ON FUN ~ Burden of Trust...

Image credit uncertain - found on Google Images with allowable sharing categorization

At the age of 45, writer Regina Brett wrote a column for the Cleveland Plain Dealer listing 45 lessons that life had taught her thus far. As a breast cancer survivor, many of those lessons were learned the hard way. Five years later she added five more lessons rounding her list up to 50 and turned her popular list into a book called God Never Blinks. I found her list to be entertaining, inspiring and thought provoking. I thought I would go through each of her lessons learned and write about how that lesson has or has not come up in my own life, now that I am over 40 and feel old enough to have finally learned something.

"God never gives us more than we are designed to carry."

~ LESSON #10

(I must first preface my thoughts on the above by saying that I just realized, after 45 "50 Lessons" posts, that the chain letter of this list that I was working off of was quite inaccurate in the order of Ms. Brett's actual list. I went back and corrected all of my previous entries to match the correct Lesson number. Which is why you find me covering Lesson #10 just now. What previously I believed to be #10 was in actuality, not a lesson of Ms. Brett's at all! It was a great mantra, to be sure. But something that was inserted into the telephone game of email chain letters along the way. Not of Ms. Brett's work. So for the remaining 6 lessons, you will find them to be in random lesson numbers. For myself, who values accuracy and proper quotation, this is annoying. For you, it shouldn't make any difference - the lessons and my thoughts are in the end, the point - not their order of appearance.)

None of us feel that we are Job. I'll bet Job didn't feel he was Job. Until it was demanded of him. And then he saw that he could bend more than he could break. That his incomparable suffering was born of something other than retribution. In other words, he didn't get what he deserved - he wasn't punished for being evil, wrong or shameful. He was being tested. And in the end was given reward. Now, it seems to me that replacement children aren't exactly a fair reward, but who am I to question these things? No one, according to God. Don't question - he's too busy with too many things as creator and manager of our entire humankind to spend time explaining it all to me. He is smarter, wiser and more experienced. Just do what I tell you to do, believe what I tell you to believe, and don't ever waver. Trust.

When stricken by grief, trust is all we have. Sometimes perhaps we deserve the emotional turmoil. Sometimes perhaps we don't. But that isn't the point. We all get thrown curve balls. My level of struggle should not be compared to your level of struggle. For my comparatively minimal troubles may be taking a mammoth toll on my psyche, my heart, my physical abilities. They are the limit of my burden. The most weight that I can carry. It doesn't mean that I am weaker, less willing or a big fat wimp. It means that my level of burden produces the same amount of toll that yours does on you.

Generally, women cannot run as fast, lift as much, throw as far as men. It is just in the way that we are put together. When we push the limits of our physical abilities, the way that our throat burns, our muscles ache or our heart races at the max level of exertion is the same effect that men feel at their max level of exertion. We push ourselves as far as we individually can handle and collectively share in the same after effects of our efforts.

I don't know how much I can carry in life. It may be that what I tote around seems far less than my neighbor, friend or family member. It may seem to be far more. But I trust that it will be the most that I can bear.