Strengths and Weaknesses

My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness

2 Corinthians 12:9

Some verses are easy to read, difficult to understand and even harder to live. But (surprise, surprise) there is so much blessing found in them.

I know my strengths. I’m great with kids, I love admin tasks, and while I’m not always the most organized in my own life, I definitely know my way around a checklist.

I also know my weaknesses. Teenagers frankly scare me, every time someone asks me to speak in front of an audience that has a median age about eleven I freak and my contributions to any potluck come premade and prepackaged 95% of the time.

 

97% of the time, life allows me to play to my strengths. I was blessed to be born in the US, where I could go to school and land a job where the fact that I’m pretty good at math means I get paid well, and it’s okay that I couldn’t bench press 50lbs to save my life (well, maybe in that case, adrenaline would take over?)  I volunteer in the kid’s ministry at my church and neatly avoid most requests for public speaking. 

God’s grace is sufficient for me, but I don’t really need His power in my weaknesses, I’ve built my life around hiding, sheltering and avoiding them.

But then you get on a plane. And are dropped off in a country where you can’t avoid them. Where everything you’re asked to do is based on the frailest pieces of your body, highlights your biggest flaws and exposes some of your deepest fears…

 When I was first asked to go to Honduras, I was excited. I love traveling, I love seeing new cultures, I love experiencing life beyond the borders of the US. It sounded like a trip for me – a little bit of manual labor (sure, I can do that), and a VBS (right up my alley!). I signed up, put the money aside and went…

The first part of this post gives the middle away. Honduras was hard. From the first night where I lost my keys to the first day where I learned that “a little manual labor” was going to be more hard work than I had ever done, nothing felt easy. My rusty high school Spanish failed me and  by the second night at our team meeting I was questioning everything.

Why was I here? I wasn’t strong enough to work as hard as everyone else or smart enough to pick up on the language. VBS, normally my strong suit, comprised of me standing back and just handing things to my team members who could actually communicate. I felt… weak.

 

I’m not sure exactly when it changed. Maybe it was when I downloaded the Spanish dictionary that Ted told me about. Or when I had a 5 minute conversation with 10 year old Carolina that made me a dancing partner for the rest of the week. Or when I tied my 1,000 piece of rebar, this time listening to the one English song on my friend Noe’s phone.

But God used my weaknesses. My faltering Spanish, with so much effort wrapped up in every conversation was a chance to show Love. I couldn’t push the wheelbarrow full of cement, but I sang silly songs and carried buckets of water.  Those teenagers that had intimidated me became my little sisters who give some of the best hugs.

And through it all, I knew it wasn’t me. It was not my own strengths, my own careful planning, my own manipulating of situations to make things work for me… it was God. And His love and His grace and His sufficiency.

 

I’m back in the US. Playing to my strengths again, but trying to remember to allow God to use my weaknesses. To look for ways to humbly love and serve others.  To rest in the knowledge of grace.

And praying, praying, praying.