What God Gives Us

There are two expressions, common in “inspirational” memes, posters, and the like, that rub me the wrong way.

One is “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” I addressed that one in a post (https://bipolarme.blog/2014/11/10/suffering-and-train-wrecks/) roughly seven years ago, and now I’m ready to tackle the other.

“God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.”

Let’s take a look at the premise. It implies that God gives us all our trials and troubles. Already, I have problems with that. Perhaps God is love and the devil gives us trials and troubles. Perhaps neither God nor the devil is involved, and life gives us trials and troubles. Perhaps even we give ourselves trials and troubles. It strikes me that these are equally valid propositions, though many people favor one or another.

At the heart of it, though, is the fact that there are trials and troubles in our lives, whoever or whatever gives them to us, and we must handle them. Wherever they come from, they will not be more than we can handle, the saying states.

The evidence of our eyes, and perhaps our own lives, says that this simply isn’t true. Plenty of people encounter (or have given to them) more than they can handle. Think of the homeless mentally ill. Are they able to handle what they’ve been given? The woman with her third miscarriage? The veteran with catastrophic injuries? Sure, some of them face their conditions bravely, but others don’t, and they’ll never make the news as “inspiration porn,” the uplifting stories of people who can and have overcome their afflictions, which is predominantly what we hear about in the media.

The fact remains that some people do receive more troubles than they can handle. There are serious mental illnesses that have no treatment. There are injuries and horrors that leave a person scarred inside and out. There are troubles that are so bad they contribute to death by suicide. In these and other cases, someone or something (or simply life itself) has given certain people more than they can handle.

The premise behind the saying, however, is that God never gives YOU more than YOU can handle. What I’ve said doesn’t mean there is no hope — only that it might come from a source you don’t expect. That might be the same God who ostensibly gave you those trials. It might mean another person, or a group of people, or a society can help you with what you need to make it through.

It’s not necessary to leave it all up to God to solve these problems. And it may be that we cannot rescue ourselves. But perhaps we can be that person, or one of those people, who can help someone whose troubles are more than they can handle by themselves.

I won’t argue whether it is because of the grace of God that other people help. But the original saying, in all its simplicity, is too simplistic. I believe that troubles and trials come to us from somewhere in the world, not from God, and people in the world are ultimately the ones who can help us handle them.

I’m not trying to deny the actions of God in the world. I’m saying that we must do our part to solve these problems too. Donate to a good cause. Volunteer to help. Listen to someone who’s hurting. Even just buy a box of cookies from a Girl Scout. Let’s make that “you” an “us.” God (or life) never gives us more than we can handle — together. (Note: Don’t even get me started on “God helps those who help themselves.” That’s not even in the Bible. Go ahead and look. I’ll wait.)

And why is this post in a blog on mental illness? Because that’s one of the things that some people can handle and others can’t, whether it was God or genetics or brain chemicals or trauma that gave it to them.