Do You Have Encumbrances in Your Life?

Stardate 02.23.2026

Don’t worry. Your answer to today’s question is for your eyes only.

If you’re like me, you probably carry more than one encumbrance. That’s part of being human. The weight isn’t the issue. What you do with the weight is what shapes you.

I developed survival instincts early in life. Some of the people who influenced me back then worried they had something to do with the roadblocks to my joy. I see it differently now.

Those roadblocks became training ground.

The person I am becoming is directly connected to how I carry my encumbrances.

You’ve heard the sayings:

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
“God will not give you more than you can handle.”

But sometimes life does feel like more than we can handle.

That is where I imagine the ongoing conversation between Spock and Leonard McCoy.

Logic and emotion. Discipline and compassion. Acceptance and protest.

Standing quietly between them is James T. Kirk.

At Starfleet Academy, Kirk faced the Kobayashi Maru — a simulation designed to guarantee defeat.

The lesson was not about winning.

It was about how a commander thinks inside a no-win story.

Kirk chose to reprogram the simulation rather than surrender to the assumption that failure was the only possible ending.

Nobody expected that kind of thinking.

I think about that story when I look at my own life.

These days I am learning to ask a different question when I face obstacles.

Not “Why is this happening to me?”

Instead, I am learning to ask, “What can I learn from this?”

There is always a lesson hiding inside resistance.

Wisdom is not born in comfort. It is shaped in the friction between where we are and where we are called to be.

One of my encumbrances is the quiet tension between the work that provides stability and the work that feels like breathing.

I am learning that I do not have to force a choice between them today.

Perhaps the lesson is patience — the understanding that purpose does not always move at the speed of my longing.

Sometimes faithfulness looks less like heroic victory and more like showing up again tomorrow, doing the next right thing, and trusting the shaping that is happening in the unseen places.

If you want to grow a little more today, try this simple but powerful exercise.

Pick one encumbrance in your life.

Do not complain about it.

Do not rush to fix it.

Instead, say thank you for it.

Not because it feels good.

But because it may be teaching you something you would not otherwise learn.

Growth often arrives wrapped in difficulty.

Strength is not the absence of struggle.

Strength is the capacity to carry meaning inside struggle.

You do not have to solve every obstacle today.

Carry one lesson forward.

If you can learn even one quiet truth from one encumbrance, then you are already walking in the direction of your becoming.

Growth is not always loud. Sometimes it is the gentle decision to be grateful for the weight that is shaping your strength.

Have a great day.