I Was The One Who Carried Things

You were always the one who carried things.

Not as a boast. It was simply the arrangement. If something needed moving, you moved it. If somebody's car needed pushing, you pushed it. Every family has one and in yours it was you, from about the age of nineteen.

And it was more than a service. It was where you stood. It was what you were for. A man who is always the one carrying is a man who is never in the position of asking, and being out of that position for thirty years does something to a person.

Then last month you asked your son to take one end of something, and he took it without thinking twice, and you have not been able to stop thinking about it since.

He was completely normal about it. He did not look at you. He did not make it a thing. He picked it up and said something about the weather and you went through the door and you set it down.

And you have replayed it about forty times, and every replay hurts, and you cannot explain to anybody why a perfectly ordinary two minutes has taken up residence in your chest.

So let me say what I think happened, and then let me give you something to do with it.

What hurts is not that the thing was heavy. What hurts is that a whole position you have occupied since you were nineteen just moved, in a doorway, in front of a person you raised.

Bear ye one another's burdens

There is an instruction in Galatians that is quoted constantly and almost always in one direction only.

Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. (Galatians 6:2, King James Version)

Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

One another. That is a word with two ends on it. It describes an exchange, and an exchange requires somebody to be carried as well as somebody carrying.

You have obeyed one half of this verse for thirty years, and Galatians 6:2 has never once been a command aimed at only one man in a family. The word is one another and it runs both directions, and the Holy Spirit is the one who teaches a household how to hand a load back and forth.

You have read that verse a hundred times as an instruction to you, and never once as a description of something being done for you.

And here is what that costs, and it is not obvious. A man who only ever carries has taken something away from everybody around him, which is the chance to do this for him.

Your son is thirty one. He has never carried anything for his father. Not because he would not. Because you were always there first, and you were quick, and it was easier, and it was who you were.

You are able to give somebody in this family a thing they have never been given, and doing that has never once been the same as taking something from them. The Spirit of God is the one who moves a burden from one shoulder to another, and Galatians 6:2 makes that exchange the way the law of Christ is fulfilled.

That is not sentimentality. Read the verse again. It says the law of Christ is fulfilled in the exchange, which means somebody has to be on the receiving end of it, or the law does not get fulfilled at all.

The sentence you cannot get out

Here is the practical problem, and it is not physical.

There is a sentence you cannot say. It is: can you take that end.

You are able to say eight words to your own son, and the difficulty of it has never once been a measure of what a man has left. It is written in Galatians that we bear one another's burdens, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gets a sentence out of a man who has never had to say it before.

You have said harder things than that. You have said things at funerals. You have had conversations with this same son that cost you a great deal more than eight words.

But those were said from the position a man has always occupied. This one has to be said from a position he has never stood in, and that is why the mouth will not do it.

So we are not going to work on the courage. We are going to change the situation so the sentence is not needed.

You have a way around this that costs nobody anything, and needing a way around it has never once been a lesser way of getting there. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in a doorway with a father and a son and a table, and Galatians 6:2 puts the fulfilling of the law in the exchange rather than in the asking.

Here is how. You do not ask for help with a thing you cannot do. You ask him to do a thing with you that plainly takes two people.

Nobody has to say anything about anything. Two people carry a two person object. That is all that has happened.

Carry something together today

So here is the assignment, and it is deliberately ordinary.

Carry something with one of them today, and let them take the heavy end.

You are permitted to take the lighter end of something without announcing it, and doing that has never once been the same thing as being unable. It is written that the law of Christ is fulfilled in bearing one another's burdens, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with two men moving one object through a house.

Pick something that genuinely needs two. A table. A chest. A piece of something from the truck. If there is nothing in your house that needs moving, then find the thing that has been in the wrong room for four years, which every house has.

Then let it happen naturally, and here is the discipline: when he takes the heavy end, say nothing.

Do not thank him in a way that marks it. Do not make a joke about getting old, which is what every man reaches for and which turns two minutes of ordinary work into a small public statement about decline.

Say nothing. Talk about the room you are taking it to.

You are handing your son something he has been waiting to be handed, and receiving it has never once made a man smaller in his own house. Galatians 6:2 says bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ, and the Spirit of God is the one who does the real work in an ordinary two minutes.

Ten minutes, at most. Then it is over, and the position has moved a little, and nobody has said one word about it.