It’s hard to start a new week with a load of worry.
I’ve been carrying quite a lot of it lately. It’s heavy and uncomfortable. It’s giving me bad posture – it has me looking down instead of up.
I shrug my shoulders, try to bear up under it, shift the weight around trying to find a comfortable carrying position. Shoulder blades aching, back chafing, my body sends an S.O.S to the brain – “Do something already!”
Brain reaches into its recesses and comes up with a memory. A lesson learned from my favorite cousin-sister-mother-best-friend combo. Kim, I think of Kim and start to feel my way back toward freedom.
That’s us – what feels like a long, long time ago. Pete, Kim and me – all covered in her kids.
She and her husband, Robin, waged a war of worry that’s hard to forget.
Robin is a doctor and several years ago he suffered an accidental needle prick; it comes with the territory in the medical field. But Kim and Rob live in my homeland of South Africa. And my beautiful country has the desperate rank of highest HIV/AIDS prevalence in the world. And for a long, terrible while Robin didn’t know if he had been infected with the virus or not.
It was a hard load to live under.
They didn’t tell their kids the source of their worry. But children internalize their parents’ anxiety. And their small frames and hearts walked stoop-backed under the weight. So Rob and Kim intervened.
They lined up all three children (aged 6 and under) after supper one night. A game of pretend was initiated and each kid given their school back pack to put on. And their parents followed them around the house and garden slowly, methodically adding rocks to the backpacks.
Big, hard, heavy stones. They kept filling the back packs with these rocks.
At first the children enjoyed the challenge. They could do it. They could still run and play with the heavy packs. But rock after rock had them slowing down. Until all three were at a standstill and the game had lost its fun.
“We can’t do this, dad,” Natalie says (or maybe it was Ryan).
“Why? Why can’t you,” her father pushes back.
“Because they’re too heavy. We’re just kids; they’re too heavy for us.”
Tired worried eyes look out from scrunched up faces at their parents. And the parents? They do what parents do.
They begin unpacking their children’s anxieties.
They acknowledge the ominous dread that has entered the house. And that the kids have taken to carrying upon themselves. They say slowly and surely that this is not a weight designed for children. It is too heavy for them. It is not up to them. They are not required to bear their parent’s fears.
And with that they reach into backpacks that have been dragging on small shoulders and begin to unpack. They remove each of those heavy, hard rocks and hurl them into the back garden. The children get in on the spirit of the thing. Satchel straps slip off small arms. Eager hands grab at ugly burdens and throw, throw, throw them away.
Free.
I remember. I remember that story vividly – as if I had been standing in the garden of that ranch house in Welkom when it happened. I can hear the laughter of release.
I slowly slip the straps of my own back pack off. I open it – look inside. I see hard, sharp rocks of worry staring back at me. And I know that I can’t keep carrying them indefinitely. I am too small.
I ask my Father to help me unpack them.
He does. He reaches deep down into my heart and lifts out the anxieties one by one. Lifts them out, names them and then throws them away. I breathe in and out. My ribcage loosens; my lungs start to work better. My back straightens.
And He reminds me that He is happy to come back tomorrow and repeat the process. And the day after that. And the next one.
I know I will take Him up on His offer.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-29 (NIV).
His yoke is forgiveness and grace and gratitude. And those are all the weight I want to carry.
#41-50 on my gratitude list:
Hope of a new beginning
Friends to hope with me, over tea and chocolate covered pretzels
Rain storms
Spring
Summer
Emails from far flung lands
Unexpected packages
Fresh sheets
A spider man board game
A husband who always, always unloads the dishwasher.
Someone read those verses from Matthew 11 in church today. Somehow, of all the verses in the Bible, those are some of the easiest to forget! Every time I read or hear them, it’s like a new revelation. Which it should be, and shouldn’t be too.
A great thing to remember on a Sunday night headed into a busy week! :)
Such a vivid picture of what to do with our burdens and worries! I’ll long remember that. Thanks so much for sharing. (I hope Robin is OK.)
Another lovely reminder to let Him help me. Thank you.
Praying for you today, Lisa-Jo…
Thank you, again, for unpacking God’s truths so eloquently. :)
It’s a great metaphor…analogy…not sure what to call it. But it’s great.
And.
If I’d only let Him take the backpack off long enough to unload…even to just unzip it. I don’t know that I wear the pack in back, probably up front, near my gut, near my tangled up heart…where it’s easier to hold on to with panicked hands that if I let go of the pack, of the worries, then what would happen?
Oh April – I would hug you if I could. I have clutched my pack tight to my belly as well. Some He has to pry it out of my hands. Unclench for a second, sometimes that’s all it takes.
I needed to read this more than you know today! Thank you for sharing!
Sigh. such a beautiful visual… thinking of the song “He will carry me” by Mark Shultz
I hear Mark Shultz is going to be in town soon…
Oh friend, I know the worry of which you speak, the battle against that heavy burden, the one we aren’t meant to carry. This post Is yet another lovely effort to talk yourself into truth–the truth that these are His burdens to bear on your behalf. Much love to you…
“unclench for just a second – sometimes that’s all it takes”
wow. beautiful, beautiful words, girl. my heart woke up with that advice.
