Bearing One Another's Burdens by Lightening the Load

I know, we usually don't tell everyone all of the burdens that we are carrying at any given moment for obvious reasons, right? Typically, when someone comes up and says, “Hey, how are you doing Monica?” 98% of the time I'm going to say “I'm doing great” because that's just my response. That doesn't mean that I'm not doing great, but typically, I'm not going to unload whatever burden I'm currently carrying onto just anyone, and I'm sure you're the same way.

We pick and choose and are careful with who we share our burdens with. I'm not going to get into who we're supposed to share our burdens with and who we're not, I couldn't do that even if I tried. That is such a personal decision. It has a lot to do with how we trust one another and the people that we feel safe to share things with.

When I think about burdens, I like to relate them to a physical burden. For instance, if we thought about the weight of carrying on our backs, a backpack full of rocks. Depending on how many rocks we have in our backpack, and how big and heavy those rocks are, that determines how heavy our burden is.

As you can guess, if we started sharing our burdens, taking one rock at a time out of our backpack and letting some other people carry a few of those rocks, it would lighten our burden. Then you're thinking, “yeah, but it would also give other people a burden that maybe wasn't theirs to bear.” So now I'm taking my burden and dumping it on someone.

When you start to think those thoughts, stop and think, who wants to try to get us to think like that? Who wants you to feel alone in your burdens?

I want you to think about your own children or someone that you love, someone that you care about. What would it feel like? What would you feel like if 10 years down the road you found out that your child or the person that you love so dearly had been carrying a secret, a painful burden, and they had been carrying it for 10 years and you didn't know about it? How during those 10 years you had just treated that person like you always do and interacted with that person like normal. If you found out that there had been this burden thatyou had no idea about. Would that make you sad?

Would you regret that you hadn't known? Would you wish that you could have known, because you would have liked to have helped if you could? Even if you couldn't solve the burden or fix the problem, wouldn’t you have liked to at least known about it. So that you could have prayed for that person. So that you could have been a shoulder to cry on for that person. So that you could have allowed yourself to be a listening ear for that person. Wouldn’t you feel better if you could have done something, something to have comforted your loved one.

It's easy for us to want to help those we love carry their burdens, but it's so hard for us to allow other people to help us carry our burdens.

I understand we don't want to be a burden to people, but we've got to remember that one of he greatest joys we each individually will feel in our life is the joy that comes with knowing that we were able to play a small role in helping someone. It's a great joy to know that our life has purpose and meaning. To me, one of the best ways for me to feel like my life has meaning is when I'm able to experience helping someone else.

So, If we know that that is a way that we experience joy and we experience growth, then we've got to allow other people to serve us in that same way. I would like to invite you to, if you're carrying a burden, and I know that you are at this moment, that you have not shared with anyone, I would invite you to spend a little time in prayer and ask the Lord to help you to know who the right person is for you to share your burden with. I know that it will be a blessing to you when you have someone to help you carry the rocks that are on your back.

This topic of bearing one another’s burdens, actually comes from a chapter in our book, “Raising a Generation of Ladies and Gentlemen” which was inspired from scripture.