Lay Your Burdens Down

I knew that I was feeling somewhat overwhelmed today. Pressures from the North, South, East, and West. I thought that I could just shake it off by the length of the day. I would try to listen to music, it does make me feel good, one of my greatest escapes by far. I attempted to watch one of my most favorite television shows today ( as a matter of fact, it have the series on DVD), it didn’t work. I still had everything on my brain that I went to sleep with last night. To be totally honest with self, I haven’t slept well in the last week or so. It’s just been building up, to tell the truth. I have talked to my God about it, well I have conversations with Him… I take that back. We don’t necessarily have conversations, I just tell Him all about it and then walk away to go handle all the things that I can’t really handle in the first place. You see, I think that I am handling it all. I show up right? I execute the work. I wake up and I take care of the kids every day. I get them off to school looking and smelling good with their nice clothes and haircuts. I make sure that the homework for the 6-year-old is placed neatly in the red folder. I want for his teacher to know that I am all over it!!! Yeah right. I don’t even read that stuff some nights. Looks fine to me is what I say to myself, he wrote his name on it. I am LOL’ing myself right now. I go to work nice and clean, dressed pretty well if I may say so myself. Some days are better than others but hey; better than some others. I get my work done without cursing everyone out who crosses my path wrong. I answer a hoard of emails all day that never ceases. I go to meeting after meeting, conference call after call. I manage to make a full day of this. I pick up the kids and try to cook, bathe, fuss at, re-direct a million times. Finally convince one that staying up to midnight isn’t good practice and convince the other again that bedtime is for everyone. I didn’t eat I think…Try to send a few text messages to friends because I need some adult attention. I crash, I think about bills, I think about responsibilities, I think about extra-curricular activities for the kids and for me. I want to go on a playdate!!! I do, I am single. Adult stimulation is good for me.
That’s a mouth full…That’s a mind full…That’s not even the half. We have bills, responsibilities, friendships to maintain, relationships with family members to engage, health concerns, emotional turmoil, political upheavals that affect everything about our lives, we worry about our children and their relationships, we are concerned about the safety of our children, we are concerned about the spike in crimes in our cities, we are faced with racial injustices, and so much more. And then there are the unspoken emotional pains, fears, anxieties, complexes, feelings of rejection, or pain and so much more. What a heavy weight that we carry from day to day…I am aware of the fact that all people are not walking through life feeling heavy and burdened down from day to day. Some people are generally happy with little to no worries from day to day. Some have great credit, great health, good jobs, happy children who rarely get into any trouble, living in great neighborhoods, living what some call the “LIFE”.
Here is the reality though…whether we like to admit to it or not…it doesn’t matter what socioeconomic background we come from, we all have burdens. Burdens, yes burdens. Burdens by definition are something you carry or withstand with much difficulty when used as a noun, and as the act of weighing down, overloading, or oppressing when used as a verb. Also, burdens are defined as something which is carried; a load. Or it is suggested to be something that is oppressive, trouble. I also discovered an old term in which the word burden refers to as “the freight of a ship; the carrying capacity of a ship”.
I personally don’t think that any person is exempt from feeling overloaded about life situations at times. Some more than others for sure; but there is no exemption. We all have been blessed with the capacity to carry heavy loads; whether it be for a short time, a season, or for the duration of the life that we live. Life happens to all who have it and are living it. Life happens to all who have it and are living it. Maybe because things are well with us today we can frown upon my accusation but I am not here to persuade you otherwise. I am here to remind you as I had to remind myself this day that for the burdens that we carry, we can lay them down. Burdens aren’t transferable so we will do ourselves an unfair injustice of thinking that we can tell someone about them or speak them in the atmosphere and they will just disappear. The work will look differently for each person because the loads are so unique. I think that one of the biggest issues is actually acknowledging that I was feeling weighed down by most of these burdens simultaneously. That is a problem. There is no way humanly possible to do this every day and not be negatively impacted by all of this weight. We have to get before our lives, acknowledge that these things are currently placing an insurmountable amount of weight on us. Some of our loads are lighter by virtue of a number of people that we have in our lives. A single person with no children will feel the pressures that a single person with children may have. This can be disputed too, the single person with no children may have a terminal illness which demands all of their income to manage their health. As I said earlier, each person has their own trials or burdens to entertain. My concerns for myself and others do we realize or have we come to the realization that we don’t have to try and manage these things. Loads are not easier to carry if we keep strategically moving them around in our lives. Loads are easier to carry when we lay some of them down. I am not by any means promoting that we cast our responsibilities on others or neglect them. I am saying that some things that we are feeling responsible for and managing should be taken off our backs and placed on the floor. We cannot be responsible for other people’s foolishness, poor decisions, decision-making period, or actions. Things like this should be laid aside on a daily basis. We rarely do that, though. We as move as I described earlier in the entry. We just carry, and carry, and carry, and carry until one day it hits us and we are already in overload. Or we do things like constantly watch the news and take on the weight of fear and concerns of the world that we can’t do a thing about. I am not saying that we can’t be changing agents in the communities and places where our lives call that we be. I am however saying that carrying worry for the world that you didn’t create nor the people in it will benefit you much at all. You will just be disturbed and extremely unnerved by the day to day foolery that takes place in the world. Lay your burdens down. Or better yet, trade your thought of what you consider as burdens for solutions to things that you thought were a weight to you. I am literally having to eat the words that I speak to you right now. Everything that feels like pressure, isn’t necessarily that. It may be things that you know you should have been or need to be doing with your life that you aren’t and therefore they take on the form of burdens. And then there are the things in your life that are your loads that are meant just for you to carry. You may have been blessed like me to be the parent of a child with a disability. What a weight that can be at times…but it isn’t something that you can just lay aside. These are those burdens that are not transferable that may be with you for a long time or a lifetime. We don’t choose this weights in our lives. Maybe you were born to a parent who abused drugs and now you deal with the emotional effects of having a parent who was dysfunctional. You can’t change that on your own necessarily. However, you can acknowledge the pressure of the effects that it may have or still have on you and get help and or the work to alleviate the pressure and pain. Lay your burdens down, I say, lay your burdens down. I am Christian and my faith teaches that we bear the burdens of each other. Well, no one can just transfer their pain or struggles to me but it is possible for me to help someone through their struggles and they can do the same for me. We can help anyone who stands in need of assistance. Maybe they just need a hug or a listening ear, friendship, romance, money, a smile, friendliness, hope, encouragement, silence, understanding, chastisement, redirection, lack of judgment, and so much more. Sometimes we just need to acknowledge first within ourselves that we are not perfect. We can’t just fix ourselves completely. We didn’t make ourselves so I am sure that we don’t have the keys to the mystery of perfection. We all have junk, we all have stuff, and we all have things that sometimes make us feel like the weight of the world is on our backs. It’s okay, though. We just need to be cognizant of the fact that these nuisances have come, will come, have come, and or are coming. Once we are aware that they are present; we can do whatever the necessary work is to lay them down.
I had to acknowledge mine today. I had been so busy trying to portray to the teachers and the co-workers, the church members, friends, and family that nothing is has got me bound that I just rearranged all of my big and little nuisances. I hadn’t done anything with them. Or better yet, I was just telling my God about them; I didn’t ask Him to take the load of the thing. In my faith, He tells His followers to give them to Him in exchange for His. He tells me that His burdens are lite. Oh, if I dared to listen and take heed. Well as for you and whatever you choose to believe; practically or physically, please lay your burdens down. If we don’t, they will eventually overwhelm or potentially destroy us. Until the next time; remember that answers await questions that are inevitable. Keep canvassing…