I polled my people the other day to get a temperature check on how everyone is doing in this time.
I like to do this periodically, usually when I need it the most, and all of the same needs and prayers came flooding in.
I quickly realized I needed to share something that I myself have had to constantly learn, relearn, then relearn again.
It’s that prayers for courage, strength, and resilience, while well-meaning can be deceiving.
I’ve prayed this prayer many times. “Lord, give me resilience as I…”.
As women, and moms especially, we feel such an unrest from the need to be resilient.
From the constant push/pull between the days that we’re living, mixed with the demands of the world we’re in, and topped off with the desires of our heart.
We feel unrest from wanting all the time in the world with our precious family but also desperately needing some solitude,
Unrest from future planning but trying not to live there,
Unrest from dealing with tragedy, sickness, and fear of the future but still needing to show up everyday.
We think that strength, courage, and resilience is an answer. We think that if we can just stay resilient until the that “thing” happens, until this season is over…
But what if we didn’t rely on our own resilience? …and what if we didn’t wait?
This it not making light of anyone’s struggles. We are all going through really real things right now. I’m also not saying throw in the towel and be stagnant. I truly believe resilience is such an crucial trait but we have to distinguish real resilience.
Hear me on this.
Any resilience that comes from you is not resilience at all.
Resilience is found through weakness.
God’s not asking you to be resilient.
He’s urging you to be reliant and then show up.
The Gospel Truth
When Paul described his afflictions as “light and momentary troubles” he had been shipwrecked, beaten to near death, starved and imprisoned. I’d venture to say that none of these singular events much less the accumulation of all of them would seem light and momentary to anybody today.
This pandemic doesn’t seem light and momentary.
But that’s what happens when we shift our perspective in light of eternity.
What if we focused less on the unrest, on the need for resilience and instead we started choosing to show up in our total weakness, in complete reliance, with our palms open, offering this day and each moment in it in total surrender?
“That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Corinthians 12:10
True strength is taking your weaknesses and acknowledging them in the presence of God.
Don’t waste your moments powering through, don’t waste your weakness praying for strength.
Just like connection happens in vulnerability; strength comes from weakness and resilience lies in the constant submitting of of fears, failures, and humbling unbelief at the feet of Christ.
Today, I want to encourage you. Take a deep breath. Let your shoulders drop from your ears, release the tension between your eyes. Take off your armor, and sit for just a moment in stillness; in weakness.
Ask yourself:
“How is my unbelief showing up as a need for strength right now?”
“In what areas am I showing up with my own strength and not the strength of God?”
Then give those things to Him.
He wants to take it from you.
“For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.”