There’s a difference between having stress in your life and letting stress start running your life. I’m starting to realize I’ve crossed that line more often than I want to admit.
A week ago, I got two flat tires on the way to see my brother. It was Labor Day weekend, and I hadn’t seen him, his wife, and my nephew in a long time. We spent the day walking around a flea market together, talking, laughing, just being family. It was a genuinely good day, and I wasn’t going to let two flat tires ruin it. So I dealt with them later — or at least I thought I did.
Nothing was open for the holiday, so Tuesday morning, before work, became tire-repair morning. My truck has aftermarket wheels, and the roadside assistance guy who came out didn’t know how to handle them. He damaged the adapters trying to get the wheels off, which turned a simple tire problem into more parts, more labor, more phone calls, and more money. Then came a week of playing phone tag with three different agencies trying to figure out who was responsible for what. As I write this, it still isn’t completely resolved.
It’s Never Just One Thing
But I’m not really writing about tires.
The tires are just one example, and that’s the problem — there’s always something. Not once in a while. Not one rough week followed by three easy ones. Something. A problem at work. Something that needs to be repaired. A phone call that needs to be made. A bill that needs to be handled. A family situation. A health concern. Something involving the website. Something somebody needs from me, or something I’m already thinking about while I’m supposed to be dealing with the thing directly in front of me. One issue gets close to being resolved, and two more seem to have already taken its place. And if you live like that long enough, something strange starts happening — you stop carrying individual problems and start carrying everything.
The People Who Get What’s Left
My work schedule doesn’t help. I have a good job and a great team, but my hours usually run from noon until whenever we finish — sometimes eight o’clock, sometimes ten-thirty at night, Monday through Friday. By the time I get home, most everybody else’s day is already over.
And it’s not just time that disappears when you live at that pace. Sometimes it’s people. My brother is retired now, and I’m genuinely thankful for him — he worked hard for a long time, and he and his wife deserve this chapter of their lives. But his schedule changed while mine stayed busy, and our paths don’t cross nearly as much as I want them to. I miss him more than I probably say. We’re older now, and there was a time it felt like there’d always be another weekend, another summer, another chance to sit around and talk about nothing important for three hours. I don’t feel that way anymore.
There are conversations I still want to have with him, stories I want to hear again, days I’d rather just sit somewhere with him and laugh than accomplish anything productive — and that’s something I need to do something about, not someday, now. I need to pick at least one day a month, maybe more when we can, and protect it the way my wife and I protect Sunday. Because people shouldn’t always get whatever time is left after everything else is finished. Sometimes they need to be the thing we schedule everything else around.
Present Without Being There
My nephew Brian is another example. He and I talk and text constantly, especially about Faith for Real Life, which we work on together. We pray for one another. We know some of what the other one is carrying. But there’s something strange about being able to communicate with someone nearly every day while still realizing it’s been far too long since you actually sat across a table from them. That bothers me, because somewhere along the way, busyness can convince you that staying connected is the same thing as being present. It isn’t.
None of these things by themselves seems unbearable. That’s what makes them dangerous. It’s not one flat tire. It’s not one difficult Tuesday. It’s not one long workday or one missed phone call. Stress rarely walks through the front door carrying a sign that says you’re about to become overwhelmed. It usually arrives quietly — one responsibility, then another, then another. Fifty little weights that don’t seem heavy enough to complain about. So you pick them up, and eventually you realize you can’t remember the last time you put any of them down.
I’ve written before about the weight we refuse to put down. But lately I’ve been looking at what happens even before that — when carrying responsibility starts quietly turning into something else.
When Responsibility Becomes Control
That’s where I’ve had to ask myself a question I don’t particularly enjoy answering: when did carrying responsibility turn into believing everything depends on me?
There’s nothing wrong with being responsible. A man should take care of his family. He should work hard. He should keep his word. He should handle what God has placed in front of him. But responsibility and control are not the same thing, and somewhere along the way, I think I blurred the line.
Here’s what makes this uncomfortable. I hadn’t stopped believing in God. I still went to church. I still prayed. I still read Scripture. If you had asked me who was in control, I would have answered immediately — God is — and I would have meant it. But believing something in your head and living like it’s true are two very different things.
Somewhere between the long workdays, the health concerns, the damaged wheel adapters, the missed family time, and the responsibilities, phone calls, and problems that needed to be solved, I started behaving as if I were responsible for holding all of it together. Not because I stopped believing God could handle it. I just never stopped long enough to actually give it to Him. I absorbed the next problem, then the next one, then the next one, and because I kept functioning, I called that faithfulness. But functioning isn’t always faithfulness. Sometimes it’s just survival with a Bible sitting nearby.
I’ve confronted that same gap between knowing God is in control and actually living like it before, in Why Is It So Hard to Be a Christian? Apparently, learning something once and mastering it forever are not the same thing.
You Are Not the Holy Spirit
There’s another part of this I have to own. Following Christ makes me care deeply about the people around me. I want people I love to make good decisions. I want families restored, relationships healed, people to know Christ, and wrong things corrected. I want the people I care about to be protected from decisions I can already see are going to hurt them. And sometimes that desire to help quietly turns into an attempt to control. That doesn’t work. God gave people free will. People are going to make their own choices — some good, some painful, some that make absolutely no sense to me.
I can pray. I can speak the truth when it’s appropriate. I can encourage, love, and be available. But I cannot play the Holy Spirit in somebody else’s life. And when I try, I usually accomplish the exact opposite of what I wanted — people feel pushed instead of loved, I get frustrated because they didn’t respond the way I expected, and now I’m carrying a burden God never assigned to me. Maybe somebody reading this needs this sentence as much as I do: you are responsible for being faithful. You are not responsible for controlling the outcome.
