Tag Archives: yoke

Chapter 3:  The Validation Yoke (When Comfort Stops Helping)

Introduction: The Weight You Didn’t Know You Were Carrying

Chapter 1: When Parenting Becomes a Load

Chapter 2:  Anxiety Is a Yoke Too

One of the most confusing parts of parenting an adult child is learning when comfort helps and when comfort backfires. Because comforting our children is good and comforting our children can heal.

But comfort can also hinder a child’s growth into adulthood. And most parents don’t know they’ve crossed that line until the relationship starts straining under the weight of it. So that the same yoke meant to help children step into adulthood can become something the parent takes on unnecessarily.  

When someone you love is anxious, exhausted, overwhelmed, or hurt, the first instinct is usually to validate, encourage and comfort.  We say things like, “I get it.” “That makes sense.” “Anyone would feel that way.”

Those sentences matter. They communicate presence. They reduce shame. They lower emotional volume. But validation alone is incomplete. Here’s what I learned: Validation calms emotions but can accidentally confirm the narrative fueling the anxiety.

Your child could hear, “You’re right to be afraid.” “Your worst-case scenario is probably true.” “Your interpretation of this situation is accurate because you’re overwhelmed.” For a young adult already living with high internal pressure, self-critique, and fear of being exposed, that kind of validation feels like relief, but it also quietly reinforces their most unstable thoughts.

The parent’s intent is comfort, but the child’s interpretation can become confirmation. And, as a result, the emotional weight doubles. This is why it is imperative for the child to take on their own yoke as an adult.  

When our children feel fear it isn’t panic it’s their perception of reality.  It is their brain focusing on short-term thinking.  It is self-protection.  It is image management.  When someone is in this mental state they usually aren’t able to hear all perspectives.  It is a loud alarm going off in their brain, “This is horrible!”

Suggestions aren’t going to usually make a dent, because “danger” is screaming at them in this emotional and mental state, so when a parent validates the emotion and the interpretation, fear gains more authority, not less.

Validation then becomes permission for the fear to keep running the show. Therefore, as a parent it puts us in a difficult place, because how are we supposed to respond in those moments?  And, also, we have a job to manage, a romantic relationship to grow, and there’s always some laundry to do!  

But, there is a difference between providing comfort and endorsing the story fear is telling our children.  We know yelling at them to calm down isn’t going to help.  I am sure we’ve all tried!  We know accepting the narrative as fact isn’t the answer either. 

Expressing Comfort That Heals

These types of responses will only lead to short-term relief, and sometimes we need short-term relief, but in this chapter, we are trying to build patterns for parenting our children into adulthood. Here are some simple steps:

Mirroring: As a parent we can acknowledge the emotion by mirroring, “I see that you are worried, scared, concerned.”  We aren’t validating the emotion but we are acknowledging the emotion.  

Tone and Breathing: W can slow the pace of the conversation by our tone and breathing in the conversation.  Stability is our strongest gift we can give to our children.  Putting a consistent roof over their head, access to food and water and adult relationships that are moderately healthy is a gift that many children will struggle to find.  Therefore, as a parent, when we take steps to be aware of our tone and breathing when our children are in an emotional and mental state of panic and fear, we are taking huge steps in parenting.  It’s really hard!  

Name it: Then, if possible, we can help our children name the fear.  It is helping our children to distinguish between the false reality inside them driving their panic and the true reality of life in that moment.  

It might be something like, “I am really mad at a friend. I am going to do horrible on a test. I don’t like my physical appearances.” Those emotions and fears are real, but at the same time the world is still spinning. Oxygen is still available.  More than likely, the sun will come out tomorrow! These types of responses aren’t dismissing the panic but prioritizing the panic.  

This interaction with your child can help them calm down.  It won’t always, but we’re not looking for perfect parenting.  We’re looking for patterns in parenting that help our children take on that yoke as an adult.  

Overtime the child can use this conversation to find clarity in the panic, and hopefully even capacity to process their emotions on their own, so that they might even see a path forward on their own.  When they start to see a path forward and find their own direction it is a win, because it is a step toward them taking on their own yoke as an adult.  

Let’s identify some challenges why these steps will be challenging for the parent:

  1. Responsibilities:  Parents have so many responsibilities today!  The topics we are talking about aren’t going to protect our children from all the pain in the world, but it can be helpful in those moments when we feel stuck. Let’s not put too much pressure on ourselves as parents!
  2. Savior Complex: It’s fun to rescue our children! It’s fun to be the hero! It’s fun to have all the answers. The fear we have of losing that role with our children can often become a huge challenge.  
  3. Guilt / Regret:  The fear of doing something wrong as a parent is a heavy weight.  Everything we do is being made visible, and our children will likely have pictures and videos for evidence, therefore, the guilt of our children going through uncomfortable experience and not fixing it for them is very difficult.  
  4. Misreading the Moment:  We don’t know as much about our children as we think we know about our children.  I know, you are thinking that sentence must apply to other parents but sometimes our children don’t know themselves, so they are simply doing / saying what they think their parents want them to do / say.  It makes it really difficult. 

