The Yoke That Is Easy

It comes in the shower. It comes in the car. It came at her sister's birthday, in the middle of a conversation she was enjoying, and she had to ask the person to repeat themselves.

There is no off switch and she has looked for one.

She is twenty eight and she loves the work, which makes this harder to talk about, because when she has tried to explain it people hear complaining and tell her to find something she enjoys, and she does enjoy it, that is not the problem.

The problem is that it does not stop. Some background process is running at all times, chewing on a thing, and it surfaces at intervals, and it does not care where she is or who she is with.

She has tried the deliberate versions of stopping. She has tried leaving the phone in another room, which works for approximately nothing, because the thing is not in the phone.

And there is a growing worry underneath, which is that this is simply what she is like now, and that the twelve years ahead of her look like this, and there is nowhere to go with that.

You may know that background process. Not misery and not resentment. A thing that runs regardless of location, and no off switch anywhere in the house.

He offers a different load

Here is what Christ actually says, and it is not what people usually remember about it.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.Matthew 11:29-30

Take my yoke upon you.

Read that again, because it is startling. He is speaking to people who are heavy laden, and what He offers them is not the removal of a load. It is another one.

He does not say: put everything down and carry nothing. He says: take mine instead. The rest He describes is found inside carrying something, not inside carrying nothing.

That matters enormously for you, because you have been searching for an off switch and there is no off switch in this passage anywhere. There is a change of load.

You are offered a different thing to carry rather than an empty pair of hands. Matthew 11:29 puts the rest inside taking a yoke rather than inside putting one down, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a practical thing for a woman whose mind will not go quiet.

Now let me say what I think is actually happening, because you were precise and you deserve precision back.

Your mind is not misbehaving. It is doing what a good mind does with an unresolved problem: holding it, turning it, waiting for the piece that fits. That is the same faculty that makes you good, and you cannot remove it selectively.

So the goal is not silence. Silence is not on offer to somebody like you and pursuing it is how people end up feeling broken.

What is on offer is that the thing being held can change hands. Not stop being held. Be held by somebody else, out loud, by name, so that your mind is not the only place it exists.

You are able to hand something over by name rather than trying to switch yourself off. The written word offers a yoke rather than an absence, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a specific named thing rather than a general request to feel better.

The honest half. This will not stop it coming in the shower tomorrow. I am not going to sell you a technique, and if I promised you a quiet mind I would be lying about something you would find out about by Thursday.

And I am not going to tell you to work less or change anything about your hours, because I cannot see your situation and you did not ask me to redesign your life.

There is a part only you can do and it is specific rather than general. Not: God, take my worries. That is too big to hand over and nothing changes. One thing. By name. Out loud. And then keep walking.