The burdens we’re meant to bear with others

It’s a sunny Wednesday and I gently toss a small Spider-Man suitcase into the back of the van.

It will be two nights away this time.

It’s happened before, but this time is oh, so very different.

How do you stop yourself from calling them your own? How do you stop feeling like the caregiver when you’ve given years of your life to tucking them in at night, answering their countless questions and taking care of their every need?

How do you let them go?

We pull back into the driveway and I unload the two littlest. The only two that will stay mine for as long as they’re alive.

I tuck them in for naps and quickly busy myself around the house —reordering, reorganizing, redecorating, as if somehow changing around things on the outside will help change things around on the inside.

I suddenly find myself wanting to change so many things, as if a new coat of paint will cover up the hurt.

As if cleaning away the cobwebs in the corners will clean away all of our broken pieces in our hearts.

We have walked a messy road.

I think back to when they first walked through our front door.

That was before I had ever walked into a courtroom.
That was before I had paged through stacks of documents telling every broken piece of children’s lives.

Life was easier—cleaner.

Aren’t we all looking for clean and picturesque lives? Isn’t that what the culture tells us will bring us joy?

We are taught to edit, filter and crop out the parts of our own lives that don’t quite measure up.

So then what would poses us to go and get entangled with the people who have chosen to sit in such messes? What would poses us to allow a broken life to come and bring all of their past bad choices and leave them in a great pile within our own lives?

It is easier, I believe, to help victims of others bad choices then the person who has made all of the bad choices.

But we are all called to bear one another’s burdens.
I wonder at the burdens we expect to bear with others.

The grief of a lost loved one.
The pain of misfortune.
The hardship that doesn’t make sense.

But what about the burdens that come from years of bad choices?
The overwhelming weight of guilt and rightful consequences for bad deeds done?

An enormous load.
One that we are meant to bear with perhaps?
One that we are to help carry to the cross?

We have walked into a world where things aren’t quite so black and white, because people are far more complex.

They change.

And people changing is what we’re after.
But how will we handle the transformation?

Will we walk alongside them all the way to the other end?

It will be a very messy road.

But didn’t Jesus walk a very messy road?
Didn’t the spectators criticize Him for not keeping things quite as clean as they thought He ought to?

He did not compromise.
He did not condone sin.
But when a broken sinner repented He welcomed them with arms wide and He walked with them down the road of restoration.

Will we do the same? And if so, what will it look like?

A change of heart can happen overnight, but what about the slow road to restoring all of the broken pieces of the past?

Are we, the people of God, ready to walk that road with others?

These are the burdens we must bear, just as Jesus bears daily with our own sin and the mess it makes.

Perhaps when we walk alongside another and their messy road to restoration, we are reminded at a deeper level of the great grace we are daily given and often unaware of.

Perhaps we’ll find that there is nothing greater than to have the very front row seat to a life being transformed into the likeness of Christ.