“The weight is unbearable. Jesus falls under it. How could he enter our lives completely
without surrendering to the crushing weight of the life of so many on this earth! He lies on the
ground and knows the experience of weakness beneath unfair burdens. He feels the
powerlessness of wondering if he will ever be able to continue. He is pulled up and made to
continue.”When I heard this passage for the first time, I felt an immediate connection to it. I know that I could relate to the feeling of falling, and not knowing how I would be able to gather the strength to go on. And while my struggles have obviously been different than that of Jesus on his journey to face his crucifixion, I have still faced moments of powerlessness and struggle, as I’m sure we all have.
When I think of this passage, two moments in my life specifically stand out to me, of where I have been in a situation of falling beneath the weight of whatever burden I am carrying.
The first moment is from my senior year of college. During my senior year I had overburdened myself with too many challenging courses, extracurricular activities, leadership positions, and multiple part time jobs. Because of all of these responsibilities I had taken on, I often found myself extremely overwhelmed, and frequently reached the point to where I felt that I could no longer continue to carry everything that I was burdened with. However, regardless of how discouraged I got, I always kept going.
When I would feel overwhelmed by my course load, overburdened by homework, and would feel my grades slipping, all I wanted to do was to give up, not go to class, not do my work, but whenever this would happen, one of my professors would reach out to me, and encourage me to keep trying my best, to keep working hard; they would remind me that I am intelligent, and can overcome the difficulties, and they would always offer me help, and this sign of caring would motivate me to keep going. They believed in me, even when I didn't.
My second example comes from this year. I know that it was probably foolish to think that this year would be a lot easier than it has been, but after how crazy my senior year was, a year of service where I would only be working one job, would have no classes, and would only have community events a couple nights a week, seemed, on paper, like it would be a breeze. However, this experience has been much more difficult than I anticipated, especially in the past couple months.
The site I am serving at has been going through some transitions; specifically, those who have been transitioning in and out, have been my direct supervisors. As a result, I, as well as other year of service volunteers at my site, have been burdened with many more responsibilities than we had at the beginning of the year. These responsibilities have also come with a lot less help and support, due to the fact that our new supervisors must go through the proper trainings and transitions before they become familiar enough with the work to be able to actually help us. Because of this situation of becoming overburdened once again, many days I feel again like I am falling beneath the weight of all of the burdens I try to carry. And unfortunately, this feeling does not just stay with me at work, it follows me home, affecting all other aspects of my life.
But I continue on. I still get up and go to work in the morning, I still work hard at my job, even when I feel like I want to quit. And if someone was to ask me, “Why?”, I would tell them this: “I care about the girls that I work with every day. I have gotten to know them, and now I have a vested interest in their lives. I care about how they do in school, I care about the goals that they share with me, and even though I only see each group of girls I coach for only 90 minutes once a week, I am still hopeful that I am able to make that 90 minutes special for each of my girls. I am motivated to keep going, because I want to continue to make an impact in the lives of these girls. I want to be like the teachers who helped me to succeed in school, by being a similar presence for the girls. I want to encourage them to reach toward their goals, to help them keep their hopes and dreams alive, because it is all too easy to become discouraged, to think our dreams are unattainable, and I don’t want that to happen to the girls I work with, and so this motivates me to keep working hard at my job, so that I am able to continue to make an impact on the lives of the girls I coach.”
We all experience moments in our lives where we feel like we cannot continue to move forward, and yet many of us do. We continue because something or someone is usually there to motivate us, to pull us up and keep us going, just as Jesus was pulled up and made to continue at this point in his journey. Sometimes it is us who need to be pulled up in order to continue, and sometimes we need to be there to pull others up so that they are able to continue to move forward in their lives. We all must overcome hurdles, both great and small, in order to get where we are supposed to go. And each time we are able to push through and carry on when we don’t know how, we are moving ourselves one step closer to accomplishing what we are meant to do in our lives.
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