Tuesday Morning, My Bag Was Heavy for No Reason

Tuesday morning, at the front door, I swung my bag onto my shoulder and it was clearly heavier than usual. It was the same bag as yesterday, but the strap bit into my shoulder differently. I had gone to bed early last night and still slept shallowly, and it felt as though, having somehow gotten through Monday, the tiredness had arrived all at once, a day late. I looked at the clock and there were ten minutes left before I had to leave. I stopped halfway through putting on my shoes and set the bag back down.

I unzipped it and took things out one at a time. The laptop and its charger were obviously needed. But underneath them I found a book I hadn't read in two weeks, two folding umbrellas, a crumpled wad of receipts, a spare battery I would never use, and a tumbler with yesterday's leftover tea going stale. The book was a case of carrying around only the intention to read it. Each thing was light, but gathered together they covered a fair bit of the entryway floor. It was a little funny that I had been putting all this on my shoulder every morning. I set one umbrella and the receipts on top of the shoe cabinet.

What I read after setting it down

Once the bag was lighter, my mind noticed before my shoulder did. The load had not only been in the bag. The work I carried around thinking I should do it, the reply I owed and kept putting off, even the expression I held in place to look fine: it all seemed to have been heavy together. Thinking of those things, I realized my breathing had gone shallow. I sat on the chair in the entryway and opened still().

“Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest.

Matthew 11:28 (WEB)

I didn't read it as telling me to put everything down first and then come. It sounded more like permission to come while still carrying the weight. Not after I had finished tidying up, but right now, with this bag on. And then the promise of rest follows after that. Rest, then, is not homework I have to finish on my own but something handed to me. That felt unfamiliar, and yet it settled me. This load wasn't going to disappear today, but thinking of it as something I could lean on made my breath a little longer.

I put the book back in the bag, since I felt like reading a few pages at lunch. I rinsed the tumbler in the sink and turned it upside down to dry. With the rest left in the entryway, I put the bag on again and it felt much better than before. When I opened the door, the cold morning air came in through the window on the landing. With each floor I went down, my shoulders seemed to settle a little more into place. While waiting for the elevator I adjusted the strap once and thought: let's go with about this much weight today.

Today's breath — Lift your shoulders once, then drop them as you breathe out.