Let me pipe up real quick.

They say men are scared of commitment.
That we run from it. Avoid it.
That we’d rather drift than stay.
But truth is, a lot of us aren’t scared to commit—
we’re scared to lose what we commit to.

See, somewhere along the way, we were taught to love quietly.
To tie our memories to objects instead of emotions.
To give our hearts to moments we could touch,
so when we missed someone, we didn’t have to say it out loud.
We could just look at the thing and feel it.
A hoodie.
A car.
A pair of shoes we never wear anymore.
A van with too many miles and too many memories.

We’re sentimental, even if we don’t say it that way.
And that sentimentality?
It makes the weight of loss unbearable sometimes.

A car weighs about a ton.
But a car that took you to court to see your kids,
that held your baby’s first ride home from the hospital,
that blasted music on drives that felt like freedom after heartbreak—
that car doesn’t just weigh a ton.
It weighs everything you lost along the way.
Everything you wanted to protect.

So when it breaks down—
when you can’t afford to keep it,
when the tow truck shows up,
when the thing you built those memories in is gone—
it breaks something else, too.

And you try to act like it’s just a car.
Just metal. Just rubber. Just glass.
But it’s not.
It was a vessel for love.
And you feel that loss in your chest
in a way you don’t know how to explain.

This is why so many of us pull back when something feels meaningful.
We’ve learned that the deeper we tie ourselves to something,
the more it hurts when it gets cut off.

And it’s not always death.
Sometimes it’s distance.
Sometimes it’s a change in custody.
Sometimes it’s being disowned by family because your beliefs differ from theirs.
Sometimes it’s life flipping the switch and saying, “You don’t get to keep this.”
And that wrecks us in ways no one sees.

So we stop getting too close.
Not because we’re scared to love—
but because we’re scared to lose something we can’t get back.

But here’s the shift I’ve been trying to make—
and maybe it’ll help you too:

Grief is proof that something mattered.
Pain is a sign that you loved deeply.
And just because the thing is gone
doesn’t mean you have to pretend it never was.

You’re allowed to say:

“That broke me.”
“That mattered.”
“That wasn’t just a car.”
“That wasn’t just time with my kids—it was my whole heart on the clock.”

You don’t have to shut down to protect yourself.
You don’t have to pretend you didn’t care.
You’re not soft for feeling the weight of what you lost.
You’re strong for still showing up after carrying it.

I still don’t know how to let go without feeling like I’m betraying the memory.
Still don’t know how to part ways with something that held love in it.
But I know this now:

You don’t start healing by forgetting.
You start healing by honoring.
By admitting the weight.
By saying, “Yeah… that hurt me.”
And then slowly, slowly,
putting one foot in front of the other.

Not to run.
Not to escape.
But to live again.
With love still in your chest.

I sat in my new car, and something hit me—
I love this thing, but it doesn’t feel like it’s mine.
And the truth is… it’s not.

Not just because it’s rented from a dealership—
but because everything in this life is rented from the One who owns everything.

Even if I paid cash for it.
Even if I pressed the metal with my bare hands.
Even if I bled for it, prayed for it, built my life around it—
it still belongs to Allah.

And when He takes it back—
a car, a child, a relationship, a season of life—
it’s not theft.
It’s mercy.
Even when it doesn’t feel like it.

Ar-Rahman. Ar-Raheem.
The Most Merciful. The Most Compassionate.
If the loss is from Him,
then the pain has a purpose.

And if we don’t learn the lesson,
He’ll lovingly walk us through it again—
not to punish us,
but to free us from attaching too tightly to what was never truly ours.

That van was never mine.
My kids? Not even they belong to me.
They’re trusts.
Gifts.
Witnesses to who I was, and who I’m still becoming.

I don’t have to numb myself to survive the loss.
I just have to remember:
What comes from Allah was never random.
And what leaves me is either a test, or a return.

Maybe both.

Remember, we all carry something,
but here you don’t have to carry it alone. Pipe Up.

More Weight To Unpack:

Its important that we unpack what weighs us down. I created the 7 Day Reflections Journal to do just that. Get it for free.

If you're going through this and you need prayer right now, I did just that for you here.

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