Adulthood as Silently Bearing Up Under Loads

Accepting the burden without folding in on yourself

Photo by Lena Fedorov on Unsplash

All summer long my children have been coming to me while I work, researching or writing, to tell me that they are bored. That they have nothing to do. Sometimes I’ll stop and play a game with them—two-player solitaire with my 11-year old, a board game with the whole family—and then I’ll get back to work. While they struggle with the seemingly endless fight to find something to do, I carry various loads. I carry many loads as an adult. We all do.

I carry a financial load. The urgency to provide for my family, to remember to pay all the bills (“Is that medical bill legitimate or a scam? I don’t remember this doctor.”), to make sure there’s money in the bank. And so I must keep working.

I carry a relational load. Friendships and family relationships that need nurturing and healing. Some are fractured and need reconciliation.

I carry a work load. The need to please my employer and excel at my job. The obligation to meet my duties at work and get along with others.

I carry a civic load. A burden to know what is going on in my city, state, and nation so that I can properly vote and advocate for justice and love my neighbor.

I carry a mental load. The reality of weakened mental health, perhaps due to all these other loads, but also perhaps due to biology or some other cause.

I carry a physical health load. The ticking reality of age and a declining body, and the knowledge that every day I don’t exercise I’m losing a bit of myself.

I carry a spiritual load. The sense that I should pray more and read the Scriptures more diligently and care for the poor and check in on someone from church. Also the pressure to turn from sin.

I carry a household load. The need to keep the house clean and operating and hospitable and to do my fair share.

And so on. And so forth.

I admit that at times I complain about these loads, but mostly adulthood to me has looked like bearing up under these loads without complaining. That’s part of what it means to be a responsible adult, is that you carry your loads well, sacrificially for your spouse, or family, or friends, or coworkers out of love.

This doesn’t mean that you should never advocate for yourself and try to reduce your loads when they are unjust or unhealthy or unsustainable. That’s not my point. My only point is that being an adult looks an awful lot like eating it. Eating words of complaint. Grinding out work. Pushing through monotony. Fighting for relationships. Having hard conversations. Disciplining your passions. Carrying your various loads. And carrying them silently.

I don’t mean this silence as a kind of stoic resignation or grim despair. Instead I think of it as a confident resolution grounded in Christ and his love for us. Because in Christ we are already loved, we seek to love others by serving. And we serve not loudly and complainingly, but graciously and quietly.

What’s important to remember is that our tiredness is not a measure of God’s love for us or our righteousness. It just means we’re tired. In our accelerated culture, exhaustion is treated as a badge of achievement, as if we should all shoot for being burned out. But that is not what God is calling us to. That is not adulthood.

Being a healthy adult means knowing your limits and practicing temperance, making space to go off and rest as necessary, but still bearing many different loads silently. By “silently” I don’t mean that you shouldn’t talk to a therapist, friend, spouse, or pastor if you are struggling. And if someone asks you in a space of prayer how you are doing, you should tell them if you are feeling beat down! But I do mean that when you are in a healthy place, even if it is difficult, you bear up under it. You don’t bring others down by your constant complaining and whining about how terrible everything is and how busy you are. Here I’m preaching to myself. Bear up, carry your load, and serve as an adult.

And when you do this, what I think you’ll find is that your burdens get lighter, because complaining doubles the weight of a burden. And it also makes your environment more joyful, as you give other people space to be free from the burdens you carry.

My children are slowly learning to carry their own burdens: chores, school, relationships, hobbies. But for now, most of the big burdens in their life are carried by their mother and I. I hope that modeling this for them will help them grow into confident adults who can bear up under heavy burdens for their children.