You Still Get to Choose
For a long time, I believed being a good person meant carrying everything for everyone.
Their emotions. Their stress. Their bad days.
I thought that was love.
But God has a way of gently correcting what we think love is… and showing us what it actually looks like.
What I’ve learned is this:
Not everything we carry… is ours to carry.
Holding Space vs. Carrying It All
There’s a difference between holding space for someone and doing the work for them.
And for a long time, I didn’t know the difference.
Holding space is love. It says, “I’m here with you. I see you.”
But carrying someone else’s weight? That slowly pulls you away from yourself.
I used to take on everything around me. If someone I loved was struggling, I felt responsible. If someone was in a bad mood, it affected mine.
And in the middle of trying to be there for everyone else…
I abandoned myself.
I stopped asking what I needed.
I stopped protecting my peace.
I stopped listening to God within me.
The Truth About Choice
Life is not always easy.
We all walk through hard seasons, unexpected moments, and things we would never choose for ourselves.
But even in those moments…
We still have a choice.
Not always in what happens to us, but in how we respond.
We get to choose whether we hold onto everything… or begin to lay some of it down.
We get to choose how we care for ourselves.
How we nourish our bodies.
How we speak to ourselves.
How we return to God.
And no one else can make that choice for us.
Healing, peace, and joy are not things someone else can hand to you.
They are things you choose, daily.
Coming Back to Yourself
I remember a moment when someone said to me, “I’m glad you’re getting help so I can benefit from it.”
And it stopped me.
Because healing doesn’t work like that.
You don’t receive someone else’s growth without doing your own work.
You don’t inherit someone else’s peace.
You don’t step into joy without choosing it for yourself.
That realization changed everything for me.
It brought me back to responsibility, not in a heavy way, but in a freeing one.
Because if I’m the one who chooses…
Then I’m also the one who gets to come back to myself.
A Space to Receive
This is exactly why I feel so strongly about creating spaces where people don’t have to carry everything for once.
Spaces where you can lay it down.
Where you can breathe.
Where you can simply receive.
Because so many of us are used to being the ones who hold everything together.
And we forget what it feels like to be held.
Closing Reflection
If you’ve been feeling heavy… overwhelmed… or responsible for everything around you…
I want to gently remind you:
You’re allowed to put some of it down.
You don’t have to carry it all.
And even in the middle of everything life brings…
You still get to choose.
“Peace begins the moment we stop carrying what was never ours to hold.”
— Kandice Steitz, Certified Sound Practitioner