When You Think Your Cross to Bear is a Person
Spoiler alert: it probably isn't
My cross to bear
From early October 2023 to about mid-January 2024, I was plagued with a near constant sense of dread. Most of it revolved around one particular person.
One person.
It doesn’t sound all that significant. But we all know that one person can generate many ripple effects, whether it’s through their kindness or cruelty, their addiction or recovery, their courage or cowardice, their discretion or a loose tongue, their joy or combativeness.
And this one person was creating ripple effects in my life that were collecting into a massive pill of hard feelings. Some days the pill was so hard to swallow that I felt like I was going to choke on it.
But because this relationship is one I couldn’t abandon,1 I was working toward accepting my set of challenges with them (I’ll be using the third person plural pronoun going forward) as My Cross to Bear:
Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” Matthew 16:24-25 (NKJV)
It was in this spirit that I actively worked to suppress my constant desire to unleash angry words of judgment and correction that would put them “in their place.” It was one part spiritual discipline and one part self-preservation because every time I indulged the impulse to vent or correct, it would backfire. Instead of bringing about some sort of change or improvement, it would lead to an escalation of conflict and instability. In my more honest moments, I could also recognize that it inflicted injury.
Hitting the wall
Well, we all have our limits. On January 17, 2024, after a series of unpleasant, very triggering interactions with this person, I reached mine. The dread turned into a dense fog that engulfed me. The person had become a daily offense to me. I hated that they were the way they were, and I hated the fact that I was powerless to change them even a little bit. I couldn’t accept it.
So, what did I do?
I responded by praying and fasting because I am a spiritual person. I cried, went to a nearby clothing store, did some retail therapy, poured myself a glass of wine when I got home, and threw myself a pity party.
The anatomy of suffering
Over the ensuing days and weeks, though, God reminded me of something I started to realize a few years ago (and that I alluded to in this post about Nathan Coulter). Suffering always involves two components. The first one is the trying circumstances themselves: a traumatic event, an oppressive environment, financial trouble, a major loss, an injustice, a major illness, a person or people creating problems for you. That one’s easy to understand. But the second, less obvious component of suffering is who we are. We suffer the particular way we do because of things within us that the trying circumstances bring to the surface: our temperament, personal history, unhealed wounds, beliefs about God, self-image, the shape of our character, and more.
I’ve long been captivated by the story of sisters Corrie and Betsie ten Boom and their father, Casper ten Boom—members of the Dutch Underground who hid Jewish refugees during World War II. They were eventually caught, arrested, charged with political crimes and sent to a series of concentration camps. Every time I read Corrie’s memoir, The Hiding Place, something different stands out to me. This time it was the fact that although Corrie and Betsie suffered the same horrendous things, they suffered them quite differently.
During their time at Vught, the sisters learned from another inmate that Jan Vogel, a fellow countryman who had shown up at the family’s watch shop asking for help, was the one who had betrayed them to the Gestapo. Vogel had told Corrie that his wife was being detained at the police station in their home town for hiding Jews. He said there was, however, a policeman who could be bribed. He begged Corrie to help him get the money he needed to save his wife. She agreed. The story ended up being a fabrication that Vogel used to entrap their family and numerous Dutch Underground operators. Casper died after only nine days of imprisonment. In chapter 12 of The Hiding Place, Corrie details an interaction she had with Betsie about their betrayer.
And I knew that if Jan Vogel stood in front of me now I could kill him… All of me ached with the violence of my feelings about the man who had done us so much harm… By the end of the week I had worked myself into such a sickness of body and spirit…
What puzzled me all this time was Betsie. She had suffered everything I had and yet she seemed to carry no burden of rage. “Betsie!” I hissed one dark night when I knew that my restless tossing must be keeping her awake… “Betsie, don’t you feel anything about Jan Vogel? Doesn’t it bother you?”
“Oh yes, Corrie! Terribly! I’ve felt for him ever since I knew—and pray for him whenever his name comes into my mind. How dreadfully he must be suffering!”
For a long time, I lay silent in the huge shadowy barracks restless with the sighs, snores, and stirrings of hundreds of women. Once again, I had the feeling that this sister with whom I had spent all my life belonged somehow to another order of beings…2
Another conversation during their time at Vught revealed how differences in their personhood resulted in differences in the way they suffered. They had been standing and waiting in a long line all day, only to find themselves in another line, exhausted but not allowed to sit, as the evening approached.
“Betsie!” I wailed. “How long will it take?”
“Perhaps a long, long time. Perhaps many years. But what better way could there be to spend out lives?”
I turned to stare at her. “Whatever are you talking about?”
“These young women. That girl back at the bunkers. Corrie, if people can be taught to hate, they can be taught to love! We must find the way, you and I, no matter how long it takes.”
