by Anna Mondal
Whether you’re a counselor, pastor, or friend, when you love hurting people you’ll eventually feel the weight of their pain.[1] And when you carry lots of people’s burdens, you may start to feel stretched beyond your limits, and spread thin, “like butter that has been scraped over too much bread.”[2]
You might respond by internalizing the sorrows, and literally losing sleep. Or maybe you are struggling to solve the problems of burdened people, and suddenly find yourself replying to more emails, having more meetings, reading more books, and thinking harder than you’ve done in months. Exhaustion creeps in, peace races out. What do you do when the weight of a hundred peoples’ crumbling worlds is all on your shoulders?
Feel the burden
There’s no escaping it – when we carry someone’s heavy story, we will feel the weight.[3] We cannot don a Teflon heart and let the sadness slide off. In fact, we shouldn’t do this. We should feel the burdens. This is part of biblical “one-anothering,” as we share in another’s joy and sadness (Rom. 12:15; Gal 6:2). It is distinctly God-like to feel with other hearts, to weep with other weepers, and know their soul’s
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