Weakness

I’m going to be honest with you.

I’ve been feeling frustrated lately.

With myself, with circumstances, with the blog.

But mostly with myself. I feel inadequate and insufficient.

Scattered, unorganized. Tired. Weak. Inept.

Carrying around a perpetual headache.

There are about 9 recent unfinished blog posts in my Documents. I feel compelled to write about many things that are pressing on my heart. I frantically try to get the words down before time runs out. Time runs out. After I’ve dealt with a day’s worth of distractions, I return and stare at the half-finished page, but the words won’t come. Half-finished conversations wait for me, but the fire is gone. Or other words beg to interrupt. So I start a new topic, only to quit midstream again.

Great posts are written in my head on the highway. They never make it out of the car. Please don’t tell me to dictate them into my Iphone or something. I’m already quite a menace on the roads. I have to concentrate or I’ll forget where I’m going.

I’m disappointed. I had such great expectations of the new blog, but it’s not how I envisioned it. I promised you that there would be both more substance and more trivia… more range… but it just seems like the same old stuff. Me, holding on by the seat of my pants. Telling you stories from my everyday life. Stuck in a holding pattern. Just keeping on keeping on.

I’d planned on learning more skills. How to make it slicker, more professional, polished. But it still looks like the Amateur Hour. Technology Instruction just isn’t high on the list of priorities right now.

The feeling of inadequacy is not limited to my blog writing. It spills over into most areas of my life.

I start listening (a little) to those negative interior voices. What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you get it together?

Last week, I had a lot of intense interaction with friends in the middle of major traumas. The issues included a life-destroying chemical addiction, job loss, an incurable debilitating disease, marital meltdown, severe depression, and complete financial collapse. (As in no money for groceries.) Other friends confided stories of children in deep trouble and parents in major crisis… some at the same time. (I laughed with one old friend that if we’re the Sandwich Generation, I feel like a piece of bologna right now. With no mayonnaise, she added.)

I’ve found myself in a rather strange position. Being an earthquake survivor evidently gives one the appearance of authority. It seems that people look upon me now as some kind of survival expert. Someone who can provide answers to unanswerable questions.

But I’m still the same old me. Weak and wavering. Fighting my way to faith one day at a time. Climbing up the mountaintop, only to slip on some rocks and slide back down a little each time I’ve made headway.

It makes me feel self-conscious. Almost like a fraud.

I tried my best to transmit hope into the situations that were laid before me last week. But the words tasted stale in my mouth, and sounded hollow coming out. The needs are overwhelming. The issues huge. Too big for me.

That old desire to fix things came briefly back to the surface.

But I felt helpless to help.

Inadequate. Weak. Discouraged. Drained.

I told them I would pray.

Finally, I high-tailed it to church to get some prayer myself.

And I remembered something:

God has always used my inadequacies more than my strengths.

It’s funny.  Some of my closest friends don’t (can’t/won’t) read these weird ramblings of mine. A couple are even mad about it. But others, people I never would have imagined reading, do. And some of those people have encouraged me this week.

The blog isn’t what I want it to be. I’m not writing about the things I most want to write about. Instead of quoting Tolstoy, I’m talking about potty training. Rather than discussing C. S. Lewis’s use of allegory, I’m telling you about how I barely restrained myself from road-rage retaliation. There is no rhyme or reason. No thematic consistency. I still haven’t even managed to get a good Books List up yet.

But.

In spite of the way I feel about it, something is happening. Posts I’ve felt were the least inspired have evidently spoken to some people where they are.

I thank you for telling me that. For reminding me that it’s not about me. That God uses His servants any way He sees fit. In spite of ourselves. Often times, when we’re not even aware we are being used.

I felt that I had nothing to give those friends in need. Except for prayer.

Thank God I had nothing else to give them. What paltry offering of my own wisdom or compassion could compare with the powerful riches that come from the prayers of an empty vessel?

Thank God that I have felt inadequate, insufficient, scattered, and frustrated. Thank God that I felt as if I had nothing left to offer. Nothing left to say.

For I have been reminded that

when I am weak, I am strong.

when I am depleted, I am rich.

when I have nothing, I have everything.

I already have everything I need.

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“But 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. 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.” (II Corinthians 12: 9-10)