***I originally posted this story nearly two years ago. It never hurts to revisit topics and the number of Ranchers has increased tremendously since then. Here is the reprisal of the rock story.***
My younger daughter wears her heart on her sleeve, just as I did when I was growing up. She’s the fixer…the tender-hearted one who wants everyone to be happy. It took me many, many years to finally gain the insight I needed to help her. She thinks in analogies much as I do, so this is how I taught her to take care of herself in her relationships and daily interactions.
God gives us all a pile of rocks. There are big rocks that represent the big things in life like family, jobs, houses, health. There are medium sized rocks for the average things we have to deal with like friends and laundry and soccer practice. Then there are small rocks for the mundane trivia of life like grumpy store clerks or the guy that cuts you off on the freeway. God gives us extra rocks sometimes for those unexpected crises like a death in the family or the unexpected loss of a job. But, HE never gives us more than we can carry. The problem comes when WE pick up rocks that are not ours.
Picture, if you will…we are sitting in a great big circle with everyone we come into contact with on a typical day. We’re all sitting here with our pile of rocks in front of us. Just the right number of rocks. Just the right amount that we are capable of carrying because we need to take them home with us at the end of the day. Suddenly, the woman across from you says something hurtful to you. If you internalize and take that personally, she has just thrown you one of her rocks and you dutifully stacked it on your pile. Now, seated a few folks down is your best friend. She’s having some major issues in her life right now and she wants someone…anyone…to carry this burden for her. So you reach over and gladly take a few of her rocks because that’s what friends do, right? You sit here all day, every day, in your circle…getting rocks thrown at you and picking up others until you can’t even SEE over your pile, let alone pick it up and carry it back home!
It’s one thing to get up, walk over to your friend, and help her carry a particularly heavy rock for awhile. It’s quite another to try to carry everyone else’s rocks in addition to your own. Let others carry their own rocks. It makes them stronger. Stop trying to own the world’s problems. Honestly, you cannot live long enough to fix them all.
Once my daughter really absorbed this lesson, to this day she’ll tell me some big drama that’s going on in her life and when I meet her with a silent pause, she’ll say “I know, I know…it’s not my pile of rocks!” Remember this the next time someone throws rocks at you.
❤️
“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
Proverbs 4:23 NIV