You Weren’t Built to Carry Tomorrow Too
Jesus said, “Don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today” (Matthew 6:34, NLT). I’ve read that verse plenty of times, but lately I’ve been hearing it differently. Jesus wasn’t pretending tomorrow wouldn’t contain problems — He said the opposite, that tomorrow will have trouble of its own. That verse is a boundary. Today has enough weight already; stop dragging tomorrow into it.
But that’s exactly what stress teaches us to do. Deal with today while rehearsing tomorrow. Fix one problem while imagining three more. Sit with family while mentally returning phone calls. Lie down in bed while holding a meeting in your head. Pray about something and then spend the next two hours figuring out how you’re going to control the answer. We try to carry today and tomorrow at the same time, and then we wonder why we’re tired.
That kind of drift doesn’t happen dramatically — most of the time, we barely notice it happening at all. That’s something I’ve learned in another area of my faith, too: You don’t drift toward God. Living deliberately matters, especially when everything around you is pulling your attention somewhere else.
Trusting God With the Outcome
Proverbs says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5-6, NLT). That verse sounds simple until you actually try living it, because trust requires giving up something I like very much — control. I can tell God what I want. I can ask Him for wisdom. I can work hard, make responsible decisions, prepare, and plan. But eventually I reach a point where the outcome belongs to Him, and that’s where I struggle. I realized I wasn’t always trusting God with the outcome. I was trusting myself to absorb whatever happened next, and because I prayed while doing it, I convinced myself that counted as surrender. It doesn’t. Prayer isn’t handing something to God if I immediately pick it back up.
Be Still Now
Then there’s the verse that gets more uncomfortable the busier I become: “Be still, and know that I am God!” (Psalm 46:10, NLT). Be still — not when everything is finished, not when the bills are all paid, not when everybody you love is doing well, not when the truck is fixed, not when the inbox is empty, not when work finally slows down. Be still now. That may be one of the hardest spiritual disciplines for a person who feels responsible for everything, because being still means admitting the world can keep turning while you stop moving. It means trusting that God is still God even when you aren’t actively fixing something. Being still isn’t a reward you get after successfully managing your entire life. Maybe it’s part of how God reminds you that managing your entire life was never your assignment in the first place.
A More Deliberate Life
This article isn’t me telling you I’ve figured this out. I haven’t. This is me realizing I need to change. I want to live a more deliberate Christian life — I want my faith to affect my schedule, my relationships, my reactions, and the things I let consume my attention. I don’t want to wake up one day and realize I spent years handling responsibilities while missing people. I don’t want to keep telling myself I’ll slow down after the next thing gets resolved, because there will always be another thing. I don’t want to confuse being busy with being useful, or being needed with being called. And I definitely don’t want to confuse carrying everything with trusting God.
My wife and I have already tried to put some boundaries around our lives. We keep politics and the constant noise of the news out of our house. Sunday matters to us — church, family, lunch, chores, rest, whoever can come over. Not because we’ve mastered balance. We haven’t. But if you don’t intentionally protect peace, the world will happily schedule something in its place.
Setting It Down on Purpose
That’s part of why my wife and I, along with some family, are about to leave on an eight-day Caribbean cruise. I need it, and I mean something deeper than just needing a vacation. This has been a long season — work stress, family concerns, responsibilities, problems, and health concerns involving my heart that have reminded me, again, that life isn’t unlimited. I’ve written about where that part of my story began in The Widow Maker. Experiences like that have a way of changing how you think about the time you’ve been given.
Eight Days to Set It Down
So I’ve made a decision. For eight days, I’m setting some things down on purpose. The truck can wait. The phone calls can wait. Work will continue without me. Problems that exist when I leave may very well still exist when I return. I’m going to spend time with my wife and family. I’m going to sit on a balcony with a couple of books. I’m going to enjoy quiet mornings at sea. I’m going to pray, think, and rest. And maybe most importantly, I’m going to practice trusting God with the things I’m not actively controlling. Because rest isn’t pretending responsibilities don’t exist. Rest is trusting God enough to stop carrying them for a little while.
Jesus said, “I am leaving you with a gift — peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give” (John 14:27, NLT). That’s the peace I want. Not the peace that comes because everything finally went right — that kind of peace would be pretty fragile anyway. I want the peace that remains when something is unresolved. When somebody I love is struggling. When the phone call hasn’t been returned. When the truck still needs fixed. When tomorrow contains questions I can’t answer today. The peace of knowing God is still God, and I am not. Maybe that’s the sentence I’ve needed to remember all along.
A Question Worth Asking
Maybe your version isn’t flat tires. Maybe it’s raising children, taking care of aging parents, working too many hours, financial pressure, a marriage that needs attention, health problems, someone you love making choices you can’t fix, a job you aren’t sure you can keep doing — or fifty small things that never seem serious enough to explain why you’re so tired. Maybe you’re still functioning. Still working. Still showing up. Still praying. Still telling everybody you’re fine. But somewhere underneath all of it, you’ve started believing that if you stop holding everything together, everything will fall apart.
So here’s the question I’m asking myself, and maybe you need to ask it too: when did everything start depending on you? Because it doesn’t. You have responsibilities. You have people to love. You have work to do and decisions to make. You have a life God expects you to steward well. But you were never asked to hold the world together. That position is already filled. And maybe faith today doesn’t look like trying harder. Maybe it looks like finally opening your hands, and setting something down.