How This Connects to the Yoke

A yoke is not a device of comfort. But it is also not a device of domination. It is a device of shared strength. When validation replaces development, the yoke becomes delayed. A healthy yoke requires confidence to make decisions. Clarity to see the decisions that need to be made. This isn’t something that happens overnight. 

Chapter 3 Action Step:  Name the Feeling, Reclaim the Meaning.

Here’s a simple practice you can use in real conversations with your adult child:

Name the Feeling (so they feel seen)

Use one sentence:

  • “It sounds like this hit you harder than you expected.”
  • “I hear how heavy this feels.”

Separate the Feeling from the Story

Ask one grounding question:

  • “What’s the part you’re most afraid of right now?”
  • “What do we actually know, not what we fear?”

Reframe with Calm, Not Correction

Offer one sentence of perspective:

  • “Your feelings are real, but they’re not the full picture.”
  • “You’re capable of handling this step-by-step.”

Chapter 2:  Anxiety Is a Yoke Too

Introduction: The Weight You Didn’t Know You Were Carrying

Chapter 1: When Parenting Becomes a Load

When most people think about anxiety, they picture trembling hands, shallow breathing, or emotional panic. It is but the kind of anxiety that shapes family dynamics rarely looks like that. It’s quieter. Subtler. More like a background hum than an alarm.

It shows up as:

  • overthinking
  • mood swings
  • sarcasm
  • withdrawing
  • hypervigilance
  • defensiveness
  • shutting down
  • or the inability to make even simple decisions

Anxiety, at its core, is threat perception. It’s what happens when your internal system scans the world and concludes: “I’m not safe. I’m not ready. Something is wrong.”  For many adult children today, this anxiety didn’t appear suddenly. It accumulated over time. Cultural pressure didn’t help. Social media normalized it. The expectation to “live your truth,” “find your identity,” and “build your personal brand” intensified it.

And for parents, this anxiety often became something they tried to manage for their children. Sometimes unconsciously. But, in the end, anxiety is a yoke for anyone entering into adulthood.

And if you’ve parented a child into adulthood, you’ve felt the weight of anxiety as a yoke. Even if you didn’t have language for it; any parent knows the horrible feeling of seeing your child struggle and wanting to fix the problem for them. This doesn’t mean the family is broken.  It means they are human. But over time, anxiety can begin to shape the emotional climate of the home.  

Anxious children crave validation because it lowers immediate distress.  Parents will often turn to phrases like, “I get it. That sounds awful. Anyone would feel that way.”  These responses bring quick relief to our children, and in general, those responses can be comforting but prolonged empathy can convey agreement.

When anxiety goes unexamined in the life of the child and / or the parent, the parent will stop guiding and start absorbing. They will feel responsible for the emotional weather in the home. They will adjust to avoid storms. They will walk on egg-shells around their children. They will over-help to prevent collapse. They will rescue to prevent regret. It makes sense.  It’s human.  But it can also hinder the transfer of the yoke for the child.

In the moment, anxiety might be lowered but in the long run avoiding anxiety will only increase anxiety.  It is because in those moments of “helping” it is telling the child “their fears were accurate; their ability is questionable” and they don’t get to grow through the struggle.  

This result confuses parents the most.  How can someone who doesn’t want my help also struggle when things go wrong?  How can someone resist support and also collapse without support?  How can someone be so strong-willed and fragile? A parent will think an anxious child entering into adulthood would run to their parents for support, but sometimes it’s just the opposite:

An anxious child may:

  • reject guidance
  • sabotage help
  • hide problems
  • push for autonomy
  • cling to unhealthy relationships
  • collapse behind closed doors

This isn’t rebellion. It’s fear. A yoke they’re trying to carry alone, without the strength to bear it.  This isn’t something a parent can get around in the development of their children.  It’s a normal part of maturity.  

The Yoke of Anxiety and the Yoke of Jesus

Anxious people see the world as something they must manage. Jesus invites them to see the world as something they can walk through with Him. Your child may not articulate this. They may not even believe it. But their anxiety is already telling a spiritual story:

  • “They are alone.”
  • “They must control everything.”
  • “They cannot fail.”
  • “They must protect themselves.”
  • “They can’t trust others.”

When Jesus says, “My yoke is easy,” He’s not promising a soft life. He’s promising shared weight. You are not asking your child to take on religion. You are inviting them to learn how weight is meant to be carried. And before they can learn that, the parent must learn to stop carrying what isn’t theirs to carry. That is a parent’s deepest act of love.

