About ten years ago, I went through one of the most overwhelming periods of my life. I was very sick and in the process of being diagnosed with a chronic illness, and it was also one of the busiest times of my life. I was exhausted and afraid and completely uncertain how I would make it through it all. I felt as if I couldn’t possibly put anything down, couldn’t imagine loosening my grip on a single thing lest it all fall apart. In processing this time later on, an image came to mind. In this picture I was climbing a mountain with a huge hiking pack slung over my shoulders. Every new challenge, symptom, or task was yet another thing I threw in the pack, the weight getting heavier and heavier as I moved. Fear was driving me, and it honestly didn’t occur to me that stopping was an option. If I stopped, I didn’t know if I would be able to get moving again.
Unfortunately, it also didn’t occur to me that there might be things that I was mindlessly hauling up a mountain that I didn’t need to be. It didn’t dawn on me that maybe the stopping itself was part of the solution. I know now that I was doing the best I could. It does no good to judge myself through the eyes of the growth and healing that I have experienced since this time. But I have also learned a lot from processing what I went through, skills that I hope to take forward with me. I have been slowly learning to listen to the fear itself, that panicked sense of forcing myself on. And I have been realizing that the fear can be an invitation to stop, to put down the pack that I am carrying, to rest and reassess, and to ask myself what I actually need to be carrying and what I might just be free to put down.
This is a lesson that it has taken me years and many failed attempts to really grapple with. And frankly, I’m often still terrible at it. When life gets hard and overwhelming, I tend to lock in, sling that heavy pack over my shoulders, and just keep moving. But I have also grown more alive to the invitation to pause as time has gone on. Growth has looked like an acknowledgment that maybe I’m carrying more than I need to, even if I don’t feel capable of letting go of anything quite yet. Growth has looked like noticing that there are more options available to me than I tend to imagine, different and perhaps gentler ways of moving forward. I also see growth in realizing that there are plenty of things that I don’t get to put down. I didn’t have the choice to set down my illness or my grief all those years ago. There were still an awful lot of heavy things that I was stuck with. But I have been growing into the knowledge that I’m not stuck with all of it, and there is usually more gentleness, more freedom available to me than I think. I am learning that it is okay to stop, even if I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep moving again.
It has been painful learning, but I have also found God in these spaces. There is poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, where he calls out to God saying “I love you, gentlest of Ways”. As I learn to attend to the invitation to pause, this is a picture of God I am slowly growing into believing. The truth is, God is usually much gentler towards me than I am towards myself. My own expectations for what I should be able to bear are often much loftier than what Jesus is actually asking of me. I don’t believe that God only gives us what we can handle, but I do believe that sometimes we end up choosing to carry more than we have to, that we are sometimes more free than we imagine to stop and set something down.
I think that sometimes we don’t stop because we are too afraid that we will have to confront the unputdownable things, the burdens that we aren’t sure that we can bear. If we stop to consider that there may be a gentler way, there is a terrified part of us that thinks there isn’t one. It’s a very real fear. But what if that fear has something constructive and helpful to say to us? What if spending some time with that fear is mysteriously a part of a gentler way forward? I think this fear is why I kept barreling on all those years ago, trying not to look too closely at my illness. If I stopped and looked it in the eye, surely it would be the end of me. But somehow, it wasn’t. Somehow, finally facing those fears, even though it mostly happened years later, brought me freedom. It brought me onto a gentler path. It gave me more courage and capacity to face the unputdownable things. It has slowly taught me to believe more deeply in the “gentlest of Ways”.
If you are carrying what feels like an impossibly heavy burden, a pack that is so heavy that you are afraid to put it down, I’d like to leave you with a few questions. If one jumps out at you, I invite you to take some time to consider and to pray.
- Is this fear and panic that it will all fall apart perhaps an invitation to pause?
- What would you need in order to accept that invitation?
- Do you feel like you could ask for what you need? Either of God, your community, or both?
- How might this moment be an invitation to have more compassion for yourself?
- Is your picture of God in this moment as the “gentlest of Ways”? Or is there a different picture that comes up for you?
Wellspring 