isn’t it my responsibility as a wife, mother, daughter, friend, to share in the burdens of others?

Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. ² Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. ³ If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. ⁴ Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, ⁵ for each one should carry their own load. 

Galatians 6:1-5

What are we called to carry when we carry the burdens of others? Do we bear the weight of their sin? The shame and consequences that they experience?

I don’t think many would say those should be the burdens we bear.

But sometimes when I come alongside someone who is struggling, especially when they are struggling as a result of their own actions, I take the burden of their happiness upon myself. I grieve because they are grieving, I mourn for their loss.

Carrying is not the same as bearing. If I am carrying another person’s load, it means I wrap my arms around the heaviness and bring it before Christ. Bearing their load invokes the image of a back bowed low under a weight we aren’t meant to shoulder.

When others are struggling, my role is to help lift, not be crushed under a weight that is best left at the foot of the Cross.

These realizations come hard, especially on a week when people you love have experienced very difficult things. If I can just take on their pain, they they will feel it less.

But here’s what a time in tears and outpouring to God has brought to me.

We are to be pain acknowledgers and carriers, not pain bearers.

When feeling the force of another person’s pain, we bend in that wind, but are not broken. We stand strong as we help them to carry their load to Christ but we do not shoulder and own that load.

My shoulders have been too weighed down as I wrestled with how I can be part of alleviating another person’s pain. I can’t take their pain. I cannot absorb enough collective misery into my body to prevent the sorrow of another. If I try, then I am misplaced.

As I realized that my acknowledgment and presence was what God requires of me, not my martyrdom to the consequences of another person’s actions, my shoulders relaxed, my back straightened.

My loving others does not require that I absorb their pain. I carry their burdens and lay them in Jesus’ hands. He is their strength and mine. And through him I am better able to love and serve others, unburdened.