Chapter 2 Action Step:  Name the Anxious Pattern Without Blame

Take ten quiet minutes and answer these three prompts:

  1. In our family, anxiety usually shows up as: (Check all that apply)
  • over-explaining
  • withdrawing
  • shutting down
  • defensiveness
  • mood swings
  • avoiding decisions
  • rescuing others
  • over-helping
  • validating everything
  • walking on eggshells
  • When my adult child becomes anxious, I tend to: (Circle the one that feels most accurate.)
  • fix
  • explain
  • reassure
  • validate
  • back off
  • over-function
  • tiptoe

3. Which of these responses is actually me absorbing their weight?

This is your growth edge, not a place for shame, but for awareness. When you can name the pattern, you can stop fueling it. Because anxiety is a yoke. But it doesn’t have to be the one your family wears forever.

CHAPTER 1:  When Parenting Becomes Load-Bearing

Introduction: The Weight You Didn’t Know You Were Carrying

Chapter 1: When Parenting Becomes a Load

Chapter 2:  Anxiety Is a Yoke Too

There is a quiet shift that happens in many families, and most parents don’t notice it until it’s already taken hold. Parenting moves from guiding to carrying. At first, that makes sense. Children need parents to carry most of the weight. Children can’t regulate emotions, make wise decisions, or anticipate consequences. That’s not failure, that’s development. But somewhere along the way, many parents cross an invisible line. 

Without meaning to, parents stop helping their children prepare to carry weight, and start carrying the weight of adulthood for them. Parents become load-bearing with thoughts like:

  • “If they’re anxious, I must fix it.”
  • “If they’re unhappy, I’ve failed.”
  • “If they struggle, something went wrong.”
  • “If they drift spiritually, I didn’t do enough.”

This isn’t self-pity. It’s fear, wrapped in love. Most parents didn’t choose this consciously. Cultural pressure nudged them there. So, did good intentions. So, did the fear of being blamed for trauma, anxiety, failure and distance.

The message parents absorbed was subtle but powerful: If your child hurts, you’re responsible. But here’s the problem: No human being was meant to carry another adult’s yoke. Read that again and say it out loud, “No human being was meant to carry another adult’s yoke.”

When parents try the yoke of their children, two things happen at once. First, parents become exhausted, resentful, or quietly panicked. They feel responsible for outcomes they can’t control and place that weight on their shoulders. Second, children never learn how to bear weight themselves. They learn how to offload it.

This is why anxiety and fragility can coexist with independence with many young adults today. A child may resist guidance fiercely while still needing someone else to stabilize them emotionally, so that on the outside it looks like a longing for autonomy, but on the inside they are struggling with anxiety.

That’s not hypocrisy. That’s confusion about where weight belongs. Adulthood requires weight. Decisions. Consequences. Delayed gratification. Emotional regulation. Responsibility for one’s body, time, money, relationships, and beliefs. Weight is unavoidable as an adult!

But sometimes in parenting there is a tug-a-war taking place between the child and the parent where the “weight of life” can be delayed too long.  When this happen adulthood won’t feel inviting but threatening for the child. 

Parents often sense this intuitively. They worry their child isn’t ready. Parents might even encourage some steps of adulting, but instead of helping their children prepare to carry weight, the parent will lessen the weight or remove the weight, hoping readiness will magically appear later.

It doesn’t. Weight trains capacity over time for the child becoming an adult. Struggle develops strength. Responsibility clarifies identity. This doesn’t mean parents should be cold, distant, or indifferent. It means the love of a parent must evolve for the child to learn to carry this weight into adulthood.

That transition is one of the hardest shifts a parent will ever make. Because it feels like loss. It feels like stepping back when everything in you wants to step in. It feels like trust when certainty is gone. It feels like faith, because it is.

Jesus never promised to remove the yoke of adulthood. He promised to be present within it. That distinction changes everything. If parents believe the goal is to eliminate struggle, they will panic when struggle appears. If parents believe the goal is formation over time, they will stay steady when struggle comes. The weight your child is carrying may not be evidence of failure. It may be evidence that adulthood has begun.

The question is not whether the child will carry the weight. The question is whether the child will learn to carry it alone, under anxiety, under pressure, under false expectations as the enter into adulthood.

Chapter 1 Action Step:  Identify the Weight You’re Carrying

This chapter isn’t asking you to change your parenting style. It’s asking you to notice what you’ve been carrying without realizing it. Set aside ten quiet minutes. No phone. No problem-solving.

On a piece of paper, complete this sentence as honestly as you can: “If my child struggles with _____________________________________, I feel personally responsible.”

