My phone lights up and vibrates against the stack of books resting on my desk. I stop typing, fingers hovering above the keyboard, long enough to glance at it. A notification waits for me on the screen: a text from a friend. I swipe the text open and quickly read it. Mentally, I try to formulate a response. My phone times out while I’m still staring at it and the screen goes dark. I go back to work without responding. I know enough now to know it’s a sign that the darkness is starting to close in. 

When things get tough, I fold into myself. It’s not a conscious choice I make, but rather something that happens so incrementally I have a hard time noticing the pattern before it’s too late.  

The draw inward is two-fold. On one hand, it’s an attempt at self-preservation, a sort of hibernation I believe will allow me to emerge a rested and restored version of myself. On the other hand, it’s my way of making sure no one around me knows the truth. Turning inward allows me to keep the realest parts of myself — the ones that feel messy and complicated and hard to explain or love — buried deep. I convince myself it’s altruistic, that by removing myself from my public-facing life I’m sparing people the burden of who I am. 

But there’s a problem with my instinct to withdraw. It leaves me carrying my burdens alone. 

By the world’s standards, there’s nothing wrong with that course of action. The world tells us to power through and to fake it until we make it, to avoid being vulnerable with one another at all costs. Vulnerability, the world tells us, is dangerous. It’s safer to keep people an arm’s length away, to smile and insist we’re fine — even when we’re not. 

But the Bible tells us something different. In Galatians 6:2 (ESV), we’re instructed to “bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” It’s a command most of us readily embrace when it comes to helping others. We willingly step in to offer our friends help or a listening ear. We try to love our people well. Why, then, are we so hesitant to let others meet us in the same way? If we are to bear each other’s burdens, there’s a flip side to that assignment — we must also let other people bear ours.  

God designed us to live in community with one another. True community requires us to build relationships that aren’t predicated by perfection. When we’re honest with the people closest to us about where it hurts and the ways in which we’re struggling, it allows us to experience community as it was intended. When we let others help bear our burdens, we can be seen and loved . . . not for the person we pretend to be, but for who we are.  

Although it feels unnatural, I pick my phone back up and respond to my friend’s text with vulnerable honesty. The words aren’t perfect or polished, but I hit send before I have the chance to overthink them or second-guess my decision to tell the truth. I’m not surprised when my phone buzzes a minute later with another text, but I am surprised by the relief that floods through my body. Not because any problem has been solved or any angst eliminated, but because, suddenly, I’m not standing in the darkness alone.  

God never asks us to bear our burdens by ourselves. Through the people He’s placed in our lives, He reveals His own care for us. In choosing to let others in, I’m reminded that I’m not only held by the people in my life — I’m also held by Him.

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