The Secret to Becoming A Stronger Person
Yesterday my three-year-old single-handedly lugged a twenty-four pack of toilet paper up sixteen steps to our front door. You would have thought he just lifted a car off of a two-year-old by the way he beamed as he turned to me and said, “Daddy, I’m strong.”
For the next hour, he walked around the house picking up things and carrying them. Every single time he did so, you guessed it, he looked me up and said, “Daddy, I’m strong.”
It’s amazing how inherently we desire to NOT be weaklings.
I’m certainly proud of my son for how strong he already is. I’m also proud that he has some competitive drive in him to overcome adversity. I’m glad he already has that fight in him to one day stand on his personal mountain top, lift both hands to the world and say, “I did it. I beat this mountain.”
But I also know that one day pain lies ahead of him. Heartache. Disillusionment. Tribulation.
Life.
Things that he, no matter how hard he might strain and struggle and resist, is not strong enough to get through.
This is why I pray that my son, someday can put the toilet paper down, look toward the heavens and say, “Daddy, I’m weak.”
Thomas Merton in No Man is an Island said:
We cannot find Him Who is Almighty unless we are taken entirely out of our own weakness. But we must first find out our own nothingness before we can pass beyond it: and this is impossible as long as we believe in the illusion of our own power.
The Apostle Paul spoke directly to this in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10:
9But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10That 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. (NIV)
Hard wired into my three-year-old son, already, is Merton’s “illusion of his own power.”
I had the same thing.
And this is the primary reason that I ran developed a serious case of pastoral burnout a few years ago. I believed that through hard work and perseverance and sacrifice for the Kingdom of God, that I could overcome any obstacle. As a result, I would go on to be a wild success in ministry, in marriage, in parenthood.
And have my strength to thank for it. “Daddy, I’m strong.”
For seven years at that church, I carried out my duties as a pastor, parent, husband, and school teacher through this lens tainted with an “illusion of my own power.”
But God broke me. And healed me. And helped me become a stronger person.
For by His his infinite grace, and through pain and suffering, and bouts of depression He generously destroyed this illusion of my own power and replaced it with the certainty of His strength.
And what a beautiful thing it is has been, when presented with burdens too heavy for me to bear, to replace the mantra of “When I work really hard. I am strong,” with, “When I am weak. Then I am strong.”
What about you?
What do you no longer have the strength to deal with in your life? Are you beating yourself up and calling yourself “weak”?
If so, it could be that God is trying to take you beyond your own nothingness to a place of strength.
Strength through weakness.