Lay Your Burden Down, for Younger Moms (Mostly)

Have you ever seen a picture or meme of a little child who has a heavy backpack put on them, and they fall over backwards, and their feet fly up? My oldest son is now a large stout fellow, but when he was young, all his energy went into his brain, not his body. He was the littlest kid in his class until about 9th or 10th grade, and that included the smallest girl. But oh, how he would load down his backpack. I had to remove books from his backpack so that he would not hurt himself. He would tell you himself that he was the stereotypical nerd, big glasses and backpack and all.

Now imagine that you are holding a backpack. Let’s think of it as your life. What is in it? Some things are normal and wonderful and as they are added to your life you gain strength to carry them.

Things from the present, like…

                Children to love and care for

                Laundry and dishes

                A job/a career

                What else?

                What about social media expectations? Ooh, that can start getting heavy.

                Peer pressure, everything from breast feeding to home schooling to ballet lessons.

That’s your present.

What about your future?

                The state of the nation and the world

                Decisions about your children and family going forward

What fills your backpack from the present and the future?

Ooh, enough of that – Jesus said, “Don’t worry about tomorrow because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Matthew 6:34

That accounts for today and tomorrow, what about the – Past?

Is there anything from the past that you are still carrying? Of course there is, probably many somethings. Some items from the past that we carry are light and fun. Some are normal and manageable. But some of us carry very real and heavy burdens, known as adverse experiences. Some are from childhood, but heavy loads can be picked up and stashed in our backpack at any time of life. As they accumulate, we learn to carry heavier things, but they start to weigh us down more and more.

Here’s how you will know if you still carry burdens from the past.

- First, if you’re human, you carry what we can call stuff. Everyone does.

- If a memory ambushes you and you re-experience the sadness or rage or vulnerability or helplessness that you felt back then, it’s still in the backpack and you carry it.

 - If you have not forgiven someone, either because you have no intention of forgiving them – the damage done was too great – or you have tried to forgive them but can’t make it happen, it’s still in the backpack.

- If you were abused: sexually, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, or physically, and you have never worked through the poison with a good counselor, then that’s a huge weight in your backpack.

- lots of people carry the heavy weights of grudges and bitterness. Maybe that’s in your backpack.

What are some other heavy burdens?

Offense:

We don't usually carry minor offenses as a burden, but we sure can when they are heavy offenses. Here are some examples of ways people offend us, often within the context of the church:

- cliques, exclusion, gossip, leadership making decisions you don’t agree with, slander, dismissal, hypocrisy, invalidation

Those things hurt and there are often unpleasant consequences from them. Maybe the atmosphere, even in a church, feels heavy to you, or you never feel like you belong and are known and loved, seen and enjoyed.

Abuse:

Abuse is different. Abuse implies a person having power and control over you and using it to harm you.

Sexual abuse is heavy and destructive. I’ve experienced it to a measure, and the weight of it messed up my life for years.

Betrayal from people you trust is a heavy burden. Damage done from people who are supposed to have your back, to protect and nurture you, but who instead harmed you deeply and betrayed you – that’s heavy.

Church abuse that comes from leadership causes destruction. I don’t want to tell you the stories that people have told me. The worst part is the results.

Because there’s always fallout, and we carry that weight too. Burdens are stuffed down into backpacks, but not only the backpacks of the primary participants. Our children watch, our children feel and suffer with us, no matter how much we try to protect them. And they make choices to stuff burdens in their own backpacks based on what they see and experience. Family members may turn away from the church, or even away from God, because of the abuse of people they love.

Side note - When there is a church wound, whether from an offense or from abuse, the instinct for self-protection often takes us away from being involved with any church. The enemy of our souls really likes that. There’s even a name for people in our society who have decided that taking a chance on another church just isn’t worth it. They are the Dones, or sometimes called the Gones. They haven’t left God, but they aren’t about to attend a church. I know what that feels like. I have family members who are right there. I’ve been there.

When we are offended or wounded by a church, our first instinct may be to get really good at being victims, and it’s not a role. It’s real. The problem comes when we take our victim status on as an identity. How much weight does that add here?

We can carry the weight for a while – we can. We can even get used to it. The thing is, it wears us out. It wears us down. And sometimes we take the offense or the burden out, look at it for what it is and the harm it has done to us, and hold it out to God and say, “This is too heavy for me. I don’t want to carry it anymore. I need your help to know what to do with this.”

And set it down.

And then pick it back up. And set it down. Pick it up. Because it’s been a habit to carry it and think about it and ponder it and to feel all that on some level is comfortable and even excuses some bad that we do to others… It has become a part of us.

Can you think of any reasons why we would want to hold onto burdens? Why would we take them out, look at them, decide they aren’t good for us, and then find ourselves shoving them back in, forcing ourselves to continue to carrying burdens?

- it might be terrifying to go deep enough to find healing

- the role of victim can make us look sympathetic to others

- pride – it can feel good that we can carry that much and stay on our feet

- we are comfortable with the way things are – change is hard. Or scary.

- we might feel that we are obligated to carry a grudge, for example, in order to be loyal to a family member who was wronged

- enjoy the “Victim dopamine” – that can get really addicting

Here’s the thing –

If you choose to keep stuffing this backpack with heavy items, with past, present, or future burdens, it will slow you down, tire you out, discourage you, distract you, keep you thinking about what’s in the backpack that you carry rather than looking ahead with energy and joy.

What are the unresolved burdens from your past that you carry? God wants to share the load so that those burdens become lighter, and give you rest.

Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” Mt 11:28-30

I love Jesus. He doesn’t want you to carry burdens from the future, which is known as worry, or fretting, or anxiety, because you cannot do much to change the future, and He holds the future. As we walk with Him, we trust Him more and more.

Neither does He want you to continue to carry burdens from your past. Memories, yes, but not burdens.

Some burdens from the past may require spending time with a wise and skilled counselor, maybe using techniques that are helpful to heal your soul.

Some burdens from your past are entirely within your power to pull out, drop by the pathway, and not go back to pick up.

God wants things for your life. He wants you to move forward in life with freedom. He wants you to grow in faith and trust in Him. He wants you to become mature and faithful. He really wants you to know Him, the real Him, the Him that the Bible talks about. That gives you a solid foundation to stand on when really lousy things happen to you, because they do. He wants to keep them out of your backpack.

The apostle Paul had so much abuse from religious people for years that it nearly killed him, and they finally did. Here is something he wrote towards the end of his life: “Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:13&14

I encourage you to think about things in your backpack that are a burden. If they can be easily let go of – next time you think about a certain one, ask for God’s help to let it go and move on without that weight.

If there has been real damage done to you and you need help to process it and find healing, I encourage you to find a way to do that. Talk with a good counselor. Take out the bricks - replace them with pillows.

Obviously, I have only touched the surface of this topic of laying our burdens down at the feet of Jesus. I hope you will be encouraged to go on the journey of self-examination and healing, and of talking with God when you become aware that you are carrying something you don’t want to carry any more.

He wants to help you – remember what Jesus said:

“Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”