the Burden

I saw a woman bent under a weighty Burden, staggering up a hill toward a clouded sky. When she turned her head to look once over her shoulder, I saw that the face was mine.

Atop the hill was a cross, and on the cross a Man upon whose face she could not bear to look. His blood dripped down down into the dust on which she walked.

As she walked she cried aloud Why, why if you are suffering for me am I bearing this weight? Have I not brought to you my Sin-Burden and laid it at your feet long ago? And every day I bring you more, my pride and shame and stumbles, each a load I release before your mercy? What is this great Burden still upon my back, Lord?

In my mind and hers we heard answer. It is not your sin you carry, love, but your Care. Wrapped in its heavy folds is everything you obsess over, every situation you manage for yourself, every person whose happiness you take upon your shoulders. Your Burden is friendships wrapped in fear, children wrapped in overprotection, dread of what others will think, timetables with which you torment yourself, worries for the future, lists and unchecked boxes and all the things you wish you could undo. It is a ponderous weight. Can you not let it go?

I saw her stumble forward, saw her hands fumble at the straps that bound the Burden to her.

Please, please take it for me, she said, and her tears and his blood were one in the dust. The load fell hard against his cross and he smiled. It seemed to me that the woman fell also, yet I saw she was not falling but shrinking down, down until caught like a crumpled leaf on a breath of wind she rose toward him, flew into the wound above his heart and was held in perfect love, no longer the Carrier but the Carried.

His blood dripped down onto the burden.