The Backpack

Let him have all your worries and cares, for he is always thinking about you and watching everything that concerns you. 1 Peter 5:7 (TLB)

It's back-to-school season, and once again kids everywhere are heading out the door with backpacks stuffed with textbooks, notebooks, laptops, water bottles, lunches, and everything else they need for the day.

Those backpacks can get surprisingly heavy.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that a child's backpack weigh no more than 15 percent of their body weight. When they're too heavy, backpacks can contribute to pain in the back, neck, and shoulders. One sign the AAP tells parents to watch for is a child leaning forward to support the weight.

The load has become so heavy that the child has to change the way they carry themselves just to keep carrying it.

Emotional weight can be harder to recognize. One worry may not feel too heavy. Neither does one disappointment, one difficult relationship, one financial concern, or one fear about someone we love. But life rarely hands us only one hard thing at a time. The weight accumulates, often so gradually that we don't realize how much we're carrying until it begins to affect the way we live.

We can't sleep because our minds won't shut off. We reach for food or pour a drink to settle our nerves. We become irritable, exhausted, distracted, or consumed with fixing, preventing, controlling, and preparing for every possible outcome.

The weight we're carrying on the inside eventually begins showing up on the outside.

Too heavy is too heavy, whether the weight is physical or emotional.

Notice that God doesn't tell us those things don't matter. He doesn't tell us to stop caring about the people we love or ignore the circumstances that concern us.

He tells us to stop carrying them.

There are things that belong in our backpacks—responsibilities God has given us, decisions we need to make, work that is ours to do. But there are also things we've picked up along the way that were never ours to carry.

Tomorrow isn't ours. The outcome isn't ours. Someone else's choices aren't ours.

He never asked us to carry what belongs to Him.

Maybe it's time to take inventory of what's in your backpack. What has become so heavy that it's changing the way you walk through life?

Too heavy is too heavy.

God never told you to get better at carrying your worries.

He told you to give them to Him.

You are loved!