If You Feel Like You Always Have to Be the Strong One, Read This

There are burdens we learn to carry not because they were given to us, but because we thought no one else would—the emotional weight of others’ expectations, the grief that belongs to a version of our life that didn’t unfold the way we imagined, the pressure to hold everything together—to be the strong one, the steady one, the one who never asks for help.

And in the quiet moments, it’s easy to confuse that kind of heaviness with holiness. It’s easy to think that if we’re carrying it well, maybe we were meant to, maybe it belonged to us. But just because you’re capable of holding something doesn’t mean you were called to.

Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved.

Psalm 55:22

If the weight you’re carrying is keeping you from peace, it is not from Him. If the load on your shoulders is convincing you that you are alone, that no one sees you, that you have to prove your worth—that is not God.

This world will always try to define you by your capacity to endure. But God doesn’t call you valuable because of what you carry—He calls you valuable because you’re His.

You were never meant to be the savior of your own story. You were meant to surrender it into the hands of the One who already knows how it ends. What is weighing you down now is what God wants to carry for you.

Let Him.

A Short Prayer

God, I’ve been holding so much that was never mine to carry. Help me to release the weight—of guilt, of fear, of expectations, of things I was never meant to manage on my own. Teach me how to surrender without shame. Help me to trust that You are not disappointed in my vulnerability, but drawn to it. Thank You for Your sustaining grace, for being the One who carries what I cannot. Today, I let go—not into nothing, but into Your hands.

Amen.