#Weighed Down

[momentsbeforemass]

Cares

Cares are things. Heavy things.

And there’s a question about cares baked into today’s Psalm.

What are you carrying around?

If you’re like me, the honest answer is something like “more than I want to.”

All of us have cares. Whether it’s cares from our past (and every one of us has them). Or the cares of the present. Or cares of the future.

Those are just our basic cares. The ones that are always with us. They create a basic level of weight that we carry around.

And even if we don’t notice them because they’re in the background, it still takes energy to carry them around.

Which means it should be no surprise that the hard stuff of life – relationship problems, family, health, finances, addictions – and even the cares of daily life can feel like they weigh so much more. Can hit us so much harder.

Because you and I are already weighed down with all of our background cares.

Before any of those other cares get thrown on top of what we’re already carrying.

With all of those cares weighing down on us, it’s tempting to just dump it all. Drop all your cares and run away from them.

I know someone who tries to do just that.

Every few months, when it all gets to be too much for them at work, they bail out.

They quit their job. Reinvent themselves with a new employer or in a new line of work. Then find a new job.

Sometimes it lasts a few months, sometimes they make it almost a year.

But when it all gets to be too much for them, they quit their job. Reinvent themselves with a new employer or in a new line of work. Then find a new job.

Rinse and repeat.

Each time it happens, we talk about it. And each time I hear the same things. When the dust settles, they swapped all of the things they couldn’t stand about their old job for the new job’s version of the same stuff.

Nothing ever seems to change for them.

Because dropping your cares and running away from them is an illusion.

It’s not just a job thing. The same thing holds true for every source of cares in our lives. Whether it’s relationships, family, friends, health, addiction, finances, or any other source of cares in our lives.

Your cares follow you. Because no matter where you go. Or what you change. You can’t get away from you.

And when you try to carry your cares alone, your cares will make you into your own worst problem.

Here’s what does work. Not carrying them alone. Not even trying to carry them alone.

And it starts with the most important relationship in your life. Your relationship with God.

How does that figure into our cares?

One of the most subtle forms of pride is the unwillingness to get help. Even our unwillingness to admit that we need help. No matter how badly, how obviously we need it. 

One of the hardest parts of our relationship of God is letting go of our pride. Even our perverse, self-injuring pride in handling our cares alone.

This is what’s behind the Psalmist’s advice to “Cast your cares upon the Lord, and He will support you.”

The help you and I need each day to bear the weight of our cares is ready and waiting. All for the asking.

Whatever you are carrying, know that you were never meant to carry it alone.

God is waiting to support you, to do it with you. If you’ll let Him.

Today’s Readings

[thevoidpeeringback]

Another tricky day.

Questioning constantly why my body is doing this to me.

Feel like my whole body is bubbling and being weighed down, it’s hard to breathe.

It’s so hard to fight and keep strong.

[howifeltabouthim]

She would have to keep this appalling secret forever, until she was old, except that she would never be old, she would die of grief.

Iris Murdoch, from The Book and the Brotherhood

[pearlsforthesoul]

YOU JUST NEVER KNOW (the others burdens)

You see people everywhere and they are public relating who they are and what they do in their coming and going and you never know what is really going on in someone even when you engage them. We forget that trust, vulnerability, permission and outright personal sharing is something people just don’t give up to anyone THE LIFE TRAVEL COMES WITH PAIN Be aware of this however. The person who you…

[tenth-sentence]

She had got rid of two of the secrets which had weighed on her for a fortnight, and was certain of a willing listener in Jane, whenever she might wish to talk again of either.

"Pride and Prejudice" - Jane Austen

[mega-delicatelysuperbcollector]

CLEAR OFF THE BED!

He can’t get all into bed With over half of it weighed down, he said… That stuff goes And frees up bed clothes, So he can be well cover-ed – Jonathan Caswell

[aratribow]

Jing yuan is the kind of parent who is overtly invested in their kid's interests and thus yanqing is his gen z encyclopedia

[stuckinapril]

don't stress about that opportunity that fell through or that friend you lost or that thing you really want to happen but isn't. as long as you keep your chin up and try try try again, better things will replace your losses. i'm looking at my life rn and actually marveling at how every single thing i stressed about, whether it be an opportunity or a person, got supplanted w another thing that is so much better. it really is true that loss makes space for better things. these days i don't get sad when something doesn't work out. i get excited that i'm now open to so many other possibilities out there, so long as i actively seek them. you never lack. you just transition.

[norumaru]

Beware of phantoms, for they are difficult to get rid of.

Happy Halloween!!

