God Is Not Asking You to Carry the World

An open hand held palm-up in morning light

I want to be careful in this one, because I’m about to disagree with some sermons. There’s a version of Christian womanhood floating around that treats exhaustion as evidence of devotion. The more you carry, the more faithful you are. Say yes to everything, serve until there’s nothing left, never complain, and if you’re tired, that’s the cost of discipleship.

I have watched that theology take women apart. Good ones. Faithful ones.

The verses we press too hard

Bear one another’s burdens gets quoted constantly. Galatians 6:2. What almost never gets read with it is verse 5, three sentences later, which says each one will bear his own load.

Those aren’t a contradiction. The words are different in the original. One of them is a crushing weight, the kind somebody genuinely cannot lift alone. Yes, we’re told to get under that with them. The other is a pack, an ordinary daily load, and every grown person carries their own.

We’ve collapsed the two, and the result is a lot of women hauling other people’s backpacks around while their own back goes out. Die to self is another one. That’s about ego and self-will, not about self-erasure. The difference is enormous. There is a way of “dying to self” that’s really just letting people use you while calling it humility.

Then there is the yoke passage. Come to me, all who are weary, and I will give you rest. My yoke is easy, my burden is light. Notice the promise there. It is not another load. Rest. If what you’re carrying has never once felt light, it’s worth asking whether it all came from Him.

What He actually asked of you

Micah gets right to it. Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly (Steve Chapman has a great song about this). There is nothing in there about being available around the clock. Also, there is nothing about running the fall festival by yourself for the fourth year because nobody else will do it right. Notice there is nothing about managing your grown daughter’s decisions or your husband’s spiritual life or your mother’s opinions.

Look at how Jesus actually operated. He slept in a boat during a storm while everybody else panicked. He declined to heal entire towns and moved on. And He said no to good, worthwhile, needy requests, regularly, from people who genuinely wanted something from Him.

He also had twelve people and still didn’t do it all himself.

The part that’s uncomfortable

Here’s where I have to be honest with some of you, because this is the piece that gets dressed up in spiritual language. Sometimes what looks like faithful carrying is actually control wearing a church outfit.

If you cannot let somebody else run the ministry, that might not be dedication. If you’re praying for your adult child while also managing his finances, scheduling his appointments, and calling his boss, some of that is not intercession. When you’re the only one who can do it right, and that has been true for eleven years, at some point the pattern is saying something about you rather than about them.

I’d ask the question I ask a lot of people. Are you sure about that? Are you trying to convince me, or yourself? Carrying what isn’t yours is not obedience. It can even be a quiet way of saying you don’t believe He’s handling His end.

What release actually looks like

Not passivity. I’ll say that plainly because somebody always hears it that way.

Release means doing your part and then declining to do God’s part. You pray, you show up, you say the true thing, you love them well, and then you stop trying to produce the outcome through force of will and worry.

Practically, it looks like this. Say the specific thing out loud when you hand it over. “This is my daughter’s marriage and it is not mine to fix.” Vague surrender doesn’t stick.

Notice when you take it back, because you will, probably within a day. Taking it back is not failure, it’s the pattern. Hand it over again. Let somebody else do the job badly. Church work, family work, whatever. The fall festival will be worse and the world will continue.

Stop calling your worry prayer. A lot of what we label prayer is really rehearsing the disaster with a religious accent on it.

Where I land

I am not a woman who has this figured out. I fix things. It’s my temperament, it’s my training. I have been guilty of praying about something for ten minutes and then spending three hours trying to arrange the answer myself.

What I keep coming back to is the sleeping-in-the-boat image. He was not worried, in an actual storm, with actual water coming in, and the disciples woke Him up furious about it.

There’s something in that for those of us who have made vigilance into a virtue. Put some of it down tonight. Not all of it. Some.

This is education, not therapy. If you’re in crisis, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. If you’re in Kentucky and want faith and clinical work in the same room, that’s exactly what I do. Circle of Hope Counseling Services.

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