How Do You Carry On?

Do you ever wonder what you will do when you reach the breaking point? What happens when you get to the point where one more thing, even the smallest thing, not even a straw but just a grain of sand puts you so far over the edge that you just sit and start crying? How do you get up and carry on when you feel like you are shattered into a million pieces or that you are stretched so thin that there just isn't anything at all left?

It is more realistic to keep going or just sit down and realize that there is nothing else left for you to do and give up your burdens? What happens when you realize that there is no one else who can pick them up for you, do you have to pick them back up and shoulder them and hope they get better? Do you feel like Atlas with no Hercules to trick into shouldering the world for you?

These aren't idle questions. These are the things that come to me at 3 am in the long dark teatime of my soul (apologies to Douglas Adams, read him if you haven't). The reason that these things come to my mind is because recently I've been going through a really hard time. Things in  my personal life have been in great turmoil for the past week. I was getting a handle on them, until yesterday. Yesterday was the one more thing. The straw that made the camel fall to her knees. There was too much for me to deal with.

Last night I questioned whether I could pick up and go on.  I wasn't sure that I could. I wasn't sure that I really even wanted to. I started looking around for my Hercules. And I didn't find him. I realized that there is no one who can pick up my burden and shoulder it. That means if it has to be carried I have to be the one to carry it.

I was raised thinking that God won't give me more than I can handle, and that if He wants me to do it, He will provide a way. Yesterday, when I reached the point that I was done, that I wanted to tell Heavenly Father enough already, I was reminded of the refiner's fire. We go through what we go through to make us a stronger person, to make us better. He gives us what we can handle, and maybe just a little more to make us stronger, to put us through that fire. The refiner's fire isn't there to make the metal brittle and breakable, it is there to burn away the dross, the impurities. It actually strengthens the metal. My trials actually strengthen me. Do I like them? No. Do I want them to stop? Yes, I really do. Do I see the benefit of them? Yes I do. I wouldn't be me without the struggles and trials and the one more thing. It has taken all of that to make me the person I am, a person who can fight through and find a way.

So, this morning, I pick up the world. I stand as Atlas, because I am the only one who can carry my burdens.  I am the one who needs this particular fire, and I am going to come out stronger on the other side. As Neitzsche said, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. I am also reminded that though I have to carry my burden, my globe, because no one else can, I don't do it all alone.