[deadsetobsessions]

There, in the fog, a pair of glowing green eyes. Who does it belong to?

Surely not that which lays beneath the city, Gotham’s spirit that drowns in the cursed bogs buried beneath concrete and stone. Surely not she, who sobs songs of grief, she who croons silently for aid. Surely not she, madness incarnate, all gnarled shadows and crumbled concrete. Surely not she, Gotham herself, perched along her city’s gargoyles and looks over her own with stone eyes and stone heart that tries to beat like her own.

Her songs were answered with one of her own, a child whose parents were murdered in the heart of her heart. The parts of her that still loved as much as she could wholeheartedly accepted. The child that brought more children- who were all hurt by her and her own and decided she was worth helping anyways. Those eyes did not belong to her own children, those that she pulled the covers of relentless clouds over in order to protect.

No, no. Those eyes belonged to a different child. One that came later who Wailed along side her screams and soothed the madness that roiled beneath her streets.

Her screams were soothed by a child who is her liege, the small one that came and eased the rot that tore her marrow from the bones of her city- her own bones.

Phantom, she ruffles the hair of the boy king. Her gnarled joints and shadowed fangs and clawed countenance does not deter his smile and she loves the child more for it. Far better than the tyrant that tried to use her madness against her own people.

“Hi, Gotham. How are you doing today?”

Better, the gargoyles shifts and grinds. Thank you, my liege.

The boy-king laughs, bright green eyes glowing in the fog she’s summoned to obscure him from her knights. “You did most of the work.”

Not so, the winds whirls in between the white flames of the boy-king’s hair. But we have had this discourse.

Phantom smiles, sadness pulling at the corners of his eyes. She did not know human ways of emotion for she had always been a spirit, but this expression she knows well. It chases at the heels of her knights and now it is in a dogged pursuit for her liege’s heart. Gotham has found new things to hate. The shadows wrap around him.

Go, they whisper as Gotham herself slid back towards the cold stone of her city. Protect. Be happy.

“Okay, okay. But if one of your knights shoot at me again with their weird knives, I’m going to dye their hair neon pink.”

Gotham laughs, spiders bouncing along their webs. They will have deserved it.

The boy-king (hers, her liege, her son, her family, please, Gotham did not want to be alone anymore) laughed again and shot off from the perch she had provided.

[temeyes]

sleepy legs zzz

[mirusx]

how does one read orv and just move on? how do you read the reader's story and not gaze at the night sky just looking for him? searching for at least a part of him in everybody you walk by, hoping that someone from them has at least a percent of him.. just like how you carry a portion of his story— dreaming, wishing, praying that you're both dreaming the same dream,

the reader finally being in the happy ending.

[howifeltabouthim]

The worries of the past had been lifted. And yet I felt weighed down, whenever I raised a hand, a leg. I felt waterlogged with sadness, anger, loss, self-loathing. I couldn't say which. Did everyone feel this heavy?

Rachel Khong, from Real Americans

[dykedvonte]

Curly's little blurb on his steam trading card just keeps reminding me he is a much more miserable person than people realize.

We don't get a lot of his thoughts, inner confliction that aren't bogged down by what Jimmy says or does. Even in the The Last One and Then Another, his dialogue is reflective, not the Curly before the crash but the result of everything. Parts of the him he was are there of course, but also disfigured and warped beyond recognition just like he is physically.

Curly really doesn't think much of himself and desires. He clearly chases fleeting moments of happiness. He doesn't really have prospects for himself, assumes in a similar way to Swansea, that if it should make it happy then he is happy. Though, he hasn't reached the point Swansea did to admit it doesn't. He neither sees the glass half full or empty, it's just water, something he needs and he'll take it from any perspective.

He wasn't running from anything but he's never really been going towards something either. He's listless. I've been using the term complacent to describe how he feels about his life and the closest people (really just Jimmy) in it, but now that word feels too neutral, too nice. Happier than Curly really was. There isn't just one word for it, he's unfulfilled, uncertain, uninspired. There are no active problems he faces and that's the issue, why should he be upset?

I believe he really is a person who doesn't know who he is or wants to be. He follows a structure. I don't think he's suicidal, but he clearly doesn't think about what makes him happy. He's numb. I suppose that is a better word than complacent, used to the feeling even if he hates it. It doesn't hurt so why stop it?

[tenth-sentence]

All at once, dragged down by its fearful overweight, the Nautilus sank like a cannon-ball – that is to say, as though it was falling in a vacuum!

"20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" - Jules Verne

[ptieuca]

#the dark piercing gaze will have her fessing up every single time