The Bag Lady

My youngest daughter, Kennedy, is in an interesting phase. She finds treasures all over the house, carries them to a Disney tea cart, loads them up and then steers the cart around the house. She’s a picture of a bag lady with a pink and purple cart!

It’s very interesting to watch this progression. She painstakingly carries load after load to the cart, arms loaded to the maximum, barely able to hold the weight of it all. Then she stacks it as high as possible, some falling off and needing to be reheaped on top of the cart over and over again. She spends so much time investing into this process and it is often overwhelming for her. When she has lost her patience with the goal, she will cry out to her dad to carry the whole cart for her. She can’t bare it any longer, so she thinks that if her dad can come to her rescue that she will be able to take it again when it reaches the next destination.

I think to myself, “This is ridiculous. She doesn’t have to be doing this. Nobody is asking her to load up a bunch of useless toys, transport them from one end of the house to the next, and protect them with everything that is in her little body. It’s a waste of time.” And yet, she continues to load up her “important” stuff and suffer for this irrelevant cause.

I wonder if God looks at our “burdens” the same way. Did he ask us to carry a weight that is beyond us? Is our image of “important” things really just a pile of useless toys? Do we ignore God when he wants to give us freedom, but we just can’t see beyond our tea cart full of junk?

I look at my cute little blonde girl with the eyes of God. Her footings in this world show me so clearly my own faults. I don’t want to exert a bunch of energy into things that have no eternal benefit. And the things in my life that are important…well, “Daddy” is always strong enough to carry the tea cart for me. If I am under the weight of a heavy burden, it’s probably because I haven’t remembered to ask for His help!