I used to feel like it was my job to hold everything together. Hold space. Hold peace. Hold people. Hold pain.
Did I realize I felt this way? Nope, not at all. This came from subconscious beliefs formed when I was younger. I carried these beliefs in my blind spot. And simply always did what I had always done.
If something felt off, I’d contort myself to make it better. If someone was hurting, I felt guilty at the mere thought of not coming through to help and show up for them like I always did. And if a relationship ever seemed to demand more of me than I was able to give, I became highly dysregulated. As someone who found her identity in how she showed up for others and in many ways, even held everything together, I didn’t realize how much these patterns defined me and ultimately drained me. How much it felt like everyone counted on me to be the go-to girl, the relational glue, etc. But if the glue failed to hold, what did that make me?
For a long time, this looked a lot like love. Like selflessness. Like compassion. But in reality, it was relational over-responsibility that dated back to childhood. By my 30s it was burning me out from the inside out. By my early 40s, the burnout reached unsustainable levels.
The Parable That Changed Everything
I didn’t have language for it then, but I lived like someone constantly scanning the horizon for danger — and rushing in with solutions whether that’s what was best for me or the other person – or not. It was love, but it was also fear. It was service, but also survival. And eventually, I couldn’t hold it all anymore.
After a series of serious wake up calls, I reached a breaking point, coming to the end of myself. Over about two years, I went through a series of awakenings in which God helped me radically redefine myself and finally make lasting changes. At one point, a story Jesus told started whispering its way into my healing.
In Matthew 13, Jesus tells the parable of the wheat and the weeds.
A farmer sows good seed in his field. But while everyone’s asleep, an enemy comes and scatters weeds among the wheat. As the plants begin to grow, the servants panic. “Should we pull the weeds out?” they ask. But the master says no. “Let both grow together until the harvest. If you pull the weeds now, you might uproot the wheat with them.”
This lesson would have been lost on me in the past. Why wait? Why let the weeds grow at all? But now I see: the urge to fix is not always the same as faithfulness.
And the ones trying to yank the weeds out too early can sometimes do more damage than the enemy who sowed them.
The Master’s focus isn’t on the weeds—it’s on the wheat. On preserving the good. On patient growth.
I Was the Overzealous Servant
I didn’t realize it, but I lived like that servant. The one who couldn’t stand the idea of “letting someone down” with inaction. I may as well have been the servant who needed the field to feel clean, ordered, and safe. Who would have ripped out what seemed wrong—even if it meant harming what was still growing.
There was a time when I believed that if I just tried harder—loved better, sacrificed more, anticipated everyone’s needs—I could save people from their pain. And when that didn’t work, deep down, I didn’t feel enough, if I didn’t feel I was “doing enough”. But that’s the trap of over-responsibility: it convinces you that everything broken is your fault, and everything good is your job to protect.
The Trauma Behind the Tending
Many of us who carry this weight aren’t doing it because we’re trying to be controlling. We’re doing it because we learned—early and often—that peace was our responsibility.
We became the emotional regulators in the room.
The forgivers.
The pleasers.
The mediators.
The emotional shock absorbers.
Sometimes, we were the children of trauma survivors. Or the partners of emotionally immature spouses. Or the helpers in every room, because helping felt safer than stillness.
We internalized this unspoken rule: If I don’t hold this together, everything will fall apart.
And worse: If it does fall apart, it means I wasn’t enough.
When Helping Becomes Hiding
There was a time I nearly lost someone I loved to suicide. And I blamed myself.
There was a time I walked with a friend through the death of her child from leukemia—and became the emotional caregiver she leaned on in her despair. I didn’t have language for it at the time, but what I experienced was a form of survivor’s guilt and moral injury. I was carrying pain that wasn’t mine to fix—but it lived in my body like a second skin.
Later, I realized how much of my energy was going toward preventing collapse. Not just in others, but in myself. I stayed strong because the alternative would mean I wasn’t doing enough.
I had confused love with vigilance and faith with hyper-functioning.
The Dance of Over-Functioning and Spiritual Fusion
If you’ve ever felt locked in a dysfunctional relationship dynamic—where your care becomes compulsion and your love becomes labor—you’ve likely tasted the polarity of trauma bonding.
There’s a magnetic pull between overfunctioners and those not able or willing to show up for themselves. Between the fixer and the avoider. Between the one who carries too much and the one who isn’t carrying what is theirs.
But here’s the painful truth: Fixing someone is not the same as loving them. And you don’t become more worthy by disappearing into their needs. That’s not faith. That’s fusion. And fusion isn’t love. It’s the absence of boundaries dressed as devotion.
In Bowen Family Systems theory, Murray Bowen refers to the role of emotional overresponsibility in marriage as the adaptive spouse. He also emphasized these roles arise from anxiety within a relational system, not personality. With decreased system anxiety and increased differentiation, these roles can shift or even dissolve.
The Field Is Not Yours
This is all why I keep coming back to this parable. It reminds me:
- You are not the Gardener.
- You are not the Harvester.
- You are not the Savior.
Your job is to grow—not to purify the field.
To stay rooted—not to diagnose every problem.
To trust the timing—not to fix everything.
Because you can’t always tell the difference between a weed and a weak wheat sprout in early growth. Sometimes the ones we want to uproot are still in process. Sometimes we are still in process.
And what a mercy that God waits.
The Courage to Stay Grounded
I didn’t know it had a name, but eventually, I learned there’s a word for what I needed most: differentiation. It means learning how to stay rooted in who you are, even when people around you are unraveling.
Differentiation says:
“I can love you without losing myself.”
“Your crisis doesn’t require my collapse.”
“I’m allowed to grow even if you’re not ready.”
You don’t have to detach to stay grounded. You don’t have to withdraw to stop over-functioning. You simply begin to notice:
This is mine. That is theirs. And I trust God with what lies between.
And here’s the beauty:
When even one person steps out of the dysfunction and grows in clarity, the dance starts to break.
You can’t change someone else. But your growth may invite theirs.
Or reveal their unwillingness to change.
Either way, it sets you free.
Letting Go is a Form of Love
Letting go is not indifference. It’s maturity. It’s saying: “I trust God with this. And I trust myself enough to step back.” It’s resisting the urge to diagnose, direct, or dissolve tension just because you can’t stand watching something unfold imperfectly.
Letting go is love with boundaries. It’s faith with humility. It’s hope without control.
And sometimes it’s the only way real healing can begin.
A Final Word of Grace
If any of this feels painfully familiar, you’re not alone.
If you’re exhausted from holding everyone else’s growth in your own hands, take a breath.
This next part is just for you.
You are not the fixer.
You are not the glue.
You are not the field’s salvation.
You are the wheat.
And your only task—your holy task—is to grow.
To receive the light.
To drink in the water.
To stay rooted.
To become.
You’re allowed to rest in a field that still has weeds.
You’re allowed to be in process, not perfect.
You’re allowed to surrender what was never yours to carry.
Because the field is not yours to fix.
But you—you are still growing.
And grace is how.
Call to Action:
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