Things I Can’t Carry
Last week in a post I titled tilting I wrote of many beloved people for whom I pray, but I did not say exactly how I pray, and the method is important. The problems are bigger than I can fix and, for at least some of the people, the struggles are part of a necessary growth process. I can’t plead for that to be taken away, because they need to grow. I want them to grow, yet it is hard to only be able to stand by and watch. So my prayers this week were lists of things that I am putting into God’s hands. “Please carry this because I can’t.” is the gist of most of my prayers this week. And He has. He has carried the things, carried me, sent friends to serve me, sent me to serve friends, and generally provided a sense of calm progress through all of the things. I really do mean all, because there was an unending stream of thing after thing after thing, every single day, all week long. It was always some little hurdle at the end of the day that tipped me into tears. I would cry a bit and then He would show me what to do next and onward we would go.
The capstone of the week was Howard’s hard drive failing. This is the sort of event that usually would tip me into a swirl of fear that our livelihood would be destroyed by the failure of one piece of hardware, which is ridiculous. The emotional blow was real though. Howard lost some data which will be time consuming or difficult to replace. Instead of fear, I felt completely calm and strove to help Howard think through options and solutions. Computer recovery will spill into next week as will many of the other things. It will all be fine. The big things are all necessary and the rest is just the ordinary frustrations and tasks which accompany life. I move onward, carrying what I can and handing over what I can’t.