The Incarnation Can Bear the Weight
Dear All Souls,
Two years ago, I was out for a run while our girls were at swim practice. I took a turn into an unfamiliar neighborhood here in Cville, one of those places with sidewalks everywhere. And with sidewalks come curbs.
As I was running, I noticed a car coming toward me. I was trying to tell whether it was continuing around the turnabout or turning into my path. That small shift of attention meant I didn’t see the step. I caught the curb wrong and went down hard. What followed was the worst sprained ankle I’ve ever had.
When I eventually saw my doctor, she looked at my ankle, then the x-rays and then looked at me and said, with a kindness that still stung a little, “You’re not young anymore.” Years of wear and tear on that ankle, thanks to football and time, meant this wasn’t going to heal quickly. It would take patience.
She was right. Weeks went by before I could put any real weight on it. Months before it felt even close to normal again. For a long time, I had to pay attention to every step. Things I usually didn’t think twice about, standing, walking, trusting my own body, suddenly felt uncertain.
What stayed with me was not just the pain, but the experience of not being able to bear weight. The ankle wasn’t weak because it was broken beyond repair. It was weak because it was healing.
Lately, that memory has been tied to a phrase that keeps returning to me during this Advent season:
The incarnation can bear the weight of this.
Not fix it quickly.
Not make it lighter than it is.
Not rush it toward meaning.
Bear it.
Our faith does not begin with an explanation. It begins with the Living God choosing a body. God does not stay at a safe distance from what hurts or overwhelms us. God enters it. Takes on flesh. Risk. Limitation. Vulnerability. The incarnation is God saying, “I will carry this from the inside.”
There are times in life when we simply cannot bear weight the way we used to. Grief, exhaustion, fear, uncertainty, disappointment, all of it can leave us unsteady. We often feel pressure to recover quickly, to get our footing back, to move on. But healing is slow. And God does not ask us to carry what we cannot.
To place weight on the incarnation is not giving up. It is an act of trust. It is allowing the Living God to hold what feels too heavy right now. It is believing that God is already present in the place where your strength has given way.
This matters not only for us as individuals, but for us as a community. If God bears weight rather than avoiding it, then we are freed from rushing one another. We can be patient. We can listen. We can make room for slow healing and unfinished stories. We can remember that fragility is not failure.
The heart of our faith is not that everything becomes manageable, but that God has chosen to meet us right here, in the middle of what feels heavy, and to stay.
With you,
Bliss +