She went on, almost forgetting in her excitement to keep her voice to a whisper, while I slowly took in the fact that she was talking about our guards. I glanced at the matron seated at the desk ahead of us. I saw a gray uniform and a visored hat; Betsy saw a wounded human being. And I wondered, not for the first time, what sort of person she was, this sister of mine… what kind of road she followed while I trudged beside her on the all-too-solid earth.3
Betsie’s final words to Corrie before she died in captivity at Ravensbrück were, “…must tell people what we have learned here. We must tell them that there is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still. They will listen to us, Corrie, because we have been here.”4
She was right. I do listen to them, even now in Dallas, Texas, eighty years later, because their witness remains more credible to me than most. No matter how deep a pit I find myself in, I try to remember that theirs was far deeper. If they encountered the unmistakable presence and goodness of God even in those vast depths of darkness, then surely I can find Him where I am.
But there’s this little problem. I’m not like Betsie ten Boom, unbothered and unburdened by hatred no matter how terrible the people around me are. I’m a lot more like Corrie was, prone to working myself up into a sickness of body and spirit with violent negative feelings. How, Lord Jesus, does a person like me become more like Betsie, or at least move in that direction? I saw how Corrie did it. But how do I?
Where the real battle was (and is) fought and won
Around this time, I happened to be re-reading Matthew’s gospel, and these words that I’ve read and probably quoted a thousand times stopped me in my tracks:
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and my load is not hard to carry. (Matthew 11:28-30)
These words hit differently this time because for months I had been trying to live out, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me,” words found in Matthew 16. These two things felt like such a direct contrast. The cross seemed nothing like an easy yoke or a light load. In fact it seemed like the exact opposite. My imagination was filled with images from Passion plays, The Passion of the Christ and other films, and Stations of the Cross—images of Jesus repeatedly collapsing under the weight of a grotesquely heavy piece of wood before a man named Simon of Cyrene is forced by Roman soldiers to carry it for Him the rest of the way to the crucifixion site.
It occurred to me that the source of all that imagery in my head might have come from human-made things and traditions rather than the Bible itself, so I decided to re-read all the crucifixion accounts with special attention to the sections that involved Jesus carrying the cross. Here they are:
When they had finished mocking him, they took off the cloak, dressed him in his own clothes again, and led him off to crucify him. As they were going out they found a man from Cyrene, called Simon. They forced him to carry his cross. (Matthew 27:31—35)
Then, when they had mocked him, they took the purple robe off him, and put his own clothes back on. Then they led him off to crucify him. They compelled a man called Simon to carry Jesus’ cross. He was from Cyrene, and was coming in from out of town. He was the father of Alexander and Rufus. (Mark 15:20-22)
As they led him away, they grabbed a man from Cyrene called Simon, who was coming in to the city from the countryside, and they forced him to carry the crossbeam behind Jesus. (Luke 23:26)
Then [Pilate] handed Him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus away. He carried his own cross, and went to the spot called Skull Place (in Hebrew, “Golgotha”). That was where they crucified him. 5
Matthew, Mark, and Luke do not mention Jesus carrying his own cross at all, just that Roman soldiers forced Simon, a man from Cyrene (an ancient Greek colony near present-day Shahhat, Libya), to carry it. If you read only their accounts, you would get the impression that Jesus never physically carried his own cross. However, John’s gospel does tell us that Jesus carried his own cross (and doesn’t mention Simon the Cyrene at all). Trying to create a sequence of events that brings together all four gospel accounts is undoubtedly what prompted filmmakers and passion play creators to reason that Jesus must have started out carrying the cross but at some point became too weak to continue, at which time Roman soldiers drafted Simon the Cyrene to carry it the rest of the way.
Whatever the precise scenario was, the thing I noticed upon re-reading these passages is that the details are sparse. The Scriptures don’t provide elaborate depictions of Jesus’ agonizing physical journey by foot to Golgotha6 — at least not the kind that we see in Passion plays, movies, medieval art, and the Stations of the Cross. It’s not that these details aren’t worth meditating on (I believe they are), but it could be an indication that God wants the bulk of our gaze to be on other aspects of the crucifixion. I started thinking about what those could be. Where in the Passion week narrative do we see Jesus’ agony described in vivid sensory detail?
We see it in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to the disciples, “Sit here while I go and pray over there.” And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and He began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed. Then He said to them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with Me.” He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.” (Matthew 26:36-39)
Then they came to a place which is named Gethsemane; and He said to His disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” And He took Peter, James, and John with Him, and He began to be troubled and deeply distressed. Then He said to them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch.” He went a little farther, and fell on the ground, and prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from Him. And He said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for You. Take this cup away from Me; nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will.” (Mark 14:32-36)
He knelt down and prayed, saying, “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.” Then an angel appeared to Him from heaven, strengthening Him. And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like greasy drops of blood falling down to the ground. (Luke 22:41-45)
I believe the crux of Jesus’s spiritual battle took place not when he stood falsely accused before Pontius Pilate or the Sanhedrin, nor when He was being beaten and mocked by the Roman soldiers and heckled by the jeering crowd, nor during the the trek from Pilate’s palace to Golgotha, nor even as His life was draining from His body on the cross, but in prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane before his arrest. It was there that He wrestled with His dread and sorrow over what was to come—injustice, humiliation, torture, abandonment—and His desire for a more bearable alternative. If it is possible, let this cup pass from me… It was there that Jesus did what Cain was not able to do when sin was crouching at his door desiring to dominate him (Gen. 4:7): He subdued/mastered/ruled over it.
