Even the Strong One Breaks

There was no job posting. No formal interview.

One day I just woke up, and apparently, I was “the strong one.”

The one who gets it done. The one who doesn’t cry at work.

The one who knows what to say when someone else’s world falls apart.

The one who keeps showing up—no matter how heavy it gets.

And for a while… it felt good.

Being the strong one gets you a seat at the table. It earns you respect. People admire your “grit” and “grace under pressure” and your ability to carry burdens with a smile. You’re the one they call when the world is on fire.

But no one ever stops to ask if you’re burning, too.

And eventually… you do.

You burn.

You burn in silence. In back bedrooms and bathroom stalls and long drives where no one can hear the scream stuck in your throat.

Because here’s the secret no one talks about:

Being the strong one hurts.

It hurts because people stop seeing you as a person and start seeing you as a resource.

It hurts because they don’t ask if you’re okay—they assume.

It hurts because you’ve trained them to expect strength, and now you don’t know how to be anything else.

At first, you tell yourself it’s a calling. A compliment. A crown.

But over time, it starts to feel like a cage.

Because eventually, all that unspoken pain curdles into something worse:

Bitterness.

You start resenting the people you once loved to help.

You find yourself mentally keeping score.

You cry harder when no one’s watching—not just because you’re hurting, but because no one notices that you’re hurting.

You get angry.

You smile anyway.

And then you get angry that you smiled.

Because why can’t anyone see that you’re not okay?

…But if you’re honest, you know the answer.

You taught them not to.

You were the one who kept saying, “I’m fine.”

You were the one who never asked for help.

You were the one who made strength look so easy that people forgot you had limits.

And now?

Now you’ve got a room full of people who respect you but don’t really know you.

A whole circle who calls you reliable but wouldn’t know what to do if you unraveled.

And all that resentment? It festers quietly, like a wound under armor you’ve been too scared to take off.

And if that wasn’t enough? Let’s talk about the part nobody wants to admit:

When you always show up…

When you never say, “Hey, this is too much”…

When you teach people that you’ll keep carrying the weight no matter how heavy it gets…

They will let you.

And not always out of malice—sometimes just out of convenience.

Because if there’s one thing I know about humans, it’s this:

We will take advantage where advantage can be taken.

Not everyone is evil. But a lot of people are comfortable. And if you never draw a line, they’ll assume you don’t have one.

You don’t just become the strong one.

You become the one who gets walked on.

The one who gets overlooked.

The one who gets expected to pour from a cup nobody’s checking to see is empty.

I’ve been there.

I’ve lived there.

And let me tell you, it is a lonely, suffocating place to be admired but unseen. To be praised and yet privately depleted. To carry everyone else’s world on your shoulders and wonder why yours keeps collapsing.

The world tells us to be strong.

The church tells us to be selfless.

Our trauma tells us to never need anything from anyone.

And somewhere in all of that, we lose ourselves. We confuse being dependable with being disposable.

But let me ask you something real and hard:

If your whole life is built on being unbreakable…

where does Jesus fit in?

Because if you’ve made yourself the savior of every situation, the answer to every crisis, the glue that holds everyone together…

then what do you need with a Savior?

The truth is—showing weakness doesn’t destroy your testimony.

It reveals it.

Because when you finally admit you’re not enough on your own, people don’t see failure.

They see Jesus.

Paul didn’t boast in his strength. He boasted in his weakness, because that’s where Christ’s power showed up.

You want to be a light in the darkness? Let people see where you’ve struggled to stay lit. Let them see the cracks. The tears. The exhaustion. Let them see the moments you couldn’t do it on your own—and the God who carried you anyway.

So no, you don’t have to be the strong one anymore.

You just have to be the surrendered one.

And I know it’s hard to lay it down. I know you’re scared the world will fall apart if you take your hands off the wheel. But maybe—just maybe—that’s what trust looks like.

Let God hold what you’ve been gripping so tightly.

Let Him carry what’s been slowly breaking you.

Let Him remind you that strength was never supposed to be your identity. It was supposed to be a gift from Him—not a burden you picked up and never put down.

You are not less holy for needing help. You are not less strong for saying “I can’t.” You are not less worthy when you fall apart.

You are just human.

And you are still His.