Does God Give Us More Than We Can Handle

Did you know that the phrase, "God will never give you more than you can handle," was actually stated from Mother Theresa, not the Bible? Okay, those weren't her exact words, but the fact that this saying is not even biblical, fills me up with so much relief.

So many times when people have said this to me, I sometimes feel like I must be weak. 

Yes, I always manage my way through the day, week, month, year, lifetime that I thought was so intolerable, but I never make it through alone. I always, always, need help from my friends, my husband, my family, and of course my God. Sometimes life is more than I can handle alone. 

Then I realized, God may not have said that he wouldn't give you more than you could bear, but he does often give us enough where we have to rely on other people. God does not want us to handle this stuff alone.

Proverbs 18:24 There are "friends" who destroy each other, but a real friend sticks closer than a brother.

A friend of mine has been going through a really hard time. She ended up spending some time in the hospital due to a nervous breakdown. This was not because she is weak or because she didn't have enough faith. She just has too much on her plate. Essentially a nervous breakdown means we have more on our plate than we can handle alone. She needed the help from doctor's to make it through.

God gives us stuff so we rely on other people. He wants us to need the fellowship of others. If it wasn't so, then he wouldn't have said that his two greatest commandments were loving Him and loving others. Oh and let's not forget:

1 Corinthians 13:13, "Three things will last forever--faith, hope, and love--and the greatest of these is love."  

Through my fertility issues, I've clung to the hope that we will have a big family. Quite recently, I went through a bad patch of feelings I didn't know existed within me anymore.

My hope was gone.

My faith in God allowed me to acknowledge this was not because he didn't love me, or had forgotten me, my faith was not shaken, but even through my faith I was broken and depressed. It was not my faith that got me through it. It was the love. The love I got from friends, family, scripture. I reached out to many and a few reached back. I believe this is what God wants.

I think instead of teaching people that God will never give us more than we can bear, we should say, "Share your burden, it will lighten your load." Because sometimes, we do have more than we can bear alone. It's not because we are weak or faithless, we are created to need people. We are created to need Him. Love may not heal all things, but it makes the worst of the stuff much more bearable.