Originally published on Medium.com here.
It’s been years since that conversation, but I still remember how heavy I felt afterward.
She was in her mid-twenties. I was serving as the leader of our church congregation. It was a responsibility I had for about five years. Those kinds of conversations are a lot like therapy. In that role, people talk to you when they’re lost, when they’re broken, when the weight of their past is too heavy for them to ignore anymore. Most of the time, they weren’t looking for answers — just someone to sit with them for a while.
She asked to meet. Said she didn’t know why, only that she felt like I was the person she needed to talk to. What she shared happened nearly a decade earlier, something from her teenage years. I don’t need to explain what it was. Only that it haunted her. She had lived an admirable life since, but that thing she carried had never been given a place to rest.
So she handed it to me.
Not intentionally. Not selfishly. She was unburdening. And I did what I thought was right — I took it. I tucked it into the already-crowded corners of my heart and walked around with it like it was mine. For days afterward, I couldn’t think about anything else. Her story consumed my thoughts.
And not in a noble way. In a helpless way. As if obsessing over it could somehow undo what had been done. As if taking it on would make me more compassionate, more Christlike, more responsible.
It did do some of those things, but mostly it just felt heavy.
What I learned from that experience has shaped me more than almost any sermon I’ve ever preached.
She needed to speak it. To name it. To release it into the air where it could lose some or all of its power.
But she didn’t need me to carry it anywhere.
In fact, part of the gift I could give her, really the only grace of that moment, was letting it land between us and just stay there. Not because I didn’t care. But because there was no point in anyone picking it up again. And if I did — if I tried to carry her sorrow — would that make her wonder if it was still hers to bear?
Some burdens — maybe most — are meant to be witnessed, not adopted.
I wish I could say I learned that lesson and applied it everywhere. I didn’t.
In my work life, especially, I’ve developed an almost pathological need to take on burdens that were never mine. I do this thing where I make myself the fixer, the rescuer, the emotional buffer between reality and someone else’s reaction.
I say yes to way more than I should.
I reread emails ten times trying to anticipate how someone else might misunderstand or disapprove.
I over-explain. I over-apologize. I over-function.
And it’s not because I’m noble, but because I’m afraid of what happens if I don’t carry the weight.
Somewhere along the way, I decided that being a good leader, or a good business owner, or a good friend meant absorbing everyone else’s discomfort and still performing like it doesn’t affect me.
But I’ve been wrong about that.
“Leave no trace” is an important principle when camping in the real world. You want to leave the beauties of nature in the same condition that you found them. In the metaphorical canyon of our lives, though, the trail should be littered.
Not with recklessness. Not with denial. But with the discarded burdens we’ve finally decided not to carry anymore.
That young woman had carried her weight long enough. What she needed wasn’t someone to take it from her, but someone to hear it and then let it fall to the trail. To let it be over.
It was never mine to carry. And neither are so many other things I try to shoulder.
I’m learning, slowly, that I can be present without absorbing. I can love without losing myself. I can witness pain without adopting it.
Some burdens are sacred to hear. But not to hold.
Some guilt isn’t mine to scrub clean. Some outcomes aren’t mine to fix. Some pain isn’t mine to own, even if I love the person who carries it.
This lesson keeps circling back into my life. Sometimes in a church pew. Sometimes in a Teams thread. Sometimes in a late-night kitchen conversation.
And every time I remember it, I walk just a little lighter.
I’m not finished learning. But I’m closer than I was.
And that is enough.
Thanks for reading, and before you go. . .
I’m Aaron Pace. I write from the middle of things — life, business, fatherhood, faith, and the slow work of becoming someone I can live with. Not as an expert, but as someone trying to pay attention.
If this piece resonated with you, I’d be honored if you followed along on Medium.com here. I write — not because I’ve arrived, but because I’m finally moving again.
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