Why do kids ask the best questions when it’s ridiculously past bedtime and all you want them to do is go to sleep so you can have a minute to read your book club book (because you meet in two days and you are not even halfway yet?) . . . Or is that just me?

Child: Mom?

Me (annoyed): What? It’s so late, why aren’t you sleeping?

Child: What is the strongest part of the body?

Me: I don’t know! The back I guess or maybe your legs?

Child: No, your heart.

Me: speechless!

This still chokes me up. I laid on the foot of the bed, novel forgotten and thought about this profound late night observation. Children do this all the time. They have these little takes on the world that seem so simple and at the same time complex. They look at life in a different way, unlike us hardened adults, who have been through some stuff and seen some things. We become calloused and practical in a way their untouched souls aren’t yet. My answers to life are so often physical when the real root is deeper into the unseen part of my being. My heart if you will.

Why is it my answer to life’s hard moments is my back? Is that really where I’m strongest? My weak, human, flawed spine. As if I can carry my problems around like a book-filled backpack with all my issues and worries written in the pages, and not grow tired and hunched over. I believe oftentimes what we are dealing with emotionally or spiritually will show up in our bodies. I tend to hunch. Not only is this unattractive, it causes me back pain. I asked my chiropractor for advice on how to not imitate one of Victor Hugo’s most famous characters. He suggested straightening out my posture by laying over a foam roller so my back is stretched in the other direction. Let me tell you, this was pretty painful for a while; I cringed as my back was trying to work through the tightness of bending the other direction. We are so used to carrying our own problems: the downsizing looming at work, the child with a learning disability, the chronic insomnia and so on, that we just get more and more bent over until our bodies cry out in pain. A warning—that it’s just too much!

If my heart is the strongest part of my body, why don’t I use that instead? I have come to believe most of our issues, my issues are heart issues. The Bible tells us this world will be full of trouble - in this world you will have trouble, and that is no lie! My grandma says life is like a bowl of cherries, sweet and sour and full of pits. I have felt that in the lose of loved ones, in debilitating migraines and a longing for things that seem to come so easy for others but not for me. Sometimes my troubles have troubles and I try to lift them with my back, until enviably, I get worn down to the point I can hardly get out of bed. Perhaps the burden of your troubles causes you to feel sick and anxious or speak to others in anger or it isolates you in your own house

I must tell myself to stop lifting with my back, but with my heart. The troubles aren’t going anywhere, but how I deal with them can change the course of my life. Which is why that sleepy nighttime statement is so profound. If I think of my heart as my strongest part I should go there automatically. But the trick with lifting with your heart is that it’s unseen. When I’m sad or struggling, I have to give it to God over and over again and that is hard work, but not a success I can measure in any visual way. Yet, the change is taking place; I’m dropping the weight off my back and putting it on the Lord and letting him work it out. And the way He deals with things is not the way I would. I would bring that person back, I would make someone apologize, I would get the dream job and I would always find success in my endeavors. But when trusting God with problems, I’m trusting Him to not to make it better, but to make me better.

He works on my heart in a thousand quiet ways. Through marriage and parenting, through family and work. All these struggles are teaching me to trust him with my heart, with my failed dreams and the parts of my life that still haven’t worked out. Where He says this life isn’t all there is, where He prepares me for what comes next, where He uses me in my brokenness to point at Him through my tears. Lifting with my heart takes dedicated practice, it’s a discipline like none other. So I take my mind and heart to task over and over as they try to despair and sink in the mire of this world. And I ask the Lord daily to help me - to take my troubles, to teach me to trust Him in all things - even when it seems like He is doing nothing. For He alone restoreth my soul . . .

I’m forever trying to carry my worries all around with me. I used to think it was the writer in me who could jump to imagine 50 ways a particular event, day or relationship could go drastically wrong. But I have discovered that there are many of us worst-case scenario thinkers. While most of you can reasonably say that’s just crazy thinking, I can not. I have experienced worst-case in my life. I want to give myself a green light to think the worst. I want to give in and unravel in my worry because the worse has happened. No one would blame me, everyone would understand. But what I have discovered is that this just feeds the worry more. I give up territory to the enemy and more bricks are placed on my back and I’m more bound in my struggle, sinking deeper in the pit because the burden is too great.

When I don’t carry the fear, the worry, the what-ifs, the should-haves on my back, I can walk upright. My shoulders don’t bow over, but instead I’m lifted up, my neck and head looking forward. We are not meant to look down at our feet, at the hard-packed dusty earth, but to look up at the sky - unto the hills from which cometh our help. My eyes search the vista for what the Lord has for me, and while He says, “yes, there will be trouble” (and don’t I know it), He still wants to give me joy and peace. I will not find it if I try to lift with my back, only if I let my heart take over—the strongest part of the body!

Write about how you carry your troubles on your back and what that looks like physically and emotionally. What if you lifted with your heart? How would that transpire?

Journal about a time you lifted with your heart instead of your own might? Did it work out the way you hoped? Was there a heart change that took place?

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