Hi all. Today’s post is a little different. I suspect many of you caregivers and chronic illness warriors can relate to the struggle I’m sharing about in this post, but today I wanted to share something I wrote especially for Enneagram type twos. I know the Enneagram can be controversial, and I’m still working out my own thoughts on it. However, no matter your thoughts on the Enneagram, I think this is a truth a lot of people need to hear. Thanks for bearing with me! 

As I write this, hot tears are streaming down my face. My friend is hurting. She had a wave of pain hit her through something going on her life. And I feel helpless. 

I don’t know how to help her. I can’t fix it or take the pain away. But my heart breaks for her. Being a two is hard sometimes. It means late nights as your heart breaks over and over again for someone you love. 

Wait, there’s text from another friend. Her heart was broken, too, by someone she trusted. Her core beliefs are being shaken and her pain-filled text brings more tears to my eyes. Another burden I can’t relieve, more brokenness I can’t glue back together.

You know in the Lord of the Rings, when Sam picks Frodo up and says, “I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you.” He couldn’t carry the ring for him, the ring that weighed down his friend so much. 

But he could carry Frodo when Frodo couldn’t make it one more step. I wonder if Samwise Gamgee was a two.

I love that scene, it’s so beautiful to see that kind of loyal, sacrificial love. Maybe we can’t carry our friend’s depression for them. Maybe we can’t carry their anxiety. Maybe we can’t carry their broken heart.

I think it’s important for us twos to realize that’s okay. We were not created to have the entire world on our shoulders. Bearing burdens with someone doesn’t mean fixing everything wrong for them. Because we can’t.

But we also need to be careful when it comes to trying to carry them. When, like Sam, we pick them up and trudge toward Mount Doom with them on our backs. Sometimes, this is right. Sometimes, this is how we should love and the only way we can love.

Dear two, if you identify as a two, don’t let those words make you feel like you have to always be the person to be there. Being there is pain is a beautiful, powerful thing. But in the times you can’t, in the times you are unable to reach in, know that God is there where you can’t be.

So pray, like the For King & Country song that God would hold her when you can’t.

We must surrender the people we love — and their suffering — into the hands of the One who can fully and completely understand and comfort their heart.

Love,

Your Fellow Enneagram Type Two