dropping the things we carry.

meghan geiser
Jan 29, 2018
4 min read

Letting go of long-held burdens.

For a long time, I have felt the heaviness of wounds and heartaches that are long overdue to be returned. I want to give them up, make no mistake, but without realizing it, I pick them up every day and carry them with me. And sometimes, with a big sweeping sigh, I take inventory of myself, and I’m disheartened to see these wounds buckled to my back, still. It makes me tired and a little scared, honestly. The pages of their stories don’t have any new lines, but I re-read them anyway. I hope to be surprised by the ending, but I’m only let down, and frustrated that all of their hurt still feels fresh. For most of my days – and I’m still learning – I didn’t know exactly what it would take to clear out the things that haunt me and be rid of them for good.

But over time, my pleas became riddled with this thought: the things we carry don’t get dropped off all at once. You can’t pull up to the curb, kick it out of the car, and drive off without looking back. I am dying to tell you that’s how it works, but our DNA walks us out of heartache a different way. When you’re so used to carrying something with you all day long, it takes ownership of even your smallest mannerisms. The way you shrug to keep the knapsack of shame sitting high, the way you adjust your stride to carry the extra weight – they're all markers of tiny adjustments to accommodate the load. Even when we set it all down for a moment, it takes re-adjusting to remember how to walk without it.

And sometimes the lightness is just as disorienting. We feel too light, under-burdened – like the feeling of leaving home without your keys. It’s an uncomfortable adjustment – almost twitchy, certain we’ve forgotten something. So we turn around and put the knapsack on again because the heaviness is what we know. That one gaping hole in our soul , burned in place from eating of the Tree of Knowledge, is why we take on burdens more easily than letting them go. Letting go of what hurts us takes stewardship and vigilance. In the same way we use different muscle groups to release rather than grasp, so we do with our spiritual exercising.

So how do we let it go without strapping it back on? The answer is packed in one tiny word: persistence. Persistence and practice in building a greater stamina than the evil of the burden. If we're being real, evil has an infantile temperance. The more of something you give it, the more often it demands it. If you pick up a whining toddler every time he or she throws a fit, you’re promising that toddler reward for nasty behavior. And when you dare to withhold what you’ve given in on in the past, soprano screams and furious stomps are sure to rain down. Most people can’t handle this hailstorm of rage, and they give in. They give in because it’s tiring and wearing to be screamed and fussed at. No matter how tired their arms are, enduring the exertion of handling extra weight seems easier than withstanding the backlash. But in the same breath, they fail to see the greater disservice: they’re starving themselves of fortitude and further enslaving themselves to the mercy of fury.

Evil throws an outraged fit every time we don’t give it attention. It howls and wails and makes us afraid that if we don’t just quietly bend down and scoop it up, the backlash will be more than we can handle. It is tiring and daunting to stand up to it; to choose the misery of being strong over and over again rather than giving in. It feels like walking through a dark tunnel when your candle has burned out. I can’t deny the difficulty of it. And I can’t deny the promise of it, either.

No story of the Lord ends with evil defeating good. No tale of the Kingdom ends with lies overwhelming the truth. The glory of the Lord is never hushed in the end. He always, always brands the last pages with thundering resonance. No matter how gravely we despair, we are continually and perpetually positioned (and re-positioned, and re-positioned) for a victory ending.

"And I myself will be a wall of fire around it," declares the Lord, "and I will be its glory within." (Zechariah 2:5)

Have you forgotten that in the coldest winter of your heart, He has placed a wall of fire around you to keep warm? That so long as you continue to give the Lord permission to move the boulders standing in your way; so long as you let Him speak into the bitter winds threatening your strength and zeal, He keeps this wall of fire burning? The impossible work – He will do. We need only to muster enough strength to stand, and He will keep us upright. Please don’t give up the fight. Keep believing in the burning of His fire long into your night.

One day you won’t have to fight not to put on your old knapsack, whatever that may be. One day, your lightness won’t only feel lovely and free, it will feel right. And you’ll know what it is to have freedom of spirit and revel in the sweetness of the Lord’s victory without effort. That day is coming, this I promise you. The difficulty only makes the fire burn stronger and hotter. And the longer and brighter you let His fire burn, the purer the heart it refines.

I have victory carved into my bones because of the fight.

And I know that is your story, too.