In the end, because He was gentle and humble in heart (Matt. 11:29), Jesus arrived at a place of surrender, or rest, in the all-encompassing wisdom and goodness of the divine Plan. Nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will. He knew there was no Plan B. His time in prayer, which included the magnificent intercessions recorded in John 17, helped him relinquish completely His desire for a different path. It enabled Him to put His hand to the plow and never look back (Luke 9:62).
Episcopal priest and theologian Fleming Rutledge summarized the cosmic significance of this:
Only a Power independent of this world order can overcome the grip of the Enemy of God’s purposes for his creation. Jesus Christ, ‘the heir of all things’ (Heb. 1:12), offered himself to be the condemned and rejected Righteous One. Giving himself up in full knowledge — after Gethsemane — of what would happen to him, and in perfect union with his Father, he went to Golgotha carrying his own cross, upon which he was nailed, ‘despised and rejected by men’ (Isa. 43:3). At the historical time and place of his inhuman and godless crucifixion, all the demonic Powers loose in the world convened in Jerusalem and unleashed their forces upon the incarnate Son of God. Derelict, outcast, and godforsaken, he hung there as the representative of all humanity, and suffered condemnation in place of all humanity, to break the Power of Sin and Death over all humanity.
…
The power of God to make right what has been wrong is what we see, by faith, in the resurrection of Jesus Christ on the third day… From within… (our) human flesh, the incarnate Son of God fought with and was victorious over Satan — on our behalf and in our place. Only this power, this transcendent victory won by the Son of God, is capable of reorienting the kosmos to its rightful Creator. This is what the righteousness of God has achieved through the cross and resurrection, is now accomplishing by the power of the Holy Spirit, and will complete in the day of Jesus Christ.7
The easy yoke: releasing burdens we’re not supposed to carry
I thought about my own situation. I was wrestling with a strong desire for someone in my life to stop being all the ways and doing all the things that were making me miserable and angry. Despite all the work I had done to forgive this person, new circumstances exposed even deeper, until-now-hidden-to-me layers of unresolved grief, grievances, frustration, and judgment—all of which reanimated desires for specific things from them like confessions, apologies, repentance, validation, and justice. Amid growing conflict and irritation, those desires had grown into a sense of self-righteous entitlement.
As I prayed in the days following my emotional meltdown, I realized that at the end of the day, it wasn’t really the difficult person that was weighing me down and making me feel like the task before me was impossible. It was my own desires, pride, rage, and posture of entitlement. It was my emotional commitment to making the person pay down their mountain of debt to me. Those were the things I needed to subdue, not the difficult person.
Before any of us can go out into the world and do hard things like endure suffering, fight injustice, advocate for the vulnerable, face opposition, make painful sacrifices, love unlovable people, or bear witness in hostile environments, we must, like Jesus, release our claims to what we want for ourselves and what we think we deserve. We must do this in God’s presence in our own Garden of Gethsemane.
I’ll close with these words from Joni Earickson Tada8:
My wheelchair is not my cross to bear… Neither is your dead-end job or your irksome in-laws. Your cross to bear is not your migraine headaches, not your sinus infection, not your stiff joints. That is not your cross to bear. My cross is not my wheelchair; it is my attitude… Any complaints, any grumblings, any disputings or murmurings, any anxieties, any worries, any resentments or anything that hints of a raging torrent of bitterness — these are the things God calls me to die to daily. For when I do, I not only become like him in his death (that is, taking up my cross and dying to the sin that he died for on his cross), but the power of the resurrection puts to death any doubts, fears, grumblings, and disputings. And I get to become like him in his life. I get to experience the intimate fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, the sweetness and the preciousness of the Savior. I become holy as he is holy.
In the interest of maintaining discretion, I’ll refrain from explaining why.
ten Boom, Corrie. (1971). The Hiding Place. Barbour Publishing, Inc. Pages 175-176.
ten Boom, p. 172
ten Boom, p. 211
New Testament For Everyone translation
Widely referred to as Via Dolorosa, Latin for “Sorrowful Way” or “Way of Suffering”
Rutledge F. (2015). The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. Pages 610-611.
a now 74-year-old writer who has lived with quadriplegia since a diving accident she experienced the age of 17
Just, this was so good. Thanks for sharing all of it.
Oof. This hits. Thank you for it.