Carry Weights

"It is not the load that breaks you down — it is the way you carry it."
— Epictetus

The Mile That Humbled Me

Monday morning, Memorial Day, I strapped on a 30-pound weight vest and ran the Murph.

The Murph is already a grind — a one-mile run, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 air squats, and another one-mile run. But that first mile sets the tone for everything that follows. I came through it at 7:55.

On any normal morning, a 7:55 mile is comfortable. It's a pace I don't have to think about. But Monday it nearly broke me before the workout even started. Same legs. Same lungs. Same road. The only difference was 30 pounds strapped to my chest.

The weight changed everything.

The Scripture That Won't Leave Me Alone

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith."
— Hebrews 12:1–2

Notice the writer doesn't say run faster. He doesn't say try harder. He says throw off. The instruction is subtraction before effort. Before you can run the race well, you have to deal with what you're carrying.

There are two categories here: sin — the obvious entanglement — and everything that hinders. That second category is broader than most of us realize. It's not just moral failure. It's anything that slows the run. Anything that turns a sustainable pace into a suffocating grind.

The Trap We All Fall Into

Here's the honest confession: it's easy to find 100 things I need to change about myself. I can make a list before breakfast. More discipline here. Better habits there. Fix this pattern. Address that tendency. Grow in this area. Stop doing that.

The problem is that when we try to change everything, we end up changing nothing.

The weight vest taught me something. The point of wearing it isn't to pretend the weight isn't there. It's to become aware of exactly what you're carrying — and to ask whether you're supposed to be carrying it at all.

The better question isn't what do I need to change? It's what is the Holy Spirit revealing today?

Not the list. The one thing. The specific weight He's asking you to lay down right now.

The Weights We Pick Up Voluntarily

Some of the heaviest things we carry, we put on ourselves.

The weight of worry. Sales goals that aren't closing. Operational problems that don't have clean answers. Financial pressure that follows you into the evening and wakes you up at 3am. These are real concerns — I'm not dismissing them. But worry is not the same as wisdom. Worry adds weight without adding traction. Jesus was direct about this: "Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?" (Matthew 6:27). The answer is no — and yet we keep strapping it on.

The weight of appearing radical. There's a particular trap for men who care about their faith: the pressure to be visibly, demonstrably, unmistakably committed. To have the right practices. To signal the right posture. To be seen as someone who takes this seriously. It's well-intentioned. It's also exhausting — and it subtly shifts the goal from becoming like Jesus to looking like someone who is becoming like Jesus. Faithful obedience, done quietly and consistently, is lighter and more powerful than any performance of radical devotion.

The weight of other people's expectations. Someone needs you to be a certain version of yourself. A parent. A mentor. A peer group. A community. The expectations aren't always spoken — sometimes they're just assumed, and you've been carrying them so long you've forgotten they were ever placed on you. Not every expectation is yours to fulfill. Not every vision someone else has for your life is the one God is building.

The weight of trying to do it better than Jesus. This one is subtle enough to be dangerous. It shows up as self-improvement culture baptized in Christian language. More systems. More optimization. More strategies for becoming a better man. All of it good in itself — until it quietly replaces the simpler, harder invitation: trust Him. Learn from Him. Walk with Him. Jesus said His yoke is easy and His burden is light. If what you're carrying feels crushing, it's worth asking whether you picked it up from Him or from somewhere else.

What the Vest Actually Taught Me

I finished the Murph. But I finished it differently than I would have without the vest — slower, more deliberate, more aware of every movement. The weight forced a kind of presence that comfort never would have.

And here's what I kept coming back to in those final laps: I chose this weight. I put it on voluntarily for a specific purpose, for a specific morning. That's different from the weights we accumulate unconsciously — the ones we never decided to carry, the ones that have just been there so long we assume they belong to us.

The race marked out for you is already hard enough. It's long. It requires perseverance. It demands that your eyes stay fixed on something beyond the next quarter mile.

You don't need to add more weight to it.

One Question to Sit With

What is the Holy Spirit revealing today — not the list of 100 things, but the one weight He's asking you to lay down right now?

It might be a worry you've been feeding. A pressure you've been performing under. An expectation you've been carrying for someone else. A version of yourself you've been trying to manufacture instead of simply walking with Jesus and letting Him do the forming.

Throw it off. Not because the race is easy. Because the race is long — and you were built to finish it.

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Chris DeLeenheer is the founder of 85 Capital Partners and the co-host of the Unfinished Leadership podcast. He writes about leadership, faith, and the disciplines that compound over a lifetime.