I stood in her kitchen, with the connecting presence of a mutual friend. She leaned into the kitchen cabinet with the ease of being at home. The warmth of the wood extended an invitation to stay awhile, to sit down with a cup of tea.
I could very much use a cup of tea in someone’s kitchen. We’d been wading through transition, plans, deadlines, and little sleep for months now. “They” say to only subject yourself to three major life events a year. Our list was six points long already, and autumn had only just begun. We could feel the weight of it all. Most of those events were good things—or at least good in part—but even the good piled on heavy. We were tired. Stress nibbled at the sleep our young daughter yielded to us, her nights and naps disrupted by changing places and schedules. My mind tried to keep track of all the details, the bills, the appointments, the tasks at hand, but it was hazy. My usually disciplined mind struggled to remember. I wrote lists and used them as an anchor for my days. It was the only way I knew how to wade through. I needed rest—for body, mind, and soul.
I tried to explain. I talked about our transition, about our life-event overload, about how ready we were to slow down, to settle, to be at home once again.
She smiled kindly. “Well, God puts us in situations like this…” (My mind was finishing her sentence. I started nodding my head.) “…to show us how strong we are.”
In the moment, I didn’t know what to say. They were not the words I was expecting. They weren’t the words my heart needed to hear. Caught off guard, without the relationship to offer the reasons I disagreed with her biblically, I smiled politely and left it alone. But since that afternoon, I’ve thinking about her words.
If all of this is about how strong I am, I’m doomed. There are days I am propelled by a mere combination of duty and adrenaline, habit and love. It is sheer willpower, sheer commitment that keeps me going. There are days I cry from self-pity, I snap at my husband, and I don’t have the energy to call that friend I know I need to catch up with. If all of this is about how strong I am, I’m failing the test. This season is merely showing my own weakness. It’s full onstage, under a blinding spotlight for all to see.
Thank God, this whole enterprise of life is never about how strong I am. It’s always about the strength and mercy and grace of the God I serve. Always, always about Him. It’s about how His strength is made perfect in my weakness. It’s about how He always enters the mess to bless us undeservedly with His presence. It’s about how His grace extends over every lost temper, every moment of selfishness, every doubt of his provision.
As we read the Bible, we find again and again that God uses people who are weak. It’s part of the way He works—taking a unlikely person or an impossible situation and using it to show His glory. He made a post-menopausal woman a mother (Gen. 17, 21) and a disgraced outcast the first evangelist (John 4). He made a murderer into a songwriter whose words have blessed people for generations (see the Psalms). With the sound of His voice, He brought blood and oxygen flowing through the body of a days-old corpse (John 11). We read these stories in Scripture. We see them today.
In seasons when all is well, I am easily lured by a sense of my own self-sufficiency. It’s easy to think I have the power to keep it all together, to orchestrate the smooth running of my life, to meet everyone’s needs, to effortlessly keep up with all of life’s demands. But when challenges hit, when sleep runs low, when I’m swept up in transition or grief or sickness, that’s when I realize what a farce that idea is. That’s when I come face to face with my inability and my weakness. It’s when I acknowledge once again my dependence on God for all of my needs, for my strength, for the Holy Spirit’s empowerment to live a life of love and faith.
I hate the seasons when I feel out of control. I’d really rather the “gospel” that says they are intended to show me my own strength. But my soul desperately craves the Gospel that tells me I don’t have to just pull myself together, to find a way to be good enough, or to put on a show when I can’t so people don’t think less of me. I need to hear the Gospel that takes the focus off my weakness and turns my eyes to a Father who loves me as I am and as I’m becoming and to a Savior who provides all the strength that I lack. This is truly Good News.
This post is part of the series “The Gospel According to My Hairdresser.” I often hear personal “gospels” as I interact with people around me, in the messages they declare about life and faith and the maxims they find to be “good news.” This series explores these moments personally and biblically as I come to terms with how these “gospels” influence our lives as disciples and how they measure up to the Gospel of grace found in Jesus.