Don’t explain your answers. Don’t defend them. Just list them.

Common answers include:

  • anxiety
  • faith
  • finances
  • relationships
  • emotional stability
  • motivation
  • happiness
  • direction

Now circle anything on your list that involves another adult’s internal life.  It can be their emotions, beliefs, or identity. Those are likely weights you were never meant to carry.

Finally, answer one last question in a single sentence: “What am I afraid would happen if I stopped carrying this?” 

You don’t need to resolve that fear yet. You just need to name it. Because before weight can be transferred, it has to be recognized.

INTRODUCTION:  The Weight You Didn’t Know You Were Carrying

Introduction: The Weight You Didn’t Know You Were Carrying

Chapter 1: When Parenting Becomes a Load

Chapter 2:  Anxiety Is a Yoke Too

Most parents don’t think about parenting and say, “I feel crushed.” They say things like, “I’m exhausted,” “I’m confused,” or “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do anymore.” They say it quietly. Often privately. Sometimes with shame.

Because parenting today doesn’t look brutal. It looks informed. Intentional. Well-resourced. Educated. We read the books. We listened to the experts. We adjusted. We validated. We stayed emotionally present. We tried not to repeat the mistakes of our parents.

And yet, somewhere along the way, parenting began to feel heavy. Not the normal tiredness of raising kids. Not the stress of busy schedules. But a deeper weight. A kind of responsibility that presses on your chest when your adult child (20+) struggles, pulls away, makes choices you don’t understand, or seems fragile in a world that doesn’t slow down for anyone.

That weight has a name. It’s a yoke. A yoke is what you put on something meant to carry weight. It’s not a punishment. It’s a tool. It distributes load, sets direction, and makes forward movement possible.

For most modern readers, the word yoke sounds abstract, religious, symbolic, even quaint. But for most of human history, it wasn’t a metaphor at all. It was a piece of equipment you saw every day.

A yoke was a wooden beam, shaped carefully and fitted deliberately, placed across the shoulders or necks of working animals. It connected them to a plow or a cart, and often to each other. Without it, heavy work couldn’t happen. With it, weight became manageable.

In agricultural societies, yokes were familiar objects. People knew how they felt. They knew what happened when a yoke was too heavy, poorly fitted, or placed on an animal that wasn’t ready.

An ill-fitting yoke rubbed raw. A yoke taken on too early injured the animal. A yoke carried alone exhausted it. But a well-made yoke, one shaped to the animal and shared with a stronger partner, allowed steady, sustainable work. Not fast. Not flashy. But faithful.

That’s why yokes were introduced gradually. Young animals weren’t yoked immediately. They were often paired with an older, stronger animal who set the pace, absorbed uneven strain, and kept the direction straight. The younger one learned by walking alongside, not by being spared the work, but by being guided through it.

This matters, because when Jesus used the word yoke, His listeners didn’t hear poetry. They heard practicality. They thought of sore shoulders. They thought of long days. They thought of work that shaped a life. They also knew the difference between a harsh yoke and a gentle one.

So, when Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you,” He wasn’t offering escape. He was offering apprenticeship. It was an invitation to walk with me. Match my pace. Let me carry the strain you can’t yet handle. Learn how weight is meant to be borne.

That’s why the promise of rest came after the yoke, not instead of it. Rest wasn’t the absence of responsibility. It was the presence of the right partner. When we forget this, we begin to imagine that love means removing all weight, and faith means avoiding struggle. But for most of history, people knew better. They knew that life without weight doesn’t produce freedom, it produces fragility. And they knew that the goal wasn’t to eliminate the yoke, but to choose the right one.

After all, every adult carries something. The question is never whether there will be a yoke, but which one, and with whom. Most parents don’t realize this, but much of modern parenting quietly trained us to carry yokes that were never meant to be ours but our children.

As parents, we learned to carry our children’s emotional regulation, their sense of safety, their confidence, their outcomes, sometimes even their faith. And when adulthood arrived, when weight was supposed to transfer, we panicked. Not because we didn’t love our children, but because we weren’t sure what it meant to let them carry anything without abandoning them.

So, we hovered. Or rescued. Or validated every feeling. Or absorbed their anxiety as our own. Or oscillated between control and withdrawal. All of that is understandable. But none of it is sustainable.

Jesus once said something curious to people who were exhausted, burdened, and spiritually suspicious: “Come to me, all who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you…for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

That line is often misunderstood. Jesus wasn’t offering a weightless life. He was offering a different way of carrying weight. This book is not about parenting techniques.
It’s about re-learning how weight, responsibility, love, anxiety, adulthood, and faith actually work. Because parenting breaks down when parents try to carry a yoke that was never theirs, and adulthood is more challenging when children never learn how to carry one at all.