So touching, Lisa-Jo. He casts our burdens from the east to the west, that we might never heap them upon ourselves again.
Stepping freely in His will and listening to the birds sing,
Suz
Didn’t think I needed that this morning, but it turns out I did! :) Thanks for sharing!
Loved seeing you on Ann’s linkup!
I was just reminded of Phil4:6-7 by a lovely older woman on the phone. Said it’s been working like a charm for her for 35 years…time to try it out myself. Wanna join me in “Being anxious for nothing?” and that includes how the mortgage will be paid and vacation taken all in the same month!
*blessings* and *hugs* to you, my favorite kindred stranger
Amen and amen to that!
Oh wow, I needed that one today. Thank you so much for sharing the words that you do. Not that this isn’t enough, but you should write a book. ;o) Your wisdom and encouragement in learning and telling is what a lot of women need. Praying that your worry rocks stay out of that pack of yours.
I love how you wrote – FREE – oh yes, it is freedom! We can all easily become captives to worry – Lord bust me out and make me free!
Stef
Gratitude…hmmm. love that. Just want to sit down my backpack here for a second and breath in the freedom of letting it go. Of letting God deal.
It feels good to not be in charge of everything.
J.
Lisa-Jo this was so beautifully written. What a great picture of how burdened we can become by the things we are indeed too small to carry. Thank you for sharing these words. My heart aches that you are feeling burdened by these things but it also rejoices because you have responded by going to the Father and asking Him to take the burden away. Your willingness to go to Him speaks to the strength of your conviction in knowing who He is to you. May I remember as you have today and may I respond as you have responded. I will pray for your heart and for this place you find yourself in, trusting the Father will indeed carry you through. Sending some love your way from the Carolinas.
Makeda – thank you. It’s encouraging words like these that feel like the Father’s hands reaching down and lightening the load through friends.
Such true words, and a beautiful analogy. My pack is heavier than I am, back breakingly heavy. Sometimes I feel like it is becoming one with me, that there is no way to separate the two. I can’t tell you how much your beautiful words today touched my heart.
“Sometimes I feel like it is becoming one with me…” oh, Sheri, yes, I know just what you mean. We need to fight it – don’t we. Or at least, we need to let him cut it off us.
Oh my cuz you captured it so beautifully. I just close my eyes and I am taken back to that moment by your words. I can still see their worried faces and then the joy at the party we threw for all of us afterwards, just celebrating the life we have, uncertainties and all. For the person who asked how Robin is, he tested positive twice and then negative after his 9 month test and continues to be negative. Either two false positives or an Awesome miracle working God.
Your words and stories are now living on in the next generation Kim. I love you!
Wow, I really needed this today- let go and let God.
Sometimes, it’s easier said than done – isn’t it? I know I have to work at it on a daily basis.
What a beautiful story and beautiful lesson!
Thank you again dear Lisa for sharing… it was an encouraging push in the right direction for my worry riddled brain! With the hubby traveling overseas for weeks, being a single mommy in the meantime of three little ones, the endless decisions I feel like we’re faced with right now, worry seems to have taken up residence in our home as a fourth child… one that is not loved, and definitely not welcome. And yet I feed it, nurture it and give it home… when I should be kicking it out on the street on it’s keister :) thanks for the reminder :)
Ugh, yes, I know just what you mean. Sometimes worry seems like part of the family – we are so attached to it that we can’t even imagine life without it.
I love this post, Lisa-Jo. It reminds me of a passage from Corrie ten Boom’s The Hiding Place where her father used a similar analogy about a load too difficult for her to carry. I have used it myself when my kids ask questions they are too young to handle. BUT-I hadn’t thought of it in grown-up terms, before! With a move around the corner and a million loose ends left to tie, I NEEDED this today. THANK YOU!
Thinking of you and that move, Kristen – what is your departure date?
Beautiful Posting – thank you for sharing it.
You have such a beautiful way of speaking God’s truth, and giving us visuals to go along with those truths. Thank you. I will think of this the next time I’m loaded with worry. Blessings!
Thank you – it has been a story and a memory that have moved me for years. It’s amazing to apply it to how God feels about us too!
Choked up over here. What a beautiful idea. Children really *get* things that are visual like this, remembering long.
Thanks for sharing.
wow….so God totally knew what He was doing when He led me here for the first time today.
I have had a white-knuckled grip on my backpack for far too long…….thank you so much for this.
I will def. be back.
peace
*~Michelle~*
I know that grip way way too well myself. Here’s to both letting go, eh?
So what do you do when your backpack is so heavy and full, it seems impossible to remove….when you cry out for help, but it seems no one is listening….Is God? sometimes does He make us carry it? To learn something? ……I cant even carry it anymore, I’m dragging it…am I even moving?
Thank you for the hope……..