I have watched a loving husband sit by his wife's bedside and wait for her to wake up from a ruptured brain aneurysm. Watched him wait to see if she was going to make a full recovery.
I have watched a friend get the news that her dear grandmother out of the blue had cancer. Watched them wait for results and muddle through what options will be.
I have watched a wife weeping at her husband's hospital bed. Waiting for answers to questions that might not ever come.
I have watched a man struggle over an accident that took another man's life and there was nothing he could have done.
I have watched a couple struggle with divorce, a family fall apart. One spouse who wanted to save the marriage but the other one was not willing to even try. A world unravel.
Those are heavy situations. Struggles that bring us to our knees in prayer. Where we feel like we are drowning, our chest so heavy we can't catch our breathe. Where we feel like we are going under for the last time. In those situations sometimes people trying to comfort us will say. Remember God doesn't give us more than we can handle.
Is that a true statement? God doesn't give us more than we can handle? I don't think it is. I think the advice we should give is that God doesn't give us anything He can't carry us through.
In all of these situations, I believe if these people were forced to carry the weight on their own, it might have been more than they could have handled. But in each instance, I watched God carry each person through that dark unknown valley. I watched their faith renewed and strengthened. I watched God carry his hurting children.
God will at times give us more than we can handle, but he will never leave us to handle it alone.
Isaiah 63:9 "In all their affliction, He was afflicted. And the angel of His presence saved them, in His love and in His mercy He redeemed them, and He lifted them and carried them all